Is there some way to get "knife"-like functionality in the vertex modeler? In the attached image, for example, what if I want to create another row of vertices midway up the cylinder. In lightwave or c4d I'd just whip out the knife tool and voila. Not sure how to do this in Carrara.

You can try to subdivide the modle but it may not come out exactly the way you want. -Kix

-Kix

To subdivide a cylinder verticaly I would select and move the top edge down half way and the extrude to the height you want. If the area you want to subdivide is between other sections you have to select the area, detach it and then delete it. This will leave a gap in your mesh. To fill the gap extrude up half way and then loft to fill and close the rest of the gap. Keith

Thanks for the suggestions. Both methods get the desired result but I think Keith's approach leaves you with cleaner-looking polygons (subdivide creates some nasty looking ones). I still think it would be convenient to have Knife functionality in the vertex modeler but I imagine that is somewhat unlikely given the focus on Amapi and the Amapi-Carrara bridge (which sounds great but one of the big knocks on programs like Lightwave is the separation into two programs so in some ways this is like a step backwards). Personally I think there's still a lot of mileage to be gained by adding functionality to both the spline and vertex modelers inside Carrara as well and hopefully the folks at Eovia agree!

You can also add points with the +point tool on the polygon edge and then Link the two points, add two and link lower down for a quad. This keeps the nasty tri's down but still isn't as elegant as LW's or C4d's to be sure. If you want you can also select an edge and sub-d it if you want to split it exactly in half. Now, If only I could get ortho reference images in :) . I also like Electric Image's knife tool, which completely cuts the object in two (or more).. but I suppose if they added all the features the big boys had they'd have to price accordingly. :)

Hope this helps.

Hey, those techniques work pretty well, too. Thanks for the picture. I guess the deal with vertex modeler is that you're working at a somewhat more primitive level than you would in some other modelers but you can still get a lot done anyway. Another problem I'm having is every time I go to select something it seems like I end up moving it as well. Is the solution to only use marquee selects? Would a higher rez mouse make any difference? http://www.losthorizonsoftware.com/products/ppex.php has a tracer (although I've had a little trouble getting it working properly without crashing Carrara).

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that was available. "Another problem I'm having is every time I go to select something it seems like I end up moving it as well. Is the solution to only use marquee selects? Would a higher rez mouse make any difference?" Marquee selects work great unless other points are behind them, like in a head mesh say. You can hide the back of the head and go on but... if you're careful about point/click selecting individual points you shouldn't have a problem. Not sure why your having points move. :( Maybe it's a slightly sticky mouse button? I'm on the opposite end.. especially edges. Unless I select directly on them they don't move. Drives me crazy :)

I always have troubles with selecting things with a mouse and having them move. My solution is to use a trackball. For delecate selections, you can use one hand to move the ball and the other to click; there's no danger of the mouse moving while you're clicking. (Of course, some folks just HATE the trackball, so maybe you could put a second mouse or a touchpad or something on your system to to isolate the click from the movement.) - Dex

I think that learning a trackball is a lot like learning to drive a stickshift. Once the pain is over it's great but getting there is a challenge. I think the solution would be to make selection and movement two separate operations (and this is the way it's done in Lightwave). It's a little more work this way for the modeler but it's hard to be very precise when things are moving all over the place each time you select them! Maybe there could be a preferences switch for this so newbies could enjoy the ease of working the way it does now and pros could get more precision by having it work like Lightwave or C4D. I really enjoy working in the VM but it seems like it needs a little more work before I'd be ready to stay in Carrra and not think about doing my modelling instead in lwave or c4d (I haven't been able to keep amapi running long enough on my machine to form any opinions about it).

