Hi everybody, here is the glasstable again. Problem: how do I apply the layer shaders to the single faces of the object. In the related pop-up menues of Parametric Mapping there are only two possibilities to choose from: "whole object" and "0". By the way: the construction of that tabletop was done in Amapi 6.1. Where is my mistake? The Carrara manual is not really helpful. Thanks

There are a couple of ways to handle this. The easiest way is to create a shader as shown. The next way is to create groups of facets in the VM room and name them. These groups will show up as named items that can be shaded individually when a Layer List function is selected in the Shader room. Mark

Thank you!!

I'll second that. I always pay close attention to anything that Mr. Bremmer cares to post (including the very informative Zima example currently featured on the eovia web site). He's also a nice antidote to those who seem to spend all their spare time moaning about how terrible and broken Carrara is (yes, I've been reading the Yahoo! version of the Carrara forum again!) rather than trying to do something useful with it. Those people should be sentenced to some hard time writing MEL scripts for Maya :-)

I was a little incorrect in the above post regarding simply naming poly's and being able to see them by name in the shader room. (It's been just a little bit since I've used that trick.) If you create separate shapes/polymeshes in one instance of the VM, then you can select the polymesh names in the shader room. However, using named polygons, you can divide up a single polymesh and end up creating multiple, named polymeshes from a single object. The technic is to create named polygon groups that you can individually select from the pull down menu. Once that task is completed the process requires you alternately delete/cut polygons, name the remaining polygons as a poly mesh, paste back the cut polygons select them and give them an alternate polymesh name. It sounds more complicated than it really is. Hopefully, the picture does a little better job of explaining it than I did here. Mark

Does your whole technique take place inside the VM? So when you cut/paste your still inside the same model? I've found some models on the web that has allowed me to use the pre-named sections for shading, but I wasn't sure how to get them named in the first place. Thanx!

Thanks for the clarification. It works as you advertise! The interesting thing is that the cut polygons come back as a single polymesh. Do you understand how C2 decides when a collection of polygons is a polymesh; or when they are several? Thanks again Ed Seling

Yes, it all takes place within the VM room. In fact, the VM room is essentially an Assembly room for Vertex objects. It doesn't quite have the same functionality as the actual assembly room but pretty close. Regarding how Carrara decides what's a polymesh and what's not, I'm not sure. It would be nice to designate a new polymesh simiply by selection instead of the cut and paste method. Maybe in a future release of Carrara...