I took advantage of the free version of C7Pro to upgrade Carrara, so now I'm taking baby steps to relearn it. A few questions on various things...

1. Is there a way to preview lighting in the Assembly Room to see if I'm getting the lighting setup I want?

2. Does anyone have any advice on an ideal lighting setup for renders using ToonPro? I'm importing lighting setups from DAZ Studio and they get different results using ToonPro than when I use pwToon in DS3.

3. I'm having trouble getting the ToonPro Override settings to work properly. Specifically, I want to turn off Line drawing for imported Poser hair. And eyelashes too, I guess! Might anyone have any suggestions?

4. When I import figure from DS, if it has a Bump map then Carrara just brings in as an Image file. Is that sufficient enough in most cases? What if I'd like to increase or decrease the bump strength? Should I use the Multiply Operator to increase or decrease the strength?

5. Really, I'm looking to Carrara as a more stable platform than DS. DS has been great as an alternate to Poser, but the regular DS upgrades make it difficult to use DS plug-ins from one version to the next. Would it be a worthwhile investment to upgrade from C7Pro to C8Pro? Is there some functionality that might help from one version to the next?

Sorry for the broad number of topics covered. Next time I'll try to stay specific to one subject.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 Hi SF,

1. This can be done by engaging scene lighting from within the Interactive Render Settings (the dialog box that opens when you click the "up" arrow at the top of the Assembly Room window.)

2. It's really variable from scene to scene - just like normal 3D lighting; It just takes some experimentation. 

3. That's because of the transparency maps. Check out this thread.

4. Bump strength almost always needs to be adjusted to accommodate changes in lighting and closeness of the camera. As a rule for  humans, the bump maps seem to work best at between 3 and 6 percent. 

5. C8's big improvements are going to 64 bit, improving large file handling. There are other improvements for lighting and a nice boost in render speed; especially if you have 64 bit box. But if those areas aren't immediately important, C7 will still treat you well. 

Thanks, Mark. You've been a big help! I'll go through each of your suggestions to make sure I get it right.

Generally speaking, do you find it easier to set the Renderer to ToonPro and then tweak settings as you need to? Do you find that easier than manually setting each of the Shaders to ToonPro?

Thanks again!

Wow, I was really pooped when I wrote that last post. Please ignore it...

Your advice really helped, Mark. Thanks!

Any advice on how to handle troublesome items like eyelashes on a Poser figure? ToonPro still wants to draw a line around the entire eyelash shape. Maybe I just have to use a bit of postwork to fix it...

Thanks again!

 There are ways to handle it but I haven't used ToonPro on a face for a little while. I'll have to play a bit and get back in touch. 

Hi SmallFry,
To answer your questions,

1. You'll need to set up the Toon effect on both the shaders as well as in the render settings. Use the "set cel lighting model" from the Edit drop-down in the assembly room to make things easier.
2. For eyelashes, use the override option in the assembly room. Basically, after you set up the Toon shaders, select your model and look under the Effects tab. You'll see the override options there. Just select the shading domain you want to change and decrease the line size to .001.
   Good luck!
   JT

 That's it! Thanks for posting the work-around JT.