Remember you've got a shader drop down on the first page of the object properties. Personally I find it faster for detailed models as point-and click makes targetting small items a pain. Mik

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com

Well, the good news is that if you get Parchment, you should be able to do it all without leaving Carrara... Mik

Mostly carrara, although there are a couple of things Bryce is better at - terrains and motion paths. You can now get the Ground Control plug-in for Carrara that will import Bryce terrains (including a water detecting plug-in), so you can bring your favourites over. Motion paths may take a little longer to fix... Mik

As an alternative, start in photoshop with the picture of the file. Fill the outside black and the inside white. Apply a blur filter so the edges fall away gradually. Save the file. Go into Carrara. If you have Anything Grooves, create an AG primitive, create a shader from the texture and use it as the height map on the primitive, with 0 being transparent. Alternatively, create a terrain and load it as the terrain height map. The file is a quick and dirty import into Anything Grooves. If you used a bigger resolution source image, left some space around the logo and a higher density AGr mesh the result would be a lot smoother. Mik

2.0 has bugs, so you'll need the patch to 2.1 from the Eovia web site. 3.0 also has bugs, but includes all the fixes from the 2.1 patch, along with a whole host of new features, performance boosts, streamlined interfaces and better render engines - and a sprinkling of its own new bugs, but nothing serious enough to interrupt your work flow. Mik

Just remember that the upgrades are NOT guarenteed compatible with the C3 Betas, just with the C3 golden code... Mik

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com

You could try the Cognito plug in from DCG. Even in demo mode it will be enough to coordinate the rotation of the wheels and allow easy handling of rotation by > 360 degrees. You still need to do the motion of the cart by hand (2*pi*r forwards for each revolution of the wheels). Mik

What happens if you turn soft shadows on? For the high lights, try adding a long, glowing, white rectangle off screen towars the camera. Hopefully it'll generate a long high light running along the length of the glass to show off its curves. You might want to consider adding a vertical one for the bottle. Mik

Nice. I'd expect the flat bit of the base with the gems to also relfect the six fold facetting (maybe it does and just doesn't show up very well). It also looks a lot to clean and neat, but at the same time without having the sparkle that a newly made/cleaned item has. Mik

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com

For clip mapping, at least for fairly flat objects, try using the Anything Grooves. If will take a bitmap giving height data and generate an adaptive mesh for it. Normally the mesh is square/rectangular, but there is an option to omit the bits of the mesh where the texture height is 0 (black). Mik

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com

Well I'll be, either a background or a backdrop of 255 comes out as 254. If you have the Noir plugin, you can set the exposure equalizer to strength 100% and master effect 103% and it'll come out with 255s (it'll also make the rest of the image a little bit (3%) brighter). I'd almost suspect a small rounding problem somewhere. Might be worth sending Eovia a bug report. Mik

Where else are you going to get two plug-ins for $20? Mik

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com

If you bought them indivudually (ShaderOps is a single package), you'd be paying $130 for all 4, so there is a noticable saving. Even if you got one of them other than Anything Grows you can still save $10 on the others. Check out the dcg site (http://digitalcarverguild.com) for some examples and galleries. Anything Grows is prehaps to most spectacular. Anything Grooves is nice for adding depth and for modelling some things. Shader Ops is much underrated - it lets you do all sorts of inventive things with shaders. Starbright gives you instant stars in the sky, and you can play around with them a bit. Mik

Got a dual head/TV out graphics card? You may be able to get the movie to playback to the second head. If so, just stick the VCR on that (with a TV so you can see what's coming out) and record that. Probably no sound unless you also shackle up your sound card outputs.. Mik

Ummm. GIF animation is a bit weird compared to most types of traditional animation. Carrera can do it, and it's a lot easier with the Cognito plug-in, especially if you think you'll need to adjust the relative speeds one it's all set up. One thing to watch for is strobing effects. At 15 fps, you're taking a picture every 1/15th of a second. Ensure that the planet is in a different place for at least 5 successive frames or you'll get some very odd motion effects. Mik