YES! I agree with you on all your points about the comparisons! I have never used Maya or C4D, but I have used the trial version of 3dsmax 8, and while it IS extremely powerful, with a lot of useful things for animation, etc., I found it a bit overwhelming, and of course the price was out of my budget! The one thing I did love about playing with 3dsmax was it's Particleflow feature. It's particles that are controlled by nodes, much like Poser 5 and 6 material room, which is very powerful as well. Also, I was really getting into rigging meshes with CharacterStudio. It seemed VERY easy, compared to Carrara's bones, or even the regular bones rigs in 3dsmax, which I never got the hang of. However, I don't have years to spend learning a package either, and I was able to jump right in with Carrara 4 without too much fuss or confusion. Can't say that about 3dsmax. Also, Max seemed to require a lot more system resources to run than Carrara uses, so I'm able to run Carrara on my laptop, and still multi-task if need be. Don't get me wrong, I would have purchased 3dsMax 8 if I had the extra cash, but if you're on a budget like me, and still want as much rendering power as the big guns give you, Carrara is by far the best choice! I'm thrilled with it so far!

This is a great thread! Maxxx, I've been watching your animations in the animation outlet and the animation forum, and find your work very inspiring!

These look GREAT! Well done!

I've seen some animations that almost had me fooled, but they weren't full-length movies. Gollum in LOTR had me totally convinced it was a real character as I watched the movie, even though I knew all along that he wasn't. They did such a good job with his motions and personality, it didn't even matter if a few shots here and there didn't look totally realistic. As for your sample animation above, I think it's an interesting effect, but it does look cartoony, especially with that drop shadow effect around the character. The glow looks good, but then there's a darker outline that makes it look a littele strange. Also, I think the hair moves around too easily. It seems even the slightest movement is making it wave about, even after she stops moving, which seems unrealistic. Hair may not be heavy, but it does have some weight to it. I wouldn't worry so much about making it look realistic, and concentrate mostly on a good story, with good animation.

AWESOME!! I can't wait to get it. I agree many of the new features in this latest version rival or surpass what some high-end software has! Then again, I recently downloaded the 3dsmax 8 demo version, and was blown away by all it can do. After a month, I wasn't even able to tap into half it's features, but it's node-based particle system had me hooked. Unfortunately, I could never afford the full version, so that's when I looked into getting Carrara. It was either Carrara or Softimage XSI Foundation. I picked Carrara, and I'm glad I did so far!

I agree somewhat with what has been said already, but even if she could never have really escaped that explosion, it still makes for an exciting scene to me. Great stuff you are doing here, especially the effects and character movements!

This is great! Thank you for showing us!

I started using Carrara, and I don't think it has animated hair ability. I know there's a plugin that can assist (AnythingGrows?), but I've never seen it used for this before. On the other hand, I also have Poser 6, which has dynamic hair, but I hate animating with Poser. Wish I could participate though! People with programs like Maya , Lightwave, and 3dsmax will be able to do this easily I think.

AWESOME ANIMATIONS!!! Wow, these are really impressive! As good as anything I've ever seen done by the big pro studios. One thing that's been bugging me: Is it necessary to use Poser if you want realistic human animation in Carrara? I see even in these movies that they are using Poser for character animation. Someone in another forum told me this is because Carrara isn't very good at doing human character animation yet. Any thoughts on this? I just started learning on Carrara 4, but will be upgrading to 5 when it comes out!

WOW! Now that's what I'm talking about! That looks like a great animation. I wonder how he did the fire and smoke spouts?? I'm glad Poser figures can be animated from within Carrrara 5, because I hated trying to animate figures in Poser itself. The movement was always so hard to get right, and working in the animation palette was a burden. It takes up all the view, so you could never see what you were doing. I wonder how long something like this video clip would take to render? Amazing stuff.

Sorry, but I can't help with the situation. I just wanted to tell you that the render looks incredible! Especially the top of the head looks so photoreal! The highlights are like real human skin. Great job.

Are Poser's animation tools much different from what is in other applications? I bought Carrara because I just can't do good animations in Poser, and I can't afford more expensive high end programs. I'm hoping the animation tools in Carrara are a little easier to use. I don't kow what it is about working with poser's animation palette that seems to make it difficult for me, but I have a very hard time manipulating keyframes and other such things without screwing up the whole timeline. It's probably just that I'm horrible at animation right now.

Thanks, MarkBremmer! Yes, I know it's hard. I've been trying to learn character animation in Poser, but I have a hard time with making changes to BVH there, and other things. I purchased Carrrara, and can't wait to start using it. I just saw a well done movie clip in the 3dsmax forum, and it's along the lines of what I want to do in 3d some day. There's no way I can afford something like 3ds or Maya. Even Lightwave is out of my price range, so I'm hoping Carrara is the next best thing! :)

This looks cool, wolf359! Is it just me, or is there a little too much motion blur on the video? There seems to be a lot of blurriness when their eyes blink or their lips move. It might just be my computer. Love the look of the characters. Thanks for showing this. Do you have any more finished animations? I'd love to see them! Can human characters like this be made to animate directly in carrara, or does one need Poser for animating the human stuff? I've seen some carrara animations, but most of them were cartoony figures. The only realistic ones I seen were imported from Poser. I have Poser, but struggle to animate with it.

Hey, thanks for all the great input guys. Very much appreciated. I'm quite sure I'll be going with Carrara 4 Pro this week. Even though I'm no pro. LOL