Atmosphere Test Scenes for Carrara

PACKAGE CONTENTS
In this download you'll find five landscape scenes in .car format (for Carrara 6 or later).



DESCRIPTION
I use these scenes for testing skies, clouds, and lighting techniques. It's much easier to do some quick tests when you've already got a good scene set up.

The terrains measure 100,000 feet and are suitable for viewing in any direction. Their enormous size also makes them great for animated flyovers.

I've set the terrain resolution to 513x513 to minimize the download size. For best quality, go into the terrain editor and increase the resolution to 4097x4097 before rendering.



INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
Note: Moving the folder that contains these scenes will break the link with Carrara's file browser. Put this package's folder somewhere permanent before proceeding. Your Carrara application folder is a good place.

To add these scenes to Carrara's browser:

1. Open Carrara.

2. Select the "Scenes" tab on the left side of the browser.

3. Click the round black button on the right side of the browser tab and select "Add new folder..."

4. Select the "Atmosphere Test Scenes" folder and click ok.



ADDING PLANETS
Adding moons and planets to your renders is very easy.

Step 1 - Set up your scene and place your moon/planet where you want it to appear in the final render. Save your scene. Important: After Step 1, DON'T move the camera or sunlight.

Step 2 - Hide everything in your scene except the planet, turn off the sky, convert the sunlight to a distant light, reduce ambient light, and render an image. You may want to adjust the color and intensity of the distant light. This will be the Backdrop, so its dimensions should be identical to your final image.

Step 3 - This step is only necessary if your scene contains reflective objects (i.e. water). Convert your camera to a Spherical camera. Leave it in exactly the same position, but set its rotation to x = 90, y = 0, z = 90 and render a really big Background image. The smoothness and reflectivity of your water, as well as the dimensions of your final image will determine how large the background needs to be, but to prevent pixelation it probably shouldn't be any smaller than 4000x2000.

Step 4 - Reopen your original scene. Make the planet model invisible (or delete it). Add the Background and Backdrop. The background "interpolate" setting will help to reduce pixelation in the reflection. Render your final image.



LEGAL INFORMATION
© 2009 Timothy S. Payne. All rights reserved.

The files in this package may be used for commercial and non-commercial renders and animations. Unauthorized sale or commercial distribution in any form is prohibited. Please distribute these files only in their original unmodified zipped format with this copyright text intact.

timpayne3d@gmail.com

Version 1.0. Released 01 April 2009