url cut short, this one should work: http://theedgeoftheuniverse.com/carrara/contest.html mdc

It is not too hard. You have to do it in the vector side of CorelDraw not in PhotoPaint. A quick one, two, three (ok, 1 to 10) goes like this: 1. Set up a new file in Draw with the units set to points. 2. set up 4 guide lines so they form a box that is 720 points wide by 720 points tall. 3. turn on snap to guide lines and snap the 0,0 base point down to the lower left intersection of the guide lines. 4. draw or import your outline, scale it so that it fits within the guide lines (does not have to touch all 4 guides, can be 720 high or wide). 5. make sure your drawing is made up of closed paths that do not intersect, remove all grouping and combine all the paths into one curve. 6. Call up the export dialog and find the ttf export filter, you have to name your font 2 times. First is the font file name and second is the one that will show up in your font lists. Call it something easy to find. 7. design size stays at 720, grid size should be at 4096(or what ever the higher number is). 8. assign your outline to a keystroke by pressing the key you want it to be. 9. that's it, find your new font and install it, then open up Carrara and it will be available in the text modeler. 10. you can add more outlines to the same font file by repeating these steps and assigning a different keystroke to each object. Note: you can have more than one outline open in your work file but you have to export them one at a time by checking the "export selected only" box during export and making sure your object is set inside the guides and as close to baseline 0,0 as it can get. gear font made this way mdc

Neat, so when do we get the next update picture? Is that Antoine in the red shirt? (not wearing my glasses) mdc

kaom, try cropping those black bands on each side of the treads. make them thinner and the center of the bitmap will fill more of the outer flat part of the mesh. another way would be to use a layer shape that covers the area you want the treads to show, use just the bump channel filled with your tread bump(crop the bitmap so that only the tread pattern is left) mdc

opps, I got it. Just put getright to sleep and the files download fine. thanks mdc

Bruce, looks good to me but, I get an error when I try to download the demo every time. "403 = Forbidden" I using getright with IE4 under NT any Ideas mdc

Vary nice! mdc

hummm.... You might try to fake the reflections on the spline object with a T-map in the reflection and highlight channels. or... if the movie is not too long you could render it 2 times. Once without the star sphere and the second with it. check the alpha channel option and overlay each frame in post with the good object reflections on top of the good star background, using the mask to knock out the parts you don't need. A real pain but it should take less than 5 hours. mdc

nice job, great detail

Thanks for the quick replies guys. Mark, I can't post anything to egroups at all, I changed my user profile and all I can do is read the mail at the e-groups web site now. No posting & no email sent to my box. I saw Garry in the chat channel and he is looking into it. willf, Carrara's modelers are ok (rds4 was my first 3d app), once you get the basics down in rhino you (IMO) will not be happy modeling in C anymore. It is easier,faster,better and can be cheaper, if you can buy with a student discount. If you any specific questions about the 2, post them & I'll try to answer with what I know. later mdc

Carrara will not import objects into the spline modeler. It will only import paths so you can rebuild your object there. You might try running your rhino export (as an obj) thru Steve's UV Mapper to smooth out the reflections of the Carrara render. good luck (after using rhino I can't bring my self to model anything in C)