I haven't been here in a very long time...what a great new look to the site and an uncluttered place to find Carrara information. And so many familiar 'faces'

Now that I have a new PC build with more power, I am re-downloading all my content from sources other than DAZ. One type I often use are the 2D backgrounds. Some are my own photos, others are things I get here. If I have a project going, I have been just putting the bcg image into the project folder along with other unique texture I've made for the characters/scene. But after a while, I realise that I'd like to have them in one place that possibly could be listed as thumbnails(?) in the Carrara content tab views.

I have not a clue if this is even possible, but I started thinking about it. I don't want to have to load them all onto planes and then save as backdrops in the browser. I have done that with a couple, but they are hard to preview that way.

Apologies if this isn't possible or I am talking nonsense... but it is so easy to lose track of good stuff as I have found in re-inventorying everything for the new setup.

Also... is it possible to ADD a tab to the Carrara browser for content? The Misc section got so cluttered up with my save to browser operations.

I have other questions...but will leave them for now. One step at a time for re-organising all this.

Cheers, SileneUK

Hi Silène, Nice to see you here! Personally, I built myself a file at the root of my hard drive “Studios” which is used as library. I classify there all my textures maps, my HDRI, my films, my textures of displacement (animated - Still) etc… All is classified by categories (Wood, water, metal, papers, fibers….) I have a direct short cut in each studio: “Studio 3D” - “Studio Ciné”, Studio Photos” to access directly in this library. I think it's the only solution or maybe, create a scene with each picture as background and save them in "My Scenes" in your browser, but that could be a very long job.

I think think the only way to do what you would like is to save the images as a .cbr file from the backgrounds tab and render a .jpg of the same name - you could then add a folder into Carrara

Folder name

some_hdri_or_background.cbr

some_hdri_or_background.jpg

They should then show up in Carrara

A bit time consuming, depending on the amount of images you have I know, but you should be able to drop them into the scene.

Another way is to add the background to the background tab and save the scene making sure to tick the "Save Scene Preview" option - again a bit time consuming

I use 2 screens and the one screen has the folder for all the backgrounds. I like this because I can set the view size to huge, instead of a thumbnail. :)

Thank you everyone... I am neck-deep in coursework this week...so it will be later before I have a chance to try any of these. Cheers for the suggestions. I am tempted to go with Sueposer as I do have two machines/two screens and access to files from both. But would like to find a more organised solution in the long run.

SileneUK