What's New in 2.2?

• Anything Grooves primitives provide better quality, control, and speed over applying AGr the modifier to Carrara's built in primitives.
• A more aggressive Adaptive Mesh algorithm adds detail only where it's needed to keep polygon counts low.
• Smart Split generates a better quality mesh from the same number of polygons.
• Zero is empty chops out chunks of geometry.
• Convert Deformed Object to Mesh changes a deformed object to a simple primitive so it can be duplicated again and again without the deformer recalculating for each instance.
• A convenient popup menu eliminates typos when selecting a master shader. 
• A new preview size for Anything Grooves primitives keeps the resolution low until it's time to render.

Primitive Options

1. Use Shape to select the Anything Grooves primitive. AGr supports Cone, Cube, Cylinder, Plane and Sphere.
2. Enabled turns Anything Grooves on and off. Turn Enabled off when you want to change several options at the same time or edit the underlying mesh, that will keep Anything Grooves from recalculating after each change.
3. Low and High control how Anything Grooves cuts into or pushes out the mesh.
4. U Samples and V Samples specify how fine a mesh to generate. 
5. Preview Size sets the U and V samples for the 3DView window.
6. Smooth Angle controls the smoothing on the resulting mesh.
7. Use Presmooth to tell Anything Grooves your mesh has sharp edges like a Cube primitive.
8. Adaptive Mesh attempts to find where it can use bigger facets. It won't work on all meshes, but where it does, it can reduce the polygon count significantly. Since it takes time to figure out if it can help and it doesn't work for all meshes, it defaults to off. Adaptive Mesh works really well for things like Plane primitives deformed with DCG's Tile shader.
9. Zero is empty does not create polygons where the deformation would be zero.
10. Quad Split controls how the mesh is divided. Dumb is the fastest. Short Facet is the same as Anything Grooves 1.0 and tries to generate facets with the shortest edges. Smart Split samples the shader an extra time and uses that information to figure out which division will be a more accurate shape.
11. The Animate slider is used to tell Anything Grooves that you are animating the Master Shader. Adjust the Animate slider so that it creates keyframes at the same place your Master Shader does.
12. Refresh Master Shader List updates the popup for next to the Master Shader field.
13. The Master Shader is the name of the shader used for deformation. Anything Grooves used that shader's color channel to calculate the deformation. The popup next to the master shader list will show a list of master shaders that can be selected to fill the Master Shader field.
14. Warnings tell you what you need to do or any problems with the mesh.
15. Refresh rebuilds the mesh if you've change the shader and Anything Grooves hasn't noticed.
16. X, Y, and Z control the starting size of the Anything Grooves primitive.

Modifier Options

1. Enabled turns Anything Grooves on and off. Turn Enabled off when you want to change several options at the same time or edit the underlying mesh, that will keep Anything Grooves from recalculating after each change.
2. Low and High control how Anything Grooves cuts into or pushes out the mesh.
3. U Samples and V Samples specify how fine a mesh to generate. Your object's UV coordinates tell Anything Grooves how to sample the mesh.
4. Smooth Angle controls the smoothing on the resulting mesh.
5. Use Presmooth to tell Anything Grooves your mesh has sharp edges like a Cube primitive.
6. Adaptive Mesh attempts to find where it can use bigger facets. It won't work on all meshes, but where it does, it can reduce the polygon count significantly. Since it takes time to figure out if it can help and it doesn't work for all meshes, it defaults to off. Adaptive Mesh works really well for things like Plane primitives deformed with DCG's Tile shader.
7. Zero is empty does not create polygons where the deformation would be zero.
8. Quad Split controls how the mesh is divided. Dumb is the fastest. Short Facet is the same as Anything Grooves 1.0 and tries to generate facets with the shortest edges. Smart Split samples the shader an extra time and uses that information to figure out which division will be a more accurate shape.
9. The Animate slider is used to tell Anything Grooves that you are animating the Master Shader. Adjust the Animate slider so that it creates keyframes at the same place your Master Shader does.
10. Refresh Master Shader List updates the popup for next to the Master Shader field.
11. The Master Shader is the name of the shader used for deformation. Anything Grooves used that shader's color channel to calculate the deformation. The popup next to the master shader list will show a list of master shaders that can be selected to fill the Master Shader field.
12. Warnings tell you what you need to do or any problems with the mesh.
13. Refresh rebuilds the mesh if you've change the shader and Anything Grooves hasn't noticed.

How do I...

Install Anything Grooves?

Extract and copy the files to the extension directory.

For Carrara 4.0

On the PC, it is the Carrara Studio 4.0\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\Eovia\Carrara Studio 4.0\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X.

1. Open the Carrara 4 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 SIT and copy them there.

For Carrara 3.0

On the PC, it is the Carrara Studio 3.0\Extensions directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\Eovia\Carrara Studio 3.0\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS 9, copy the files to your Carrara Studio 3.0\ Extensions folder. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is Applications (Mac OS 9)\Carrara Studio 3.0\ Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X, copy the files to your Carrara Studio 3.0\ Extensions folder. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is Applications\Carrara Studio 3.0\ Extensions.

