Greetings, I was wondering, how do you lipsync your character models in Carrara 3 and/or Amapi ? Is it possible? Regards, billhdz

Its not easy... what I've done to apply facial morphs, is have the head parented to the skeleton, but a separate mesh from the body. That way I can load expression morph targets onto it. Only problem is that Morpher only takes one morph at a time... I hope that gets fixed in C4.

Hi bijouchat, Bummer! I was very excited about Carrara 3, until I heard it doesn't do lipsyncs. It's going to be a while until C4 comes out. I may have to look into another software package in the same price range. I understand there is a plug-in for C3 and Poser 5 in development. Maybe that will be the answer. Have you heard of it? -billhdz

yes I know about it... am looking forward to it. :)

yeah that's the biggest problem I think with Carrara is the weakness in character animation. But I've managed to get a lot done with Carrara bones.

I don't know if its going to be a long while before C4 comes out, C3 came out in September, C2 came out a year and a half before it. If time is any indicator on Eovia, the next update is probably going to arrive around spring of next year. But a year is a while to wait, I agree.

I've animated a talking puck with bones and it came out pretty well if I may say so. I put one bone to the back of the mouth and from it I created eigth bones around the lips to control lip movement. Then another two bones to control teeth. Multiple morph targets would be cool. Didn't Zmorphics have a plug-in for this? Power pack?

Hello HK, Thank you for your comments! It must be a lot of work to do lipsyncs with bones. Is it? Do you have a sample you can share? Yes, it looks like zmorphics has a Power Pack plug-in with a feature called "Morpher". http://www.zmorphics.com/products/ppack.php Here is what someone did with it: http://www.life3d.co.nz/blinke.avi It says it works under (MacOS - V1.1) and (Win32 - V1.1), but it doesn't mention the latest Windows and Mac operating systems. I wonder if they still support it? They also have a plug-in called Ztools that looks very interesting.

morpher comes with C3. Zmorphics is coming out with another tool called Zmotion, but its not out yet.

bijouchat, It does? Awesome! The version of morpher that comes with C3, is it a full version? How do you like morpher? Have you used it? You mentioned earlier that you do the lipsync with Carrara bones. Why not morpher?

bijouchat and amigos C3 users, One more thing. I forgot to ask. Where can I read about Zmorphics? Is anyone else familiar with Zmorphics?

Sorry folks, I my post above, I meant to say "Zmotion" not Zmorphics.

I use Morpher, not bones, though you can use bones... its just a bear to edit the influences. What I really want is to be able to paint the weightmapping, instead of having to edit it almost vertex by vertex, and losing it all when I detach the skeleton. The only drawback is that morpher only lets you load one morph at a time. You need a lot more morphs for facial animation... I end up using Poser 5 to blend morphs and export as a facial target for Carrara. I don't know what Zmotion is truly going to be like, its supposed to import BVH motion files and let you import rigs and animations done in Motionbuilder. (and Poser)

One morph at a time could be a real pain. Maybe Zmotion will handle that better. Does the Poser 5 approach work well for you? Any drawbacks there? Thanks!

it works, but its a stopgap until better tools are available for Carrara :( That being said, for price vs. features, I don't think any other software beats Carrara right now. The renderer is top notch, plugins are inexpensive and really add most of the functionality that is missing. (like displacement and fur from DCG, fresnel/blurry reflections from Zmorphics, etc)