Quote - Most likely the Posre version used advanced material room settings that D|S won't read from the Poser files - some of them can be reproduced in the Surfaces plaette, especially if you have the layered image editor or some of PoseWork's or Pendragon's shaders, but others don't have equivalents yet.

I've noticed also that with an obj import to DS, it comes in correc tly.

The strange thing is that the Poser import to DS faces do not look like their modifed form in Poser and do not look like the original unmodified faces either.  It's like new faces from out of the blue; and they are interesting and well porportioned faces just completely unplanned.

James

Thanks, I'll experiment with that.

On another issue, I have a special effects "light sphere" enabled and it looks OK, but when I select the "realistic" option under "Light Sphere" so as to use the quality slider, then the light sphere t dissapears entirely.  Wha't up with that?

Thanks!

Jim

Thanks much for your reply.  What suggestions do you have for improving the quality of the shaders used in the foreground so that they render with finer detail and realistic appearance.  The tiling of most things I've tried degrades a lot when used in foreground.  Does one need higher res shaders or is there a setting in Carrara that improve what is there.

Quote -
With general preplanning, what you can do with a set of render layers in photoshop is only limited by your imagination.

Occurs to me that the problem with rendering individual components so they can be worked on as layers in photoshop is that you would loose all the lighting effects among the objects that you get in a full carrara render. Right?? Jim

Don't see a png file typle in my Carrara 5 Pro. What is your procedure here? How are you dealing with the background on saves from Carrara? Jim

Yes, that's what I was thinking, but also wondering if there were other ways or plugins or utilites to do the same thing. Also, what's the best 2d application for such postwork? And let's see, you would use the "visible" switch to switch off everything except the one thing you are rendering. What's the best save file format to use in Carrara to go to photoshop or similar program? Thanks! Jim

Does not work with the body of a character, e.g., a character in profile with some alpha applied results in unwanted result of the left arm being visible through the body from the right side of the character. Apart from saving each 3d component individually, is possible to move a Carrara 2d render to photoshop or paintshop pro while retaining the different 3d componets as layers in the 2d ap? Best Thoughts, James

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions; very helpful! Jim

Still hazy about the haze controls. Here is a picture; what's wrong with this picture? I've turned the haze red so it stands out. How do I get the line of haze which is already set to zero. Thanks, Best Thoughts, James

Quote - Lower the value where it says " in the scene corresponds to" from "1.00 mi" to ".01 mi "and the haze will be drastically reduced.

Thanks for suggestion... Values now read "100.00 in the scene corresponds to .01 mi" Still no luck; haze size still looks about the same as before even with altitude and density set to zero. Best Thoughts, James

Did not seem to do it for me. Unchecking that box filtered the haze from upper sky but I still have a dense block of haze between sky and ground; see picture attached. Jim

Quote - Try with the"Enable Ground" in Atmosphere Unticked!

OK, so in experimenting with realistic sky, I find that the default inserts a sizable haze between the sky and ground. The two controls for it, Haze Altitude and Haze Density don't seem to work as I expected: A setting of 100% turns the whole sky to haze, which makes sense, but a setting of 0% still leaves a sizable haze between the sky and ground. What am I mising here? Jim

Quote - Try with the"Enable Ground" in Atmosphere Unticked!

Thanks!; that worked for "realistic sky" which has the "enable ground" option. I did not see any corresponding option under the plane "sky" selection??... Jim