I have the same problems with the selection tool. The marquee tool is much better for selections, because it doesn't move the selected parts. With the marquee tool, you can not only drag, but also click a vertex, edge, or polygon, to select the part. Shift-click adds to the selection, shift-click a selected part removes the selection. Clicking overlaying parts selects the frontmost part. Unfortunately, the reference guide doesn't mention this functionality of the marquee tool. To select and move, I usually choose the marquee tool, drag and/or click to select, and then press the "T" key to activate the selection tool and move the selection (or press "R" or "S" to rotate or scale the selection). If you have "Toolbar hotkeys are sticky" disabled (unchecked), the "T" key activates the selection tool temporarily. When you release the key, Carrara goes back to the marquee tool.

So that's what the sticky option is all about. I guess the marquee tool is the key to making precise selections then. I keep thinking that the vertex modeler is somewhat limited but then I discover additional tips and tricks that make it all worthwhile. The new gemini plug-in from DCG is interesting. In Lightwave it's also "t" for move but then "y" for rotate and "shift-h" for size (scale). Carrara's mnemonics make more sense.

When you use the 'sticky tools' option, if you hold down a key, like the 'T' and then tap the space bar, it will change the selection to the selct tool as the default. If you then hold the 'M', you can use the marquee temporarily. If you want to switch to the marque as the default, hold the 'M' and tap the space bar, and then the marque tool will be the new default. I also have a lot of problems using a mouse or a Wacom tablet for selecting vertices, but the marquee comes to the rescue as VK said. Good luck! :>

Attached Link: http://www.losthorizonsoftware.com/products/ppex.php

re: my previous comment about lost horizon software's new tracer feature - an update has been issued already and it seems to have solved my problem and now the new tracer feature is working great (no crashes to report).

Ahh.. it's for Windows.. no wonder I don't have it :) On a mac here. Hartcons.. just curious, why Carrara if you have LW and C4D?

It's a long story but the bottom line is that I just plain enjoy working in Carrara. I think the spline modeler alone may be worth the price of admission. Also, the availability of affordable plug-ins like those from DCG and Lost Horizon and VectorStyle helps as well. Plus the Carrara user community is overall very supportive. And maybe there's a bit of David vs. Goliath in there as well (go Eovia!). I gave up on Carrara at first because I thought it was under-featured relative to the big boys but over time I've learned assorted tips and tricks for making Carrara behave (plus the v2 release offered caustics and global illumination and smoothing and the third-party plug-ins help fill in some of the gaps). I started with Inspire and then upgraded to Lightwave. Lightwave is an awesome beast but I've yet to tame it. I think it's the kind of program you have to use every day in order to feel comfortable (partly because it doesn't tend to follow standard interface conventions; for example to constrain a circle you use Ctrl instead of Shift). Plus the renders seems to take quite a while, especially if you have anti-aliasing turned on (even at a low setting). If you want nice-looking glass you have to create all these extra surfaces for Air-Glass-Air refraction transitions. There's an amazing fur shader called Sasquatch but it will set you back $500. If you ask a question on a Lightwave forum you're often told to RTFM (or worse). And finally I just like the output I get from Carrara better; I find that I really have to work at it in Lightwave to get the same quality of output. C4D is a very interesting program and I really like their modeler and materials system. It's easy to get great-looking metals and really glossy colors plus the renderer is fast. C4D is big in Europe so a lot of the online material is in German, though. The default interface layout doesn't give you quite as much room for your models. Some of the deepshade shaders are amazing (http://www.maxon-computer.com/deepshade/) plus C4D has the SLA system of procedural shaders. And the particle system can spit out objects (even lights!), not just little particles. Sometimes I'll model in C4D and then finish up in Carrara. The bottom line is that Carrara is fun and relatively easy-to-use, has a friendly user community, relatively affordable plug-ins and usually produces great-looking output (some of the "you have to render at four times the target size and then downsample in photoshop" problems notwithstanding). Given that I'm willing to live with some of its quirks and shortcomings. I've been very impressed by the Carrara efforts of TOXE and LITST and Mark Bremmer (and others too numerous to mention). If I were trying to do something along the lines of Jimmy Neutron (my wife and I are hooked on that show!) I'd probably have made a different choice (Lightwave has a lot of features geared toward efficient workflow and working with very large, complex scenes plus it's very stable). If Carrara didn't exist I'd probably be using C4d most of the time. I will say that both Lightwave and C4D seem more stable/robust than Carrra. Maybe that's part of what you pay for although the price gap between Carrara and these other programs is diminishing over time and Eovia's tech support folks seem quite active these days as well. Back to working with Lost Horizon's new fresnel shader ...

