I seem to be able to create virtually every kind of mask when exporting a render Except a straight forward alpha cut-out mask as in Bryce.The manual states this option is only open to certain image export options,however none that are provided will export a mask. Would be grateful for some help. Running 1.01 update.

Hi boozyflooze, I havent tried this before so I went for it. It worked for me. Win98, Carrara 1.01 and Paint Shop Pro 6.0. I set up 3 spheres in a scene. Went into the Render room and set the file format to TIFF. Then went into G-Buffers and selected Mask. I rendered the image and save the TIFF to disk. Fired up PSP and opened the TIFF file. Loaded the Mask from the Alpha Channel and it seemed to work fine. I basicaly got a cutout of the spheres. Is that what you tried? It doesnt do it like Bryce. Bryce gives you a Grey scaled rendered image to use as a mask...at least for Distance masks it does. Looks like Carrara puts the mask in the files Alpha Channel for you. Let me know if you are still having problems. Clint

There is a goofy bug that apparently doesn't affect all systems regarding the Alpha Mask. Before Metamorph... er Creations that is, went away they gave me this work around. In the Render Room, get everything else set the way that you want it. Then in the Format selection choose>Movie (the radio button). Then, from the Movie pull down that appears, select Sequenced Photoshop file. Next you can go to the G-Buffer area and select Mask which otherwise is disallowed. Then go back to the Format option and select Tiff or whatever format you want to render in (uncheck Movie) and the Mask G-Buffer option will be retained. The alpha mask will give you a solid object mask (unlike distance) unless there is transparencey in one of the objects being masked, in which case a grayscale version of the transparency is created. Hope that this helps. Mark

Many thanks for MarkBremmer's work-around for the alpha mask problem. However I've noticed that the required mask for specific objects does not function if you are using the infinite plane, unless the infinite plane is made invisible before the render. Q:Is there a solution as in Bryce that when an object is sunk into the plane,that only the part of the object above the plane is alpha masked? Considering the breadth of the Carrara manual the vital sections on masking etc are incredibly brief.

Unfortunatly, that is a camera angle thing. The objects will not be masked separately because Carrara 'sees' the plane as an object. You have to have a horizon line in the view which will terminiate the plane. The results are a mask that shows the top of your objects that protrude above the horizon line. Everything else will be black below and white above. That goes on my Carrara wish list; A mask feature that ignores the plane but shows only the objects above the intersection of it. Mark