Agreed. They are not as robust as they could be. Just wanted to clarify that Modo does have some support.

"The organization of the new material editor kind of threw me off a bit. Not 'cause it is bad, but because it is quite (organizationally) changed. The functionality seems pretty much the same, however?" Understandable. A much more efficient layout. If you work with complex textures you will see the benefit. Lots of simple changes. Control of the raydepth, etc within each texture. Individual shaders can be dragged and dropped into shading domains (see properties tray in texture room, they also can be dragged and dropped with highlighted selection in the assembly room as well) Copy and paste functionality. Real fresnel effect intergrated in textures. Etc. etc. "the new features are really only existing plug-ins that have been "included" inside the package." I think that comment needs more support to it. "I still dislike the navigation tools." The three mouse button setup? Really I'm not seeing a difference in functionality? Perhaps if you explained more. "Sorry I don't share your blind enthusiasm; as I said several times, I was very disapointed with Carrara 4 and SSS is the only thing of real interest to me in C5." I find that comment a bit rude. We aren't having "blind enthusiasm" we just like the new features that are available. I'd think true fresnel, SSS, (possibly translucency shading), ambient occlusion, true microdisplacment (ie. using 16 bit maps), true ansiotropic lighting, irradiance maps..etc might be of interest to you. But if its all about SSS...um ok. scratches head Odd you are so focused on the one feature. A feature that really isn't all that necessary in most renders. Guess you render a lot of milk and candle scenes.

"I already own Vue 5 Infinite, and the "surface replicator" thing looks like a pale imitation of the Vue EcoSystems." From my experimentation with ecosystems I was not that impressed its just a hyped up version of replica (http://www.inagoni.com). I got to thinking the only thing that beats out Carrara's implementation is the ability to say place a rock and have the replication intelligently avoid the rock. This is easy to do using the Proximity shader. http://www.des-web.net/html/proximity.html

"My only complaint (which has been one for some time) is Carrara's poor implementation of visible, volumetric lighting with shadows. They won't stream through glass! The light passes through, but the nice foggy beams stop cold." This is true. The only way around this is to deselect cast shadows on the glass object. Which in many times this will work, but I realize that their are many cases where it won't.

"Problem with that solution is then the light cones become super XRays beams, and will pass through about anything. I didn't even get into photon attenuation. Of couse the problem is that the visible (light cones) are really post rendering effects, not raytraced effects." Agreed. Its something that should be fixed. Perhaps C6. Though I have a extensive list for C6.

Try Deselecting interpolation in the render settings. And nice start.

Message edited on: 11/04/2005 04:26

"1- Is translucency in materials supported in C5? I know subsurface scattering is, which some consider to be the same thing - I am not technical enough to know if this difference/identity is true or not, BUT, what I am really interested, for professional reason, is the typical translucency that you have with very thin materials, such as a leaf, or a curtain - much thinner than marble or wax." Translucency is not currently available. But according to Eovia during the chat event they stated it would make it in the final release.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia3d.net/showthread.php?t=4162

It will not loop. I'd suggest either a movie with a alpha map. Or Primivol.

How did you import it?

Nice example Mark. I was testing the settings and the degree of change per setting. People were saying that it wasn't working correctly. I feel it is. And its surprisingly fast. Comparing to the old fresnel plugin from the now defunct zmorphics.

What are you using to light the scene? It looks almost like ambient lighting only. Can we see a screencapture of your scene.

n-gons are bad. I find it best to avoid them, no reason you NEED to use them. You might be able to untriangulate the mesh you imported into Carrara and eliminate some of the issues you are having. You can also manually cut the linked vertices (you don't have many so thats not a bad solution).