Since what we did for character animation in Carrara 4 is not clear for everyone , here is a little bit more information on what has been done and how you will benefit from it: First you have the "Morph target" feature which is completely new (it is not an "improved" version of the old morpher deformer which was never supposed to handle more than one target). The Morph target feature allows you to create multiple targets (smiling, frowning, big head, small head....) on multiple parts of a character (hands, head, ...). Once the morph targets are set up you can simply use the sliders associated with those targets to blend those targets together and animate them (just like you would in Poser for example). And of course all this is fully integrated in the vertex modeler so that it is completely compatible with the bones. If you plan to do "lip synching" for instance, this is something you must have because that's the only easy way to animate a character's face. This is really a huge feature in my opinion... Second if you plan to make your character move, you obviously need Inverse Kinematics. There was Inverse Kinematics in Carrara 3 but it was not the best solver and it was difficult to set up. So we added a new Inverse Kinematics solver that is much better than the old one. We also added a new IK chain tool to set up the Inverse Kinematics faster (basically in 2 clicks) and introduced the concept of IK chain. We also introduce IK Targets (automatically created by the IK Chain Tool as well as the basic constraints) that allows you to easily control the end position of an IK chain (for instance, to constrain a foot on the ground). This is a huge improvement for character animation. Third we improved the sequencer which you have to use all the time if you are doing character animation. We introduced a key frame at time 0, introduced an improved display of the sequencer and made it easier to use... Fourth, if you plan to do lip synching, the sound support is a good start. Ok it is not an automatic lip synching tool but it allows you to synchonize your character animation with the sound which was not possible before... Fifth there is the BVH import which allows you to import motion capture data into Carrara. This is probably the simplest way to animate characters. (Select a skeleton, open a BVH file and it's animated !) And of course there is TransPoser, FBX import if you want to use another application to animate your characters One thing we have done in this release is to give you simple, robust and efficient tools to create character animations (and other type of animations) ! Of course there is always more to do (the list is basically endless) but I think this version is really a great improvement over the previous version, in particular for character animation. Charles

awesome...sounds good..look forward to playing with them...

Hi Charles, You mentioned TransPoser, just wondering if you can import an animated Poser file with Mimic audio into Carrara 4? I just joined the forum and am looking at getting Carrara to go with Poser 5. Cheers, Straker

straker, from someone whos tired of shelling out money constantly for all this software...lol...with some of the new features C is going to have...and optimistically theyll work well...then it may be somethign to think about to just bring the figures into C and do all your animating from there...may take a little more effort..but then im not so sure it would... id asked Daz3D and the figures can be directly imported into C..theyre just .obj files with jpg textures..i havent tried it yet to see what the difference is going to be, but...it may be a way to bypass the need to purchase Transposer and Mimic... we'll see i suppose...:)

Hey Todd71, I agree it would be great if one vendor could combine all these features. But if you want a character to walk and talk in your animation, isn't the advantage of Poser that it will save you all that step by step keyframing that you would have to do in C? I saw the part about mo-cap in C but unless they offer preset mo-cap files it would be a (huge) expense to do mo-cap independently, you'd have to rig up live actors to capture the data and then you have another mess to contend with. straker

"it may be somethign to think about to just bring the figures into C and do all your animating from there...may take a little more effort..but then im not so sure it would..." It's going to take a lot more effort. In Poser, the DAZ figures have morph targets already set up for facial expressions, lip synch phonemes, and general appearance. None of which will work in carrara if you just open the obj file, since they are built in to the .cr2 file. That's what this idea of yours lacks, Todd. The .cr2 file contains all of the morph targets, as well as the skeletal rig information. You'll aslo have to be careful when shopping here or at DAZ, as most of the characters for sale are only modifications of Mike or Vicki's .cr2, and DO NOT include a new .obj file. And again I'll say, you won't be able to use conforming clothing without incorporating it directly into your figure, which means that every time you try to change outfits, you'll have to re-rig the character. And forget about using MIMIC for automated lipsynching..... The few new features in C4 are definitely an advantage over C3, but make no mistake, they are not a substitute for Poser....

Does my copy of Transposer that I bought for C3 work with C4?

No what my idea lacks is support...lol..the problem is, sure i can use Poser..if i want to purchase it in addition to whatever else ive got..and then i have to buy Transposer, or used to,depending on the situation, to adequately export the animation..but Poser isnt a good enough renderer but once the character is in C i cant touch it anymore..i have to go back in Poser and redo everything... It would be more efficient to have everything done in C...Poser has a CR2 file..ok...so theoretically..why cant C have a 'cr2' file...ok we dont have one right now...maybe someone can program something and make C even better.. This is all theory anyways since it hasnt happened yet...but IF Carrara were to also aim at doing things Poser can do, and why not?... weve got morph targets now, so why shouldnt it aim more toward Posers capabilities to make it more of a complete solution? If it had the user base and community then possibly DAZ would start doing things for C... Daz sprung up out of the Poser community and is weakly challenging Poser with its 'DAZ Studio'..but its still got that threat out there... not that im a programmer, but a plug in to be able to do more Poser-esque would be of great benefit id think... Its really too bad Metacreations disappeared and didnt have the chance to really combine what it had...

"Its really too bad Metacreations disappeared and didnt have the chance to really combine what it had... " Yes it is. I've only just now got, with carrara, poser and vue, what we should've had years ago with poser, ray dream, and bryce.... It doesn't particularly bother me that I have to go back and forth between programs, I keep them open together, so it's like switching back and forth between the "rooms". I was in the same boat though, before I bought poser. I thought to myself, why can't they just give me plug-ins so that I could use bones and morph targets.... Then poser 3 came out, and it had the ability to import poser figures into ray dream, sort of like what transposer does, and I bought it, hoping for better somewhere down the upgrade highway. If they would've gone that way, then you'd have what you want. The plug-in for Ray Dream let you go into a new "room" where you could manipulate the poser figure, just like in poser, but you still had to buy poser to get it... Of course, even poser5 is not the end all be all of character animation software. Back in poser 3, you had to create a skeletal rig in a text editor, like notepad. With poser 5, you can do it in a few clicks, but there are new tricks, like JCM (Joint-Controlled Morphs,e.g. you bend the elbow, the bicep flexes automatically) or "easy pose" which I think lets you assign a pose to a morph channel, both of which still have to be done in notepad. Although there might now be utility apps or python scripts that aren't to expensive, that will automate these functions....