I was wondering how I could use Carra together with a live footage,supposing i want my Toyota RAV 4 model drive in a street with cars and people,any hint on how I can pull this off with Carrara.Secondly any hint on how I can make my dinasour model interact with(actually,attack)people in a live footage?I tried to import but i couldn't,need some tips pls!

I dont think there is any 3d program that can totally solve your problem. The 3d is just one element. Yes carrara should be able to generate the objects with the alpha mattes that you need. In order to generate the scenes you speak of, what you need is a compositing program like aftereffects from adobe. if money is a problem then there are two cheaper versions that are free: http://www.lerstad.com/mmstudio/ http://moppi.inside.org/demopaja/ These programs are very hard to use and lack the plug-inns that adobe has but they are free and you can see if you have the skills to pull off what you need. You need to become a chromakey master before you become the 3d master if you want to see your ideals come to life...have fun :)

http://www.mainconcept.com/mainvision.shtml an inexpensive (and interesting) compositing tool I ran into the other day. Saw a demo of Discreet Combustion 2 the other day and my eyeballs nearly popped out of my head. $4,000 worth of product, though.

You can use Carrara or RDS to paste a 3D object onto a photographic or video scene by putting your file into the backdrop. Of course, it looks pasted on, as the lizard on the right above. Using a compositing program like AfterEffects or those described above, you can mask out foreground elements, add shadows and such to really plant your 3D object INTO the scene. I spent about 5 minutes on the shot on the left trying to get the lizard into the shot.

This sort of thing has been done in standard animation circles for decades -- Ray Harryhausen's "Dynamation" is a perfect example.

The images above are pretty poor -- I only had a few minutes to prep them, but I hope this will help you out a bit.

• Dex

Looks like the rare Amazonian Hover Lizard ...

Hey - Those Hover Lizards are vicious! I was attacked by one of them. Good thing they can only hover at about 2 feet in height. He tried to bite my knee caps off! ;) Clint

He's not actually hovering in the picture on the left; he's really participating in a modern interprative dance that symbolizes the struggle faced by small, green digitally created creatures the world over.... Of course, he CAN hover, if he wants to.

Grafikdon:

I admire your willingness to learn and tackle a big project.

Shooting and compositing blue screen/green screen is the key (no pun intended) to your success for this project.

For books on using After Effects you can't beat Chris and Trish Meyer's "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects" and its companion "After Effects in Production." Master these and you'll find work anywhere.

A good source of tutorials for compositing, lighting bluescreen, matte creation check: http://www.creativecow.net
The site is filled with great advice and excellent tutorials. One of my favorites is on Procedural Matte Creation in the AE section.

Creating the kinds of things you're describing were among my favorites when I was producing video. But my life took a different turn, I changed careers and post-production's only a hobby now.

I'm sure you're discovering that you need lots of apps to accomplish what you want: 3D graphics, 2d paint, video compositing, probably video editing, plug-ins, filters...the list goes on and on. Then, of course, there's the computer(s) to run it all.

Have fun.
Norm

I think the simple answer to your question is that you'll need a 2D Video Editing application like: Adobe Premiere, Ulead Video Studio, or some other application. If you look you may find a freebie at tucows.com or download.com or something. With this you can splice the video output(probably.avi or .mpg) of Carrara with your home videos. You home video footage will also probably be in .avi or .mpg format once it is loaded into your computer. The hardware you use to acquire the data from your camcorder and into your computer probably came with such a 2D editing application. Video cards from ATI come with Ulead Video Studio...