Hi! I see Carrara is going to version 3. Can someone tell me what the character animation tools are like. Can you animate a face on a body? Is it easy to bone a character? Thanks

I'm curious about this myself. I have C1.1, may just upgrade to C3 if all goes well. Since I missed C2 altogether, I've never tried Carrara bones. I understand there's a Poser/Carrara plugin in the works and I'm wondering if it might allow you to tranfer figures from Poser to Carrara with bones intact (as I understand the C4D plugin does (did?)). But... are Carrara bones even good enough to handle a Poser human figure? What bits and pieces I've read about Carrara bones in the forums hasn't sounded too promising, though that COULD be just because folks haven't gotten the hang of it. Lord knows boning a figure is always a bit of work in any app. So if anyone HAS gotten the hang of it, just how good are they? Can they handle a complex figure like Michael or Vicki, or are they too limited?

The animation features are not the main focus in this upgrade. Different areas have been changed this time. I am not really into character animation, but I understand that this version is not a big leap from C2 to C3, regarding that subject. The next upgrade will incorporate more attention to the subject you touch, as I understand from what the people from Eovia are saying in the Yahoo group. That information is worth cheching, for really in-depth information. I think that Michael and/of Vicky are, at this moment, way out of the league of boning in C3. The 'brige' everyone wants, between Poser and c3 seems to be in the making. Maybe that will open up great new possibilities, even when using C3. For now, I tend to thing you should not throw away any other app yet, when animating characters and certainly faces is one of your main targets. But I am totally in love with it, because suddenly I can make 'high-end looking stuff' without paying bigger bucks, nor learning a new program. I am really enjoying these months!

There is an excellent plug-in to assist with character animation/creating that you can use with Carrara2&3 called Gemini by Digital Carvers Guild (www.digitalcarversguild.com). It allows for symmetrical mesh modeling while you work on only 1/2 of the mesh. There have been some refinements in the Bones capabilities on C3. Mark

Have there been some refinementes in the Bones department in C3? I have C3 (beta at any rate at the moment) but I haven't gotten around to playing with the bone project that I was having a hell of a time with in C2. I'm hoping they have fixed some of the bugs that I kept hitting over and over and over and... in C2 that pretty much annoyed me enough to not use it. From the release it doesn't look like they've done anything in animation. I've heard there is a new plugin that works well with motion builder but it's still in alpha/beta and hasn't been released yet. But without the plugin's C isn't the greatest for character animation. I think C is still rather young in this area and will need a few more years before it'll satisfy the majority of the users working in this area.