ShaderGel is a Gel. To add it to a light (only Bulbs and Spot Lights), select the light and go to it's effects panel. From the Gel drop down, you can select ShaderGel.

Once you have the ShaderGel dialog, press the ShaderGel button to edit the ShaderGel parameters.

Strobe is a shader that comes in two varieties - regular Strobe and Multi Channel Strobe. Both shaders work in the same way. The difference is that regular strobe works with just a single channel, while Multi Channel Strobe with with multiple channels. In this, they are very similar to the way that the Mixer and Multi Channel Mixer shaders work. This discusses the regular Strobe shader, but applies equally well to the Multi Channel variant.

Strobes effects are rotation based and it has the ability to interface to Cognito, allowing its rotation (and thus the color of the resulting shader) to be driven in sync with the motion of Cognito controlled objects.

Concepts

Strobe works a bit like a mixing desk processing multiple video channels. The sliders on the Cycle Mixer let you define how much of each video stream shows in the output video stream. Strobe works with up to three input streams and, if none of them are selected, produces plain, black output.

Strobe then takes this a step further and allows you to define a cyclic mixing sequence, driven by a nominal rotation value. Think of a circle. Divide it into a number of even steps - say 12 of them. At each step you can specify a separate mixing ration of the three input shaders, allowing us to map a rotation value (a distance around the circle) to a mixing value.

Why are steps used? If you just specified the cycle in terms of rotation, you would be doing lots of fiddly math to ensure that a particular mix value actually landed on a frame in the rendered output. Say you wanted a bright flash of yellow light followed by a fade to red. At 12 fps, a single frame corresponds to 0.83333 of a rotation (assuming 1 rotation per second). For your flash of yellow to happen on frame 7 you'd need to specify a rotation of 0.58333 and hope rounding errors didn't move you to far away from it (and Carrara would only display 0.58). With a 12 step cycle, you simply say it happens on step 7 and let the shader worry about the finer points of the arithmetic.

To simplify things further, you do not have to specify a mix value for every step. As with key frames, you just need to enter mix values for the important points in your cycle, and tell it how to work out the values for the steps up to the next step with a defined value. For example, the flash and fade to red cycle could be defined as:

  Step 0:	0
  Step 6:	0
  Step 7:	100% shader 1
  Step 9:	75% Shader 2

Use the Fade blending effect, the resulting cycle would be:

  Step 0:	  0
  Step 1:	  0
  Step 2:	  0
  Step 3:	  0
  Step 4:	  0
  Step 5:  	  0
  Step 6:	  0
  Step 7:	100% Shader 1
  Step 8:	 50% Shader 1, 35% Shader 2
  Step 9:	 75% Shader 2
  Step 10:	 50% Shader 2
  Step 11:	 25% Shader 2

The cycle would then repeat from step 0.

Using Strobe

In your shader tree, simply select Strobe from the pull down list of available shaders. At the root of the tree you can only select Multi Channel Strobe, while in the leaves you can only select regular Strobe.

Once selected, you should see a small Strobe Parameter dialog and slots for three child shaders. The Parameter values for Strobe determine how the values from the three child shaders (and black) are combined to produce Strobes output.

Strobe Parameters

1. The Rotation lets you specify the position of strobe into its cycle.
2. If Cognito is checked, Strobe will look for a Cognito data element attached to the object the shader is applied to. If found, it will takes its rotation to figure out Strobes position in its cycle.
3. If Invert is checked, then the sign of any rotation value taken from Cognito is flipped. There are a number of Cognito linkages which reverse the direction of the rotation, something that will cause your Strobe cycles to run backwards.
4. The Edit Cycle button brings up the Strobe Cycle Editor window.

Cycle Editor Window

This window lets you define the strobe cycle.

1. The Cycle Length parameter lets you specify the length of the cycle in rotations. By default it is set to 1, meaning 1 rotation maps to a single instance of the cycle.
2. The Cycle Phase parameter lets you apply a phase offset to the cycle. This is useful if you have multiple objects/shaders driven by the same rotational source, but which you want to be at different points in the Strobe cycle.
3. The Steps parameter specifies the number of steps that occur within the cycle. Normally you want to set this value to the number of frames in your animation that a single strobe cycle will take. If you have more steps than frames, they you will not see all of the steps in your finished render, as there won't be enough to show them all. If you have fewer steps than frames, then steps wil be stretched over multiple frames, possibly giving a distorted and uneven playback.
4. The Strobe pattern parameter is used with the Strobe Effect and determines which value is used for each step. A value of 1 means the values of the step at the end of the strobe sequence will be used, a value of 0 indicates the values of the steps at the beginning of the sequence will be used. When there are more steps in the sequence than there are characters in the string, the sequence is reused from the beginning.
   
   For example, the default strobe pattern is '01'. This means that if you set up step 0 to be all black and step 11 to be 100% of shader 1, then the first frame will be black, the second will be shader 1, the third will be black again, the fourth will be all Shader 1 again, and so on...

