Can someone explain - very simply - how to apply 2 simple colours to a knife in carrara 3d basics?  This model was made in wings3d and has a yellow/bonish colour on the handle and a greyish-metally colour of the knife blade, but as these colours are just wings materials, they are not very good, so I wanted to see what it looked like in carrara3d basics

But I can't find any basic colours in carrara nor how to adjust the colours I have - i.e. what arrived on the model.

When I just tried it, the whole model just went black.

I have tried the carrara backroom - nothing, I have tried the tutorials - nothing
and the help in carrara is a super fast video - I just can't follow it.

Please can someone help?

I wish I could help Fran, but I've never tried the 3D Basics ver. of Carrara and I don't know if the mapping/shader functions are the same as in Carrara Standard/Pro. I have had no problems in importing Wings-built models and texturing them in Carrara. Wings is still my preferred modeler. 
   I usually just run my Wings models through UVMapper standard and save out the UV mapped mesh object. When I bring it into Carrara all my material groups arrive as the default gray material. If I want to use simple colors as you describe, it is a simple matter to select each separate material group and then go to the texture room and use the color picker in the color channel to assign a simple color. Sorry I'm not at my home computer right now or I'd post some screenshots for clarification.

I haven't got cb either. see if there's a shaders browser, metals, chrome e.g. then drag said shader icon onto the blade.

Yeah, I'm just not up on Carrara at all, which is probably why when I tried looking for colours/textures (- or are they called shaders in Carrara?) everything on the knife suddenly went black.

This model comes into Carrara with a plain bone colour - a pale yellowish bone - on the handle, and a soft greyish colour on the blade but it doesn't look very metal like, since I just put these colours on in Wings3D.
This image shows what it looks like before I tried to improve it.

By the way, why did Carrara start to render an .avi instead of just a simple image, when I pressed render?

**Miss Nancy,
**There is something there that says "browser" but it's empty - dunno if that's the browser you mean? - it's visible in the image... ah, now wait a minute, I've managed to get some textures into that window after all - but, now I find I can't select the blade alone, or the handle alone, so I can't change just the blade or just the handle - only the entire object.

Bummer!

if ya got poser, then ya can import that, spawn props, then export the grouped prop. I dunno if cb has got a vertex room in which one can select polygons, groups or materials. in c6pro and previous, shaders browser/metals appears as in attached image.

Fran. Really, Carrara Basics is--Ooooooold!. At least up date to Express--but, at the current price, you would be crazy not to get Carrara6Pro.

Carrara 3D Basics is like Carrara Studio 2.  And I've forgot how that interface worked.  The browser is in a different place than in Carrara 5 and 6.

bwtr, Well, thanks for your advice.  I just cannot afford CarraraPro6.  So not crazy just poor.

However a mate of Ian's gets 'Computer Shopper' regularly so Ian's going to ask him on Monday if I can have the disc with Carrara 5 on it.

Miss Nancy, I do as it happens have Poser5 - the free one - *natually.
 "*import that, spawn props, then export the grouped prop."

er... pardon?  Not sure I understand that.

So are you saying I need to import the knife model into poser5 and then re-export it again from poser to carrara... huh?

Like what's "spawn"?

"grouped prop"???

IIRC, it's similar to Carrara interface:
[menu] Windows -> Texture to get the texture/shader room.
Then click on 'shaders' tab in the window on the bottom right corner of the screen. Each of your materials should have a shader listed w/ the name of the material that you assigned in Wings; double click on one.
That will open the shader window. Change the values in the shader sections. I can't remember what shader options Basics has... basic, I guess. Color, highlight, shininess, bump, so on.

As for .avi, change file formats in the Render Room -> Output tab.

Managed to change the render to bmp no more avi's so thanks for that.

But I can't find the materials I assigned in Wings - there should be "Blade" and "Handle" but all I see are cube2 and default and ButterKnif - not even "ButterKnife"!  None of those shaders are yellow in any way, all are some form of grey - one does look a little shinier than the other two, but... shrug

And there must be some yellow in there somewhere because the object arrives with the wings materials on it - you can see them on the butter knife object in the assemble room.

I've been clicking everything I can try, and did manage (not sure how) to find this: where I *can* see "KnifeBlade" and "KnifeHandle" - only anything I do still changes the whole object not just the handle or just the blade.

Try this:
From the assemble room.
In the scene window -> instances tab. Click on the object in the list.
See if there is a 'shading' tab in the top right window.

If there is:
You can see the 'shading domains' (which should be the same as your material assignments) applied to the object.
Then double click on a 'shading domain and you can edit the domain's shader directly from there.

If that isn't available/doesn't work; I don't what else to tell you.

I'm guessing in the Assembly Room there is an Instance list that will tell you the names of the objects imported from Wings3D.  I'm curious if the knife is in two pieces, since there are two different shaders.

If the model is in two (or more) pieces, you can click on one piece in the list and edit its shader (change it's Top Shader to Multi Channel) and tell it what color, hightlight, shine, reflection, etc to use.  Then go back to the Assembly Room and click on the next piece and change it's Top Shader to Multi Channel and assign its color, highlight, shine, reflection, etc to a different setting.

Metal has no color, but has lots of highlight, shine, and reflection.  The handle will have very little highlight and shine if made of wood.  And more highlight and shine if made of plastic.  But no reflection for either case.

Post a render of it to show us your progress.

Well here are 3 screen shots of what I see in the interface of the assemble room one shows the instances tab, one shows the shaders tab open - on the bottom right, not top - and one shows the knife clearly with two colours on it, one for the blade and one for the handle. 

But these are the Wings Material/colours, and I just cannot find anywhere to adjust each colour separately.

And it looks - from the shaders tab - like carrara thinks the knife actually has a shiny grey material all over it - which you can see isn't true, just from the un-rendered view of it in the assemble room.

Will now render this...

Both colours show up in the render but they are dead looking with no reflection of either blade or handle - by the way there should be reflection on the handle since it's polished bone, not wood.  There should also be reflection on the blade since it's metal - and anyway I did put a little reflection onto these materials in Wings, I didn't worry too much about getting it acurate since I intended to adjust that in the rendering prog - and intended that to be carrara.

Which... isn't looking too good.

Something else I thought of to try.
Re-export the object from Wings and make sure that the boxes labelled 'One group per material' and 'Export normals/smoothing groups' are checked in the export dialogue. I don't know if that will do anything; but it is worth a try.

I've now separated the knife blade and handle in wings - and now in carrara I can change the two materials individually - an incredibly laborious way of doing things and a way that will not work with any models but my own and not many of those will suit breaking up like this.

But I now have a shinier blade... not convinced by the handle though.

And another problem - when I tried putting a plane in the scene and putting a mottled black & grey marble texture onto the plane - it rendered grey.

I then inserted an infinite plane, and put "desert beach" material onto it and that rendered - grey.

Very dis-appoin-ted!

Sigh

Ah, just saw your post Dv, tried that but 3ds export from Wings doesn't have the option for 'One group per material' and carrara will not import .obj - which does.