Hi all,

 I am just wondering if it is possible to use alpha planes (or something similar) in Carrara, e.g. if you wanted to - say - put many trees in your scene without blowing out your memory ?

thanks,
Andrew

Yep. Just put a plane in, and choose a map with an alpha channel mask. Or put the mask in the alpha channel of the shader.

Has anyone tried the 2 crossed planes? I saw the tip somewhere. Gives a bit more substance to the tree but easy on memory. It might have been a game development trick.

Intersecting planes works fine but whether you should do it or not depends on how close they sit to the camera. Plus, you need to get the trunks lined up! :-D For multiple, single plane trees, I use replicator but put an XY motion constrain on the source object and a point-at camera modifier.

MarkBremmer, someone else has drawn my attention to replicator and surface replicator but I couldn't work out how to use it. Do you know of any good tutorials on it ?

I've actually got 5 tutorials put together regarding the Replicator. Try out the freebies here: http://www.markbremmer.com/pages/TutMain.html If that seems like the kind of learning that interests you, the online tuts will be a good investment. There is also a free replicator tutorial here: http://forums.polyloop.net/forumdisplay.php?f=64 It's about the eigth one down the page. Have fun. There replicator is one of the coolest functions of Carrara. Mark

Thanks, Mark.

This will be most helpful. I'll let you know if I have further questions.

regards,
Andrew

Mark, I just ordered your VTC training (thanks to your PR). I hope to learn some things I don't know yet, but more than that, I want my employees to dive in Carrara to see if they like to add it to their toolbox. But then I thought, aftere I watched those 9 hours of training, and I give, say, Robert acces to my station and let him watch, learn and use my Carrara 5 Pro and your VTC training. Am I then breaching the single user license? Otherwise I will have to order more licenses to make Robert, Hugo and Djamel as enthousiast about Carrara as I am.

Hi Hoof, Sounds like one of those goofy moral gray areas. Just use your best judgement. Let's see, 3 x 9 = 27. If you can take 27 hours off from your work station, I want your job. :-D Please let me know your thoughts on the tut's and ways that I can improve them. And, if you've got a question about something a little more complex, let me know and I'll squeeze it into the free Dark Arts tutorials. Mark

Actually, I might be forced to do this at home (like lots of my Carrara work and play). It will still take me 27 weekends after all :)

And if it is as good as I think, I will buy more for the guys here. It's not like it's a course that costs 1599 dollar per person :)