Thanks for the replies!! And I'll check out those tuts, Dr. Geep. It all begins to make sense now. later

Well, I had to re-install Poser 4 in order to get Transposer 2 to work, but I've imported several Poser 6 files into Carrara without any problems ( made sure that the compress files and save as binary options in the Poser prefs are not checked -- last tab in the pref dialog). Rather happy with P6 currently and Transposer 2 seems to be well worth the Upgrade.

In my case, recently upgraded to Poser 6 from 4 and using Mac OS X, MacConverter works in the OS 9 "classic" enviroment. My workflow is when I d/l something (usualy in a Poser DL folder), I run it though MacConverter and then place the files/folders in the correct Runtime location(s). Then I quit MacConverter and the Classic enviroment. Then I start up P6 and use the newly installed thing(s). Works fine for me. No crashes or anything. Heck, I even ran a d/l folder with a hundred or so different props, poses and figures in it. MacConverter didn't blink or get weirded out at all. BTW, to speed things up, I created an alias of Mac Converter on my OS X desktop and am able to drag and drop folders on it, which starts up Classic and then MacConverter. Although MacConverter isn't an OS X-savvy program, it does the job and until a OS X native proggie comes along, it's the only solution we Mac users have, afaik. hth

Cool, thanks for the answers, Shonner. Poser 4 really isn't an option for me, as I'm currently using Mac OS X and poser 4 is Mac OS 9. It's better for my workflow to bite the bullet and upgrade to P6 rather than take the time to constantly boot into OS 9...imho.

thanks for the info, Shonner and Patrick. As far as upgrading to Poser 5, I doubt that I can, as I only have Poser 4 and curious labs only has options to upgrade to 6 from 4, there's no path from 4 to 5 that I can see. I've checked out the Transporter help, thanks for the screen cap, Shonner. You've given me the info that I needed, guys! Thanks so much. One more question, is the fact that Carrara's Z axis is height and Y is depth and most other 3D programs it's the Y axis that's height and Z is depth something I should keep in mind when designing characters, or can I change the orientation of the imported models? Thanks again, mike

caps lock on, move the Hot Point. caps lock off, Hot Point moves with object. wax on. wax off. hth mike r

And good luck with yours, Noviski! Really cool characters you have there. mike r

She's a sentient grape being. There's a whole backstory about her and her co-hort, Nagol, that I wanna tell... eventually. When I first upgraded to Carrara (from RDS 5.5), I had hoped to be able to do a comic story using renders from C as the artwork. Now in C 4.x, it seems like it's almost possible. thanks for the comment, Noviski! mike r

Nice Pix! Hope you get the problem solved. Looking forward to see how this progresses. mike

I have the same problem and am completely clueless as to why it happens. However the work-around I'll be doing is to set a keyframe at 1 second and animate from there. That way I have a "real" reference to work from. And when things get really weird, I go to frame zero and get the misbehaving bone's info (xyz location and rotation) and then apply it manually to the bone in the frame that's giving me problems. In fact, for most models I've skinned, I made a map of the skeleton, by hand on paper, with all that info written in. It's a handy reference that has helped me in the past. Maybe one thing that's adding to this problem is the way that I make the left and right sides (for arms and legs) - I select the parent bone (hipLeft or shoulder left) and go to the edit menu and choose duplicate with symemtry(sp) and then change the name in the property panel -- changing left to right. On bones that have been created this way the check box for "mirrored" is checked. Maybe that's getting C confused? Haven't tried that out as I'm in the middle of creating a rig and figuring out the IK helper tool. HTH mike rhodes