Cycle Mixer

1. The Cycle Mixer lets you specify mixing strength for the input shaders at different steps. The Step value must be from 0 to 1 less than the number of steps in the cycle. This value is also used to automatically sort the sequence. To add a new step, simply type the step number into one of the unused rows at the bottom - it will automatically be positioned in the appropriate place. To delete a step, enter its number in one of the unused rows - the steps values will all be set to zero. Then overtype its step number with 0 and it'll be removed from the display.
   
   Warning: if you type a value into one of the unused slots, it will overwrite whatever is defined for step 0. If you change the number for a step to match that of another step (including step 0 if it has non-zero mixing values), the two steps with the same number will be combined and the data from one or other of them will be lost.
2. The three Shader Mixer values, specify the relative magnitude of the three input shaders to be used in the output. If the values are all zero, the output will be black. If the values specified add up to less than 100%, then they will be used in the ratios specified. If the specified values add up to over 100%, then the proportions will be scaled to ensure a total of 100%.
3. The Effect column lets you select the way that mixing values for intermediate steps are calculated.
4. Fade means the values are interpolated over the interval, giving gradual translations from one mix to the next.
5. Hold means that the mixer values for the last defined step apply to all steps until the next defined step is reached.
6. Strobe means the strobe pattern is used to determine whether the vales from the last defined step (strobe off) or the next defined step (strobe on) are used.

How do I...

Install Shader Gel and Strobe?

Extract and copy the files to the extensions or plugins directory.

For Carrara 8.0

On the PC, it is the Carrara8\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Carrara8\Extensions or C:\Program Files (x86)\DAZ 3D\Carrara8\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X.

1. Open the Carrara 8 folder.
2. Ctrl-click on the Carrara application and select Show Package Contents.
3. In the newly opened Finder window, navigate to Contents\MacOS\Extensions.
4. Extract the contents of the ZIP and copy them there.

For Carrara 7.2

On the PC, it is the Carrara 7 Pro\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\DAZ\Carrara 7 Pro\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X.

1. Open the Carrara 7 folder.
2. Ctrl-click on the Carrara application and select Show Package Contents.
3. In the newly opened Finder window, navigate to Contents\MacOS\Extensions.
4. Extract the contents of the ZIP and copy them there.

For Carrara 6.2.1

On the PC, it is the Carrara 6 Pro\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\DAZ\Carrara 6 Pro\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X.

1. Open the Carrara 6 folder.
2. Ctrl-click on the Carrara application and select Show Package Contents.
3. In the newly opened Finder window, navigate to Contents\MacOS\Extensions.
4. Extract the contents of the ZIP and copy them there.

For Carrara 5.1

On the PC, it is the Carrara 5 Pro\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\Eovia\Carrara 5 Pro\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X Universal Binary.

1. Open the Carrara 5 folder.
2. Ctrl-click on the Carrara application and select Show Package Contents.
3. In the newly opened Finder window, navigate to Contents\MacOS\Extensions.
4. Extract the contents of the ZIP and copy them there.

Enter my serial number?

After purchasing Shader Gel and Strobe you will be emailed a serial number. If you open a scene with Shader Gel and Strobe or use Shader Gel and Strobe in a scene, the Enter Serial Number window will display. Enter your serial number in the field provided and click OK to continue.

Tips and Tricks

1. WARNING! While ShaderGel works under Carrara 2.1 and 1.1, there is a bug in the Carrara code which will cause Carrara to crash or behave erratically if you duplicate a light with ShaderGel applied to it. If you choose to use ShaderGel under Carrara 2.1 or 1.1, do not duplicate a light with ShaderGel applied.

2. ShaderGel and Strobe can both take a rotational feed from Cognito, so their effects can both be synchronized with the motion of Cognito objects.

3. Use ShaderGel and Strobe together to animate flashing lights.

4. You can animate the ShaderGel parameters, so you can have the gel rotate, stretch and change its repeat interval.

5. ShaderGel's radial mapping is quite a useful feature, letting you make any texture circular - try it with a Tiles shader.

Evaluation Mode

Shader Gel and Strobe supports an evaluation mode which allows you to try out Shader Gel and Strobe before purchasing it. When the Shader Gel and Strobe Enter Serial Number window is displayed, just click Cancel to go into evaluation mode. During evaluation mode, ShaderGel will always color half the light red and Strobe's rotation is restricted to a maximum on 1.0 and you may only have 8 steps in your cycle

Release Notes

June 08, 2010

1. Changed where serial numbers are saved to a more modern OS friendly location. This fixes a problem with saving serial numbers on the 64-bit Windows Carrara when UAC is turned on.

Pricing

$29.95 US dollars for a single user license. The single user license includes the right to use the product with up to 5 render nodes using Carrara 5.0 Pro or better. Pricing is also available for a render node site license for use with Grid.

Ordering

Place your order online here using our secure server. Use the same link for PayPal, credit cards by fax or phone, purchase orders, and checks.