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Hints for New Users.

HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,988
edited August 2013 in Carrara Discussion

Greetings, and a warm welcome to chohole and all other new users :)

Well, I had a few mins, so I thought I would share some hints for working in Carrara.
These hints would have saved me a lot of time if I had known them initially.


1) when you load carrara (if you have a lot of content) don't let it search for your runtimes, add the folders manually :)

2) Next Edit your Preferences, especially the views shortcuts. Assign Left Right Top Bottom to the numerical pad's appropriate arrows. Assign number 3 (page down) to Director's Camera. This will be one of your most used keys.

GETTING AROUND in THE ASSEMBLY ROOM

3) when you drop an object into the assembly room and can't find it, look for it in the instances tab (the list over on the bottom right).
Click the object to select it. Then hit the zero button, and your view will zoom in on the object.

4) On the top left of the assembly room window you will see "Camera 1".

This means you are looking through Camera 1. This is bad because if you change your viewpoint then it will get added to the UNDO list. It will also animate the camera if you are doing an animation. So click on where it says Camera 1 and you will get a drop down list. Select Director's Camera. Always do your posing etc while in Director's Camera. It will make life easier for you. Especially if you have assigned Director's Camera to Button 3.

5) To pan sideways hold down the tab key and the left mouse key.

6) To orbit your selected object hold down the "alt" key and use the left mouse key to pan around that object.

7) To select an object when there are several objects overlapping right click in the area and you will get a drop down list of objects in that area to select.

8) the ALIGN OBJECTS shortcut is one you will use often as well. First select the object you want to align to, then shift select the next so they are both selected. Click Ctrl>K this will bring up a window with alignment parameters. Click x,y and z. This will align the hot points.

9) Hotpoints. The hotpoint of an object is what it will rotate around. Usually you want it in the centre. However a lot of meshes and CLOUDS come in with the hot point decentred.

To fix a hotpoint in Car 8.1 look at the top right of your window. Hit the tab that says "Motion". Then you will find a window that has lots of numbers. There will be two buttons that say (from memory) object to hotpoint , or hotpoint to object. Click on the one you want.

10) To change the hot point of an object manually use caps lock and drag the arrows.


RANDOM THOUGHTS

11) Instead of using Carrara's fog use Clouds.

12) If you plan to use Carrara seriously grab Fenric's plugin for keyboard shortcuts for travelling down the instances list. You will love it.

13) Fenric's other Plugin that you really should get is Shader Doctor. Shader Doctor allows you to reset POSER shaders en masse on a figure so that their highlights aren't blown out. Otherwise on eg Stonemasons Emerald Forest you will be there all day and still miss some shaders.

14) Carrara comes with standard ambient light at 20 percent. Get rid of it or your renders will be washed out.


feel welcome to add to this list if you like.

Post edited by Headwax on

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