I have in mind an animation with animals doing human actions. I've got a lot of mocaps based on M4 and V4 that I'd like to use, but it seems many of the animal characters are rigged differently ... probably because they have four legs typically. I've had luck with Troll models, but not much else, yet, although I don't have a lot of animal characters to test. Any suggestions for animal characters?

Here are some answers to all your animation wishes. Humans, animals, props, you name it. Possibly even sub-humans and super-humans too. See this link and this link. In all their sophistications, these clips can be done relatively quickly with a crew of only 1 developer.

Oh but wait. You only want to use 3 tools: Carrara, Carrara, and Carrara, in that order. Sorry, never mind.

Hi Steve! Do you remember one or two years ago I sent you a pack with a bunch of animation files for several animals, they work fine in Carrara (some of them with a few work in the timeline)?

DUDU -

I will check them out, but what I'm looking for is human type motions for animal characters, using my large collection of M4/V4 mocaps. Something like Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPJXpyBZ8I8

I did have good luck with DAZ's Millenium Gorilla, for which I also own the Space Apes outfits, so a SciFi animation might be possible. I have my eye on DAZ' Meerkat, which might also work since it stands up straight like the Gorilla, I'm hoping somebody can test it, or maybe I'll just buy it.

Thanks

And why not to build the skelleton yourself?

My interest is more short animations, I'm not a modeler, just don't find it nearly as interesting. Plus there are a LOT of affordable 3D elements available for very reasonable prices, and much better quality than I could do. Probably why I've got a large hard drive full of them.

...

well I did just think of another thing you can try

track modifiers

have your animals bones track the V4 M4 bones

you may need to turn off limits and also use target helpers due to differences in rigging

wendyvainity posted at 12:26PM Wed, 09 May 2018 - #4329697

well I did just think of another thing you can try

track modifiers

have your animals bones track the V4 M4 bones

you may need to turn off limits and also use target helpers due to differences in rigging

That sounds promising, although I've never done anything like that. I did a quick test using the track modifier on M4 head, tracking a sphere, it works pretty well. Might get complicated with two rigs ...

Thanks for the tip, a feature that I can probably use elsewhere in any case.