Hi folks,
We just finished posting an update to Anything Grooves. There are no
major functional changes, but there are some performance enhancements
targeted towards helping integration with ZBrush models.

To apply Anything Grooves to an imported ZBrush object, follow these
steps:

1. Import the base OBJ file. On the import object select Vertex Primitives
   and Create Single Polymesh.
2. Open the object in the Vertex Modeler.
3. Select Edit|Select All.
4. Select Selection|Smooth Edges.
5. On the Modeling tab in the Selection section, turn on Smooth and turn up
   the Subdivision Level to your CPU and memory limits.
6. In this case less is more, apply Anything Grooves, set the U and V
   samples to 1. When the U and V samples are 1, Grooves will not create any
   new vertices and will just move around the ones that already exist.
7. When you build the shader for the displacement, import the displacement
   map, turn on Interpolate and set the Filtering on Summed Area Table or
   Gaussian Filtering.

This technique will work reasonably well for base objects < ~1000
polygons before Subdivision. Here are some tips for keeping things
responsive while working on the larger meshes.

1. Set the display mode in the 3DView to bounding box.
2. In the VM, set the display mode on the preview window to bounding box.
3. In the VM, set the display mode on the modeling windows to the level that
   just shows the control cage. I think it's the same icon as the flat shaded
   in the preview windows.
4. Do your shading before you kick up the subdivision and apply Grooves.

This update is free to existing Anything Grooves and eovia Power Pack
customers. You can download the update or try out the demo version of
Anything Grooves from the links below.

Carrara 3.0
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c3/anythinggrooves.zip
Mac OS9
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c3/anythinggroovesos9.sit
Mac OSX
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c3/anythinggroovesosx.sit

Carrara 2.1
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c2/anythinggrooves.zip
Mac OS9
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c2/anythinggroovesos9.sit
Mac OSX
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c2/anythinggroovesosx.sit

Carrara 1.1
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/anythinggrooves.zip
Mac
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/anythinggrooves.sit

Best regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins