I understand that Carrara does not allow a simple way to project a background image for creating a scaled model. Apparently I have to apply the reference images (top and side views) to planes. These images are .tif files. Will somebody please explain how I am to do this?

Carrara 7Pro; Win 7

Thank you.

Quote - I understand that Carrara does not allow a simple way to project a background image for creating a scaled model. Apparently I have to apply the reference images (top and side views) to planes. These images are .tif files. Will somebody please explain how I am to do this?

Carrara 7Pro; Win 7

Thank you.

I'm on 8.5 now, but it should be the same.  Go into the vertex modeler.  On the right hand side, there are four tabs called Model, Morph, Bones, and Global.  Click on the Global Tab.

Just underneth the tabs, it says Backdrop.  There are three areas Front/Back, Left/Right, and Top/Bottom.  To the right are three buttons with ... on them.  Click on the button, and browse to the file you want.  There is also an Enable check box.  Check these.  On my system you do not see the reference files in the directors camera, but if you select the top camera, you see the image you loaded for Top/Bottom.  It is the same with the Front/Back and the Left/Right Cameras.

ncamp

Thank you! The only book I have to go by is the Carrara Studio 3 Handbook, and this apparently came after. I guess there is a CS 5 Handbook, but I haven't been able to get it. Many tutorials seem to assume you already know what you're doing.

Do you know how to scale the images to fit the grid? Zoom affects the grid, and scale doesn't affect the image. The manual itself doesn't even touch this stuff.

DAZ hasn't updated this ability in Carrara yet. The reference imagery needs to be scaled to fit correctly together prior to importing in Carrara - I do this with photoshop and layers with all layers being square and the same pixel width. Then, the vertex room reference plans can all be made to have origins at zero for ease in modeling. 

Thank you.

Kinda thought a tutorial for Carrara would have had the top and side views already scaled to match each other...

If I tried it the old way (putting the images on planes as textures) how would I do that? I can access the shaders in the program, but can't seem to pull in a .tif from outside.Can this still be done?