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