Here's my take, having recently upgraded to C4 Pro from C3: 1] Having used other proggies, the interface on C4P is excellent, easy to learn and use after learning. 1a] The shader tree, the best of all other programs I've used. 2] Rendering. So many options, it's like christmas every time I render :D 3] New/Improved Animation tools. The morph shape addition and ablility to edit vertex models after putting bones into it is very welcome. Main reason why I upgraded. 3a] The attraction/magnet tool now has its own options in the properties tray, just like a real tool! 4] Stability. For me, I can use C4 for hours ( max time was for about 11 hrs) and no crashing or erratic behavior (except for Morph shapes, which as a new feature may require some time to iron out). 5] Parity in features/plug-ins between mac and windows. I cannot express how pleased it makes me to be able get "that neat plug-in" or "use that neat feature" on my chosen platform of choice. Things that chafe my hide: 1] When is the metaball modeling going to become actually useful? Basically it's still the RayDream plug-in "blobbies" (or whatever it was called) and is just as hard to use now as it was then in RD. 2] Not having a convient way to select shading domains other than going to the menu yadda yadda yadda. Now with morph target/shapes, being able to 'call up' previously saved selections would be a big ol' timesaver! 3] Having to 'recreate the wheel' every time I create a new character. this would include walk cycles, facial morphs and such. Morph targets I can understand, but why can't one just create a skeleton and put it in the object browser? It would be oh-so good to be able to save skeletions with all the constraints, IK chains, and motions intact (e.g. a walk cycle, hand wave and such) and apply it to a "virgin" vertex model like another program that claims to have Mastered Animation :> 4] Some easier way to make bones invisible/hidden. Currently if I want to work on placement of a hand's fingers, I have to manually hide all the other bones one-by-one. It would be really, really nice to be able to hide a parent bone and have the children of that bone also become hidden. 5] In the vertex modeler, not being able to lock verexes/polys. So if I'm modeling some tricky thing around another polymesh, I can lock one and then move vertexes around in the other. Like making an eyelid wrap around an eye. Instead of relying on the smallish preview in the property tray. The top things I would like to see in upcoming version(s): Like others, would like to see some softbody dynamics/cloth. IIRC, isn't there some kinda opensource 3D thingie that will do that? That would be so cool to have as a plug-in! Hair would be a fair addition to the Carrara tool set also. Translucency and Irridence would be just peachy to have as options in the shaders. Some kind of Constraint that would 'automagically' help with Follow through in animaiton. Something that would lag behind another bone/object by a user-defined amount. And a way to vary the "strength" of a constraint. This could allow for things like making jello shake or a spring spring.

I'm using a Wacom Intous 2 tablet w/Carrara and having pretty good experiences using the "3D" mouse that came with it. It has 4 buttons that can be individually modified. The scroll button doesn't seem to play well with C4 Pro, though.

Good news that you found a solution! BTW, as good as C2 is for texturing and such, C3 is even better. It has a gradient color and fractal noise shaders now, among others. Within the vertext modeler you can assign what's called "shader domains" and then use the layers list to give each domain its own distinct shader. The layers list is much more useable with C3 than with C2. And the vertext modeler has a lot of improvements. Modeling is so much better now in C3. The best thing I can say is that upgrading to C3 was the best upgrade I did in the past year and a half. Looking forward to your development of this project, in any case.

Carrara 1.x to 2.1 You may have the "center" and hotspot of the object locked. Try hitting Caps lock and attempt to move the dot. Carrara 3.x In the properties tray, select the object and in the tray, under the motion tab, there's a checkbox to lock the center and hotspot. Uncheck it and move the dot(hotspot) and then re-check the lock checkbox. There's some buttons in the properties tray that are a titch confusing. Basically one will move the object's center to the Hotspot and the other will move the hotspot to the object's center. Be careful not to hit those buttons. I did and had to redo about a hours' worth of work (it was an animation). Because of that, I often write down the coords of the various objects I have in a scene, center, hotspot, etc. hth

Here's a plug for... modeling from life (lol). I would go to a yard sale or used bookstore and just buy an old book, crush the paper the way you want and look at how it changed the pages. Then begin with a vertex mesh that approximates the book's dimensions and then distort the polys so you have something like the real-life book. You can use the crease tool to get some hard folds going. Depending on whether you want a single page crushed or the whole book crushed (with the whole book, the creases won't be so severe as with a single page). I suggested AnythingGrooves so you could have a way to get the edges of the book uneven w/o having to model each zig-zag of uneven page/signature size. This would reduce the size of the mesh hopefully making rendering a bit faster. mike