What Is The First Thing You Add To A Carrara Refresh?
Steve K
Posts: 3,235
I've mentioned I'm migrating software to a new machine, and I got to the point where I had to think about what I should put first in Carrara's browser. This also happens after a big contest project when I decided to just start over with Carrara, wiping out the crowded browser (except for Carrara native content).
FWIW, my first addition is to the "Content" tab, the Runtime from Poser 7. This is after I add M4, V4, F4 & their morphs++ and skin textures to the P7 Runtime. I have Poser Pro, but I use P7 because I can't figure out how to load M4 etc into Poser Pro. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I don't care. P7 works for me, and for Win10.
After that, its Dimension Theory (Tim Payne, I think?) skies, lighting, etc., and PhilW's Realistic Seas, the best for any scene with water.
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Comments
iirc had to run the bat files to load the morphs ++ channels into the m/v4 cr2s
I just keep a backup of my preferences file and use that so nothing changes
and a backup of my Carrara file structure so just copy it all over to the new hard drive
Carrara feels incredibly goofy to me when I don't have Fenric's plugins installed. That has become the very first thing I do when I install Carrara fresh.
I don't actually make a copy of my Preferences file, but along those same lines, I backup my entire custom browser from My Documents, so I have all of the crap I've been saving over the last ten years - as long as I still have all of the required stuff installed. I just cleaned out a huge pile of junk made from freebies (that I acquired from my pre-Carrara Poser days) that I haven't had for years! LOL
The whole 'storing stuff on external drives' for use in Carrara is fairly new to me. Stezza, Silene, Wendy and the crew turned me on to that.
I always start my build with a fresh C drive - spanky and new. So for this new build, I installed my previous C drive and just left everything where it was - even Windows. I'll clean it up eventually. But instead of installing Carrara Native Content in the usual way, this time I added all of the various folders that populate the usual browser, but in my own order.
So where before I had to save my scene files into my Objects folder, because the My Documents system doesn't have one for the Scenes tab, this time I added all of my Scene folder categories directly to the Scenes tab. I love it.
Since I migrated all of my folders from my laptop too, which had slightly different names and such, I still have a mess to clean up! LOL
Easy peasy though. One day I'll just open all of the folders I don't want and empty their contents into the folder I do want them in. It's nice having a good, organized system.
Yes, I also load some backup presets, especially clips which took some work to collect from various other sources like Eclipse Studios (defunct?), Posermocap, aniMate Aniblocks, etc. And yes, Fenric is a must, especially for getting rid of "Shininess" which seems way too high for every Poser model loaded.
Maybe another way of asking is ... what is at the top of your Carrara Browser "Content" tab. As I mentioned, mine is the Poser 7 Runtime with M4, V4 and F4 installed.
mine hasn't changed in years
since my preferences have gotten reset against my will a few times by Windoze 10
including all my serials!!!!
and I moved my content to a couple of different drives
mine is a bit of a mess
Stezza got me wondering so I had to check my content libraries.I have runtimes named for sources and programs, such as Content Paradise and Poser 11.
I still have a Poser 4 runtime.
Looks like a different approach than mine, more organized with a lot of products in each Runtime. After my Poser 7 Runtime at the top, I end up with a long list of individual product runtimes for a given project, so long that it makes it hard to find a particular product. And reloading that product does no good, Carrara won't do it twice, so I have to find it. So at the end of a project, I usually have to do a lot of deletes ...
Ouch!
Some of my stable presets wander from system to system. As for V4 or M4, I don't clog my system with such figures anymore.
well is a Carrara Refresh an alcoholic cocktail or a Mocktail?
it definately needs a cherry and an umbrella regardless
I think pineapple and banana a given since Carrara Australia on the Gold Coast
Rum probably too
rummy
i like how you think 
i install carrara to fresh e:\ drive partition, with ps, ds, and the qms.
the runtimes go on a fresh q drive partition. i want to make sure the file paths are all the same system to system
q:\ dont want any of those pesky 'not found' messages.
"Carrara, Australia on the Gold Coast" I see they have a purpose built cricket stadium. Reminds me of a conversation here in Houston with a baseball coach complaining while a cricketer (yes, we have them) listened in. "Our leadoff batter is Randy, he's having trouble staying in the box." The cricketer laughed and said "tell him to take a cold shower".
"Houston man building country's largest cricket complex"
https://tinyurl.com/yxj2h5tw
I was laughing right along with them, even though I understood less than half of what they were saying. And I was in London during the 1999 Cricket World Cup, even took the Tube to the Oval. Or maybe Lord's ...
Mine is a lot like Stezza and Diomede's except that I make mine according to the base figures:
Now, my "My Presets > My Objects" browser folder is quite a bit more vast, however!
I vaguely recall that my M4 & V4 installers required installation to some version of Poser. Then linking Poser's Runtimes to Carrara's browser. Do you have standalone Runtimes for M4 & V4 in Carrara's browser?
Daz 3D installers used to check the address we were installing to for:
If any of those were missing, the installer would give us the finger and close.
The trick was to create a blank (or not blank?) txt file and rename it "poser.exe"
So, yeah... on my old backup hardrives that I'm not sure I remember their loctation... they all have poser.exe within each of these categories I made.
Back in the day, there was a quirk in Poser that only allowed the user to 'see' (and therefore have access to within Poser) something like 99 items in any one category. So it became a common and suggested thing to create multiple runtimes. Poser 5 (my first copy) came with the new ability of having multiple runtimes built in. I think before that folks needed a mod of sorts.
By the time I bought Carrara, I knew I had to think up a new "runtime" organization system - mine was an absolute mess!
I used the fact that I always found it a pain in the tush to have to look through Michael, Aiko, Freak, etc., clothing in order to find something I bought for Vicky. Many things back then didn't say V3 or A3 of Posette on the name of the item, so I'd constantly wonder what "Kill Suit" was, and who it was for. (I just made up the Kill Suit name for lack of memory! LOL)
Once I started organizing by base figure I'll never do it another way - for the people, that is! Keeping vehicles and environments separate is an utter dream!
In my Carrara browser I started keeping Interiors separate from Exteriors because I make so many scenes. My new computer has a whole bunch of environment categories, like Environment Exterior, but then also SciFi Exterior, where the stufff that begins with Environments is mostly grounded to Earth. Starships, Starship Interiors.
Inside my Interiors folder are things like Castles, Dungeons, Home xxx, Home yyy, West Park, etc.,
I have a bazillion browser categories for people alone! Rosie and Dart probably take up over 500GB because I've saved every version since I started making them. It's on my to do list to clean that stuff up and put it in storage. I never want to lose it, but this is getting ridiculous!!! ;)
Carrara 6, 7 and 8 each came with a null "poser.exe" file as well.That enabled the Daz 3D installers to install to them directly. Carrara can hunt for Poser runtimes, but it also comes with one in the program's directory.
Great explanation, I did not know most of that. I've always let each product create its own Folder/Runtime in a massive "Poser" folder (327 GB currently) on an external drive, then added whatever I need for a particular project to Carrara's "Content" tab. I think only M4 and V4 didn't work without your strategy.
you can create your own fake poser.exe
open notepad and save as poser.txt then rename it poser.exe
too easy
That sounds like cheating, what if I get caught?