I can make several obejects, group them together, add the bones and attach the skeleton with IK easy. I now want to group the eyes, ears and mouth and use bones seperat from the main skeleton for the arms legs and body. Carrara does not want to do this for me. Do most of you use bones to animate the face that are seperat from the main skeleton? I can not seem to get seperate bones for my figures. Carrara wants to add a new bone to the last slelected bone in the skeleton chain. I also notice once I group my parts that I made in the Vertex modeler as the figure I can not group a sword or gun to the characters hand. I can not group anything to the figure once the skeleton is attached. Is there a way to do what I want to do. What do you folks do to animate the facial features in Carrara?

Any info would help.

Carrara only recognizes one root per skeleton. This means that you can only really attach one skeleton per object/group. You can however build the facial structure off the main group to the head and use it to animate the face. For most of what I do I usually make the gross movements of the head and face off the skeleton and associate all the vertices in the head to the bone. Before doing this, though, I usually build in morphs for the face in the vertex modeller (C4Pro only). That way I can animate expressions on a separate level. As to parenting an object to the hand (gun or sword), one method is to use 2 objects: One parented to the hand in the hierarchy, and one free moving. By turning on/off "visible" in the properites, I can make it look like I'm picking up said object. It's a bit of a trick to get it right, but it does work. Hope this helps! Ken

cckens, Thanks for the info. I like Carrara and I just got version 4 Pro. Has anyone rquested the use of multiple skeletons or the use of attaching or grouping objects to figures once the skeleton has been added? That would make things easier. I hear you on the turn on and of for the object for visability but that is a work around rather than the way I would like to have it. How exactly do you do morphs with the vertex modeler? I just make the parts (4-9) duplicate the parts with symetry then add the the bones with symetry. Are you saying you make the whole model in the vertex modeler at once and add morphs for the face while making the model? If it is a long answer you can email me at medeamajic@yahoo.com. I need to animate the face. I think you might have a better way than I am thinking.

I may just have to rewrite the tuto that I wrote for facial animations in the backroom (yeah, Kix, it's overdue!) The simple explanation is that you create the object that you want to morph in the vertex modeller. You select the polygons that you want to morph. There is a morph section that you use to create morph targets. Once in the morph area, you move the vertices/polygons to the desired form and it creates a slider using that position as the final target. It's easier to show than explain... Check the e-manual/help for morph targets and be on the look out for a tutorial to be coming soon (God and time-willing....) Ken

It sounds easy but I guess I have to find the morph section to create the morph targets.