I also have all 3.. and I agree with you on the LW forums. Though it's really only a couple people there who while they know what they are doing, are like grumpy old men who give a big FU to politeness and some seem like kids who think they got "mad skillz". The rest seem like good people. I have to say I really like modeling in C4d the best. Especially with a few basic mostly free plugs. Even though the majority are in german, they still make and effort to provide instruction in English. The people on the C4d forum here are overall great. I agree with you on the screen space issue with C4d, but it's not unworkable. I do have to say if Carrara put a few more modeling freindly features in I think it would be a real contender. Round/chamfer corners, keyboard nudge (please EOVIA!), better mesh control, bitmap placement.. and a few others well documented in this forum. Carrara is also fairly slow for me when it comes to high density meshes.. and it's .obj importer sometimes places stuff willy nilly, but overall it's very full featured for the price (collision detection for example.. a $200-$400 plug for LW). I can't say I have a love hate relationship with it, because I don't hate it. Right now it just doesn't do what I need it to is all. I'm waiting for Amapi7 pro to come out.. we'll see how that is. Though it's still like the LW paradigm then. Model in one program, render in the other.

Attached Link: http://home.arcor-online.de/grunenberg/photostickies.html

neoklassik, here is an alternative to lost horizon's tracer that was discussed here before - PhotoStickies. Requires OS X and works great. Bob.

All the talk about differents apps got me to playing with ULead's Cool 3D Studio demo last night and maybe they're on the right track with all the different presets for all sorts of things (like the Carrara browser tray but on steroids). You can quickly drag&drop to get the ball rolling and then can tweak from there. The tool packs a surprising number of features into a compact interface and has some things that Carrara doesn't (like collision detection in the particle system and pre-made particle emitters for things like smoke, snow and fire that look like they may have been taken from the impressive wondertouch particleIllusion which also supplies the particle effects for Discreet Combustion). Especially if you're doing work hourly for a client it seems like these days there isn't much time in the budget to realize a particular effect or to use a 3D program and a 2D particle program and a compositor or video app all on one job. Overall I don't think Cool 3D produces output on par with what Carrara can do but the swiss army knife approach with tons of presets certainly makes for an efficient workflow.

Well, I mostly model in Carrara for Poser at this point (although I've started using Carrara's render engine recently and really want to spend more time learning it!). I bought Inspire to try, and while I realize it's an older and more limited program than LW, I find I still like Carrara better for modeling. The same goes for C4D Go edition. Maybe because I learned Carrara first but I can manipulate the mesh faster and more intuitively. Plus I like the Carrara community, the LW'ers seem a bit stuck on themselves, if you know what I mean, since I didn't have the newest version, or the "full" version, I wasn't worth their time to talk to. Oh, well, "to each his own" I guess. mike

There is a commercial plug-in (sold at safe harbor, I think) that adds numeric functionality to Inspire bringing it closer to the "real" version (I think it was based on lwave 6.5). I think one problem with the lwave community is that many of them started way back in the Amiga days and had to bootstrap themselves at a time when everyone was clueless and don't see why anyone else should have it any easier! I like working in Carrara's vertex modeler, too, and that's why I'd love to see a few enhancements in C3 so I don't feel like I'm missing quite so much relative to lwave and c4d.

Attached Link: http://www.lineardesigns.co.uk/products.shtml

At the risk of going really off-topic, I found the inspire numeric plug-in link.

hartcons thanks for the link. Unfortunately Safe Harbor doesn't seem to recognize the plug-in any more, even following the link from the site. I guess there isn't much of a call for it anymore. I've sent an email to Linear Designs for more info. mike