Many moons ago, I used to write articles about Carrara for a magazine. My column was called "Stupid Shader Tricks". I looked for cool and novel ways to use Carrara's super powerful, yet easy-to-use shader editor to create great effects. 

This first one is about how to create a Vargas Girl effect, similar to the pin-up illustrator, Alberto Vargas, from the '40s. This one requires the use of Digital Carvers Guild, Shader Ops. Not all of these will require plugins though...

Here's how it's set up: 

1. two distant lights, a)pink from the left with no shadows, b)white from the right with 30% shadows and softness enabled.

2. white plane under the character with 20% white glow. 

3. ambient lighting set at white, 50%

4. With a Multichannel mixer, blend the regular character shader with a neutral pink or white shader using the Shader Ops Fake Fresnel effect. 

If you can't see the image well, just right click on it and open the image in a new window or tab. 

Alberto Vargas, eh? what a great memory you have :) Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with. I'm always looking for ways to look my renders hand done !

That's a very cool effect! Thank you! I hope you can post more from your column.