Newbie question

Dark-Elf

Hi, I've just installed Carrara 7 Pro and I'm loading one of the preset scenes but when I go to render it, I get an error message box pop up that just says "there was an error" and won't render

Am I missing a step somewhere? Please help

Mistara

a screenshot would help diagnose

which preset?

evilproducer

There could be a number of issues, from a corrupted scene, to, well, anything. Misty is correct. More information would be great! We'll help you figure it out and get started rendering!

Some info. that could be relevant includes system, OS, platform, temp file location (is Carrara allowed to write to that directory for instance), scene preset, what is in the scene, have you added anything to the scene, do you get the error with other scenes?

Dark-Elf

ok, so... I opened Carrara this morning, intending to get some screenshots of the error message. I opened it up and it asked me for my name and serial number again. I put these in and it went to the blank screen. I loaded the preset "mountains" like I tried to yesterday and it opened the same as it did before. When I went to the render tab, and pressed render, it started rendering

I've tried a couple of different preset and they all start rendering  I've no idea what has changed from yesterday to today but whatever it is, it's fixed the error

Now all I have to do is try and figure out lighting, render settings to make a nice sharp image etc and I'm all good lol

I did try adding a plant to the sceen but it doesn't show up in the render

Diomede

There are three starting scene sizes.  For most scenes with people, trees, and such you will probably want to use th medium size scene.  If you start with a large scene, the terrain will be scaled so large that a tree or a person will be hard to see.

Dark-Elf

I've picked a hill scene and it's rendering now, gonna be going a long time with the high settings I've used as I want a high quality render

MarkIsSleepy

Dark-Elf said:

ok, so... I opened Carrara this morning, intending to get some screenshots of the error message. I opened it up and it asked me for my name and serial number again. I put these in and it went to the blank screen. I loaded the preset "mountains" like I tried to yesterday and it opened the same as it did before. When I went to the render tab, and pressed render, it started rendering

 

Just FYI: if you are on Windows you will need to right-click and "Run as Administrator" before entering the serial number.  If you don't, it may keep asking for the serial number every time you start Carrara.  You should only need to to run as administrator one time though and it will then remember the s/n.

Dark-Elf

Thanks, I will do that after the render finishes

3DAGE

Hi Dark elf

By simply applying the "Highest settings" available,. What will happen is that you'll make carrara calculate a lot of stuff it doesn't need to, and take a really long time to calculate and render an image you could have rendered in half the time,.. or less.

there's more to understanding those rendering settings than hitting go

The example scenes are just that,.. "examples of what you can create in carrara",. and each scene is normally set up for you to render, as it is,. no need to set the renderer to highest,. and that doesn't normally make things better,. just takes longer.

If you buy a scene made for Carrara,. then the creator of that scene will set the rendering options, so that the user can load and hit render,.

rather than requiring the user to manually set the rendering options.

take some time,. look througfh some of the examples,. (there are also several example "rendering presets" )  Look through some example shaders, and have a look at some animation scenes, perhaps render one or two of these animated scenes out with the settings they are supplied with.

Hope that makes sense :)

Dark-Elf

OK, so I bit the bullet and bought 8.5 Pro. I installed it and it's content and I've opened it up to this

Is it supposed to look like this? The file menu consists of "preferences", "reset preferences" and "exit"

evilproducer

That looks like, and sounds like the stripped down interface for the Render Node.

The Render Node is really a stripped down version of Carrara that is supposed to be installed on a different computer on your LAN, and allows you to render scenes over your home network. It is not intended to be installed on your main computer- Only the Carrara application file and associated content. Again, if you have multiple computers at home and have them networked, the Render Node is supposed to be installed on the other, "client" computers.

You will probably need to install the Carrara application again, as I don't know if the Node overwrote the main Carrara program.

A note about the Nodes: If you have any plugins installed, or scenes with custom leaves for the trees, such as Howie's Snow Scene (which comes with Carrara Pro), or any other scene with customized leaves, those will need to be installed on the client machines as well.

evilproducer

Any luck?

Dark-Elf

Yes, thank you! I was pulling my hair out until I read your comments  I had to uninstall everything and delete everything out of the folder, but it now works

Now, if I can only get the Badlands package I bought to work, I'll be very happy

Diomede

Badlands is a great product. 

To get started, open Carrara to an empty scene (won't be using it).

Go to your content browser under the scene tab.

Go to the landscapes folder.

Open Dartanbeck's folder and navigate to the badlands subfolder (see screenshot).

I opened the dragonlands by double-clicking it.  A new scene opens with all of the presets for that scene.

In addition, the creator, Dartanbeck, has included helpful information alng the right-hand side in the instances tray.

Finally, there is a 12-page pdf readme file with additional details.

 

MarkIsSleepy

Dark-Elf said:

Yes, thank you! I was pulling my hair out until I read your comments  I had to uninstall everything and delete everything out of the folder, but it now works

Now, if I can only get the Badlands package I bought to work, I'll be very happy

I really like the Badlands set.  I used it in a couple images in my gallery here:

http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/59753

http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/104919/

For images I really didn't do anything to the set itself, just loaded one of the presets and added my stuff to the foreground.