Hi, My name is Marc and I'm from New Jersey, USA. I recent aquired a copy of Carrara Studio 3 and a handfull of other programs from a friend whos been sent off to Iraq so he obviously won't be able to use them and was nice enough to hand them off to me :) I used Ray Dream Studio back in high school around '95-'96 however this looks totaly unfamiliar and I've almost no clue what I'm doing :) Problem #1 is he couldn't find his manuals by the time he left just the cd's so I'm going at this with little information. I used the tutorial that Carrara offers when you install the program and from there tried to start making a couple models. My first is a sword from medievil era (or atleast my version of one) Which I managed to make however the entire inside of it is hollow which they didn't really cover in the tutorial, they just showed the example to make the Eovia fish. I would like be able to fill it in and then apply the shade for organic metal to the blade and steel/aluminum for the handle.

Ex. #1 Sword View #1
Http://www.mindcrash.net/carrara3-sword1.jpg

Ex. #2 Sword View #2
Http://www.mindcrash.net/carrara3-sword2.jpg

I also cannot get this to render without it being pitch black even though I have a spotlight pointing directly at it. Any help would be great, Thanks in advance.

-Marc

Message edited on: 06/01/2004 11:36

Message edited on: 06/01/2004 11:36

Marc, I can answer half of your question: before the sword will be visible, you have to give it something to reflect. You've chosen a chrome-like texture, which doesn't have much of an intrinsic color of its own. The quickest way to give it something to reflect is to add a sky to your scene. 1. Click the word Scene in your Instances palette (it's in a larger font than the other items, but it's clickable) 2. In the Effects palette above that, go to the Atmosphere section and click the word None to show a pop-up menu of atmosphere choices. Choose Sky. 3. You'll see a pop-up menu of sky presets. Try one and render your scene. You should see the sword. Once you have some more objects in your scene, your sword will reflect those, and it will be that much more realistic looking. - Joe

I would suggest to play with lathe first and then vertex. If you have problem with modeling lathe then post screenshot of it and I ll try to help you with it.