Quote - My second question (and this is strictly Carrara) is this. Is it possible to set a proceedural shader in Carrara and use the proceed to paint with, or are we limited to pictures only?!? Thats a longshot and I may be asking for too much but I wouldnt want to have the feature and not know how to use it).

I belive it's possible to paint a map manually that can blend channels, just do it in grayscale. Use the blend function for the shader channel or layers list and then dump the grayscale in there. Then you can paint where you want the different procedural channels to be. It's capable of pretty neat effect, like if you want something like a flat black shader applied over a metallic glossy car paint or something of that sort. (Channel A is flat black, Channel B is glossy car paint, blend control is grayscale that separates where A & B get used.) Likewise you can have two different painted designs, and again use the blender with a grayscale procedural between the two. And you can stack blends on top of blends to some extent (not sure how many levels, but I know two seems to work ok.) It's hard to deny that the way shaders are handled in Carrara is one of the software's more powerful features and is worthy of exploration.

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Barbequed Pixels?

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Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.