For Carrara 2.1

On the PC, it is the Carrara Studio 2.0\Extension directory. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is C:\Program Files\Eovia\Carrara Studio 2.0\Extensions.

On the Mac, OS 9, copy the files to your Carrara Studio 2.0\ Extensions folder. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is Applications (Mac OS 9)\Carrara Studio 2.0\ Extensions.

On the Mac, OS X, copy the files to your Carrara Studio 2.0\ Extensions folder. If you installed Carrara to the default location, this is Applications\Carrara Studio 2.0\ Extensions.

For Carrara 1.1

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

On the Mac, copy the files to your Carrara\Carrara Extensions folder. Depending on where you installed Carrara, some possibilities are Applications\Carrara\Carrara Extensions or Carrara\Carrara Extensions. 

Get started with Anything Grooves the modifier?

Check the get started Anything Grooves tutorial here.

Keep Carrara from deleting my Master Shaders?

Carrara has a function you called Remove Unused Shaders. It's an excellent tool for cleaning up your scenes and getting rid of all those unused "experimental" shaders that inevitably get created. Unfortunately Carrara doesn't know the Master Shaders you are using exclusively for Anything Grooves are spoken for. Use the Edit|Lock Anything Grooves Master Shaders function. It will create small, invisible objects to hold the shader so Carrara won't delete it.

Build stone structures using Anything Grooves?

Check the How to build stone structures with Anything Grooves tutorial here.

Get the most out of the Adaptive Mesh feature?

Check the How to make the most of Anything Grooves' Adaptive Mesh feature tutorial here.

Convert a deformed object to a mesh so it can be duplicated easily?

Each time you duplicate an object with a modifier, like Punch, Explode, or Anything Grooves, Carrara recalculates the modifier for each instance of the object. Anything Grooves 2 adds a function to let you convert deformed objects to a basic primitive so they can be duplicated over and over again without being recalculated. Select your deformed object and then select Edit|Convert Deformed Object to Mesh. It will leave the original deformed object and create a new object called Mesh Version of "My object name", which can duplicated without Carrara recalculating the modifier. 

Use Anything Grooves on Tree Druid or a Particle Emitter?

Anything Grooves uses an object's UV space to slice up a mesh for deforming. Because Tree Druid and the Particle Emitter both have lots of small pieces that span the entire UV space Anything Grooves cannot currently deform them. 

Enter my serial number?

After purchasing Anything Grooves you will be given a serial number. If you open a scene with Anything Grooves or add Anything Grooves to the 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. Sometimes smaller is better. On some meshes Anything Grooves will work fine with a low sample rate.
2. For extra speed, turn off Show Object in 3D View before using Anything Grooves. On really dense meshes, it take more time for Carrara to figure out how to draw the mesh than it takes Anything Grooves to create it. Show Object in 3D View is available in the View section of the General page of the Properties palette. When it is turned off, Carrara doesn't draw the object, but it does show up in your renders.
   Additionally by turning off Show Object in 3D view it uses less memory.
3. Use the Enabled function when making more than one change to Anything Grooves or if you are editing the underlying object. Turn off Enabled, make your changes, and then turn Enabled back on.
4. If your mesh is already dense enough and you just want Anything Grooves to deform the existing mesh, you can keep Anything Grooves from adding geometry by setting the U Samples and V Samples to 1.
5. Use an Anything Grooves primitive instead of Anything Grooves the modifier when possible. It will usually create a nicer mesh quicker.
6. To create an Anything Grooves disk primitive, add an Anything Grooves primitive to the scene, select Shape = Cylinder and Z = 0. 
7. Check out the Anything Grooves resource page here.

Evaluation Mode

Anything Grooves supports an evaluation mode which allows you to try out Anything Grooves before purchasing it. When the Anything Grooves Enter Serial Number window is displayed, just click Cancel to go into evaluation mode. During evaluation mode, Anything Grooves will deform the mesh in stripes. The picture to the right shows an image rendered with Anything Grooves in evaluation mode. 

3rd Party Tools

MBGroove

Mark Bremmer has released the first shader pack designed specifically for use with Anything Grooves. MBGroove contains: 16 standard Shaders 16 Shaders for use with Anything Grooves 53 Custom, high quality texture maps to add realistic abrasion, reflection, diffusion, highlights, and bump maps. You can get MBGroove for the PC or Mac.

System Requirements

Minimum: Carrara's system requirements plus an additional 64meg of RAM for Anything Grooves.

Recommended: Carrara's system requirements plus an additional 128meg of RAM for Anything Grooves.

Here's a table that shows rough additional memory requirements for Anything Grooves when applied to a 240 facet Vertex Modeler sphere.

Downloading

Try Anything Grooves
Carrara 4.0	PC	Mac OSX
Carrara 3.0	PC	Mac OS9	Mac OSX
Carrara 2.1 or  3D Basics	PC	Mac OS9	Mac OSX
Carrara 1.1	PC	Mac OS9

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 4.0 Pro or eovia Chain. Pricing is also available for a render node site license for use with eovia Grid.

Ordering

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