Shading

Overview of Shaders
Shaders define or visually describe how (not when or where!) objects appear in your scene. A shader is a set of properties that you define and then assign to objects -  surface  properties  or attributes such as  color, texture, transparency, shininess, and roughness. In Carrara, these  properties  are referred to as channels.

Here is an example, showing the  shader settings for  "agedcopper"  provided by  Carrara.



Master Shaders
Each object has a master shader.

Carrara Channels
You have access to 11 different channels (properties) to work with in Carrara. These channels allow you to define a number of different  surface  properties  such as  color, texture, transparency, shininess, and roughness.

R efer to the following link to learn more  about Carrara's shader channels.

Channel Components
You can set the values for each channel using a number of  components. Refer to the following link to learn more about how to set shader channels through components.

Tips and Techniques for Shading Objects
The following ideas are important to understand regarding shading objects.

 Mix and Match In most shading situations, and especially while getting the shader basics down, you will likely create single layer shaders (called a multi-channel master shader). But to create more complex shaders, you can also create shader hierarchies - that is, sub-shaders, or shaders within shaders. And anywhere you can place a component, you can also place a shader. These are called shader trees, where each sub-shader is a branch built off it's parent shader.

Any channel can have mixers.

More on How to Shade Objects
Daz3D Documentation Support

Carrara 7 User's Guide - pp. xx - xx.

Carrara 8 User's Guide - pp. xx - xx.

Video Tutorials
The following tutorial provides some basic information about shading. 