Today my friends and I were doing what we do every Saturday; brainstorming new ideas and directions in which we could take our digital art. The lack of bones in Carrara came up in the subject as a few of us went out and bought the product. Being used to using Lightwave and 3DSmax, IK consisted of mainly of modifying the mesh through the use of an object skeleton or bones, and this brought about the question, How do you define IK??? Now we are all ignorant as to the origin of IK or who patented the process but we all agreed on one thing. IK has not to do with the mesh or the goal objects. IK within itself is the development of the object skeleton(BONES) to manipulate the mesh with the use of constraints and goal objects which are not entirely part of the process. Thus we agreed that there is no Inverse Kinematics without the object skeleton and if that is the case then, Metacreations falsely advertised a feature in this product that did not exist or cannot be defined as the patented Inverse Kinematics. What do you think on the subject.

As I understand it IK is a cause and effect function, you pull on the foot and the leg will follow. Carrara is capable of doing that through the use of hot points and adjustments in the range and motion. While the process is different from the one used in product like "Bones" the outcome is the same, move the foot and the leg follows. You definition of IK would only fit the "Bones" product so it is not a fare comparison. Poser for example is "IK compliant" yet you do not have to set a skeleton. Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Actually, Poser does use bones, If you have ever created a poser model, there are serveral things that you must do in order for your model to move correctly. This can be seen while edit inclusion and exclusion angles and blend zones while coverting your model to Poser. Don't be mistaken, poser does use an object skeleton. Metacreations just does not refer to it in Poser. But lets go back futher to the origin of CG animation. 1. There the model based hierachies. I guess we all know about this. The different objects that are attached at pivot points and placed along the body to create the appearance of human and animal motion. The disadvantage to this process was that there were seams in the model at best, and at worst, the object had to be broken up, as it does in Cararra. 2. Morphing came along and it was revolutionary for a while because you could make seamless models and have great animations and very real movements. The disadvantage of this process is that you had to have so objects of that same model for the computer to reference to go from one step to the next. This called for more processing power and slower renders. 3. The advent of Inverse Kinematics. This was the life saver. Now you had the advantage of seamless models and fluid motion without the headache of slow renders because so many objects of the same model existed. Take you mesh and complete it as though it were a sculpture, add an object skeleton and animate it. Now what poser did was took all of the separate object and converted them into a single mesh by welding the vertices and forming a single mesh and that is why when you stretch and object in poser while the centerpoint is out of place it stretches the entire polygon as it would in any modeler. Before you can even start editing a custom object in poser you have to first create a text file for the object hierachy and then the IK chain at the bottom of the text file. Now with the way this operates I cannot exclude the use of an object skeleton or bones in any system of inverse kinematics because anything else would go back to where animation begun. You can create and object hierachy and use constraints and goal objects and not have IK. Because that is where it all began. IK is the manipulation of a SINGLE MESH, not many objects as it is in carrara through the use of a hierarchial skeleton. Now I tried welding vertices in Carrara within my hierarchial chain so that my objects would not break up when I bent the knee for example but everytime I did it, the program crashed with a runtime error. GO figure. And if you read all of this I commend you.

I see what you are saying and feel you are correct for the most part. I don't thing that IK is defined as "the manipulation of a SINGLE MESH". If a program is capable of linking objects together, limiting movement to a defined area, and following the cause and effect rule(move the foot and the leg follows) than you have IK. Ketting you model to look and behave as a single unit is not a property of IK. IK is the rules of movment not mesh welding or ripping. IK is just a small part of what programs like Poser and Bones do for you.

I do understand what you mean by the cause and effect factor. Truthfully I am not totally dimishing the IK capabilities that Carrara does have. If I create a hierachy chain from leg to hip in Carrara and use a goal object and set the contraints, of course, it is going to act the way IK is supposed to act. And that is the delima that we are stunted with. Surely the IK in Carrara does do what it is supposed to do, however the problem is with the IK chains being made of the separate objects that make up your model. And that is the BIG problem with Carrara. Actually, IK chains are only indigenous to a single mesh. If you two lightwave objects, say a shin and a thigh as separate object files and loaded them into the layout and created a IK chain based on the Thigh, the shin will be uneffected by the chain because the bones are indigenous only to the thigh will only activate the vertices of the object it is indigenous to. In order to for the shin and the thigh to be effect you must create a single mesh. The shin and the thigh does not have to be connected but it must be a single file mesh. Only then can both the shin and the thigh be effected by a single IK chain. In order to do that I reiterate single mesh because that is what IK is designed for. To created realistic human movement without degredation to the model "So say my infamous Lightwave tutorial tapes. And that is why I question the validity of Carrara IK because you cannot do that without some kind of Object skeleton. Furthermore if you have poser, turn on fast tracking and pan the camera around. I f you think that those are bounding boxed that you see taking place of the poser model, you are wrong, that is the object skeleton that poser uses for its IK chains. I have both 3D studio max r2.5 and Lightwave 5.0 and I have yet to see and IK system in any product including poser which does not use an object skeleton. That is my argument, but you have a VERY VALID POINT

Bones aside, I'm beefed that Carrara clearly claims in its manual that it supports Photoshop filter plugins for post render effects (see page 46 of the Carrara manual). I have never been able to figure out or use this claimed capability. {Please email me if I've missed something and you've figured it out-- I'll be very happy to be proved wrong!!} Try following the instructions listed on that page, and if you're like me, you'll see that it fails to work. I really want this feature -- it would add a great deal to Carrara's output, especially since designing custom photoshop filters is pretty easy. I like Carrara, but it makes me mad they would document a capability that doesn't seem to exist. - - -

Something smells, big time.Was it a done deal a long time ago to sell Carrera to Adobe? When something like this pops up,it brings back old questions. Why did Kai quit Meta? Why does the Poser 4 update write screwed up BVH files? Why were documented bugs in Carrera given lip service? Metacreations could have been a Beaucoup graphics company, but instead chose to be a something else. There are alot of different 3D plug-ins out there besides Metastream. I only hope that everything works out okay for the user of Metacreations 2D and 3D applications.<:>

I agree spanfarkle. Metacreations had the Potential to be the S**T, and something does smell. I cannot say what it is as I really don't know the dynamics of events in the company but what I do know is Metacreations have come out with very good products in the past ie. the Poser Series, infini-d, Bryce, Ray Dream and not to mention thier MONSTER of a program series Fractal Painter and Painter. They had serious alternatives to Lightwave 3D studio max and Adobe Photoshop/illustrator and even though for the most part you had to by serveral packages to have a complete 3D solution, the price still never reached that of what you would pay for Lightwave and 3D studio max. Frankly, Carrara with all of its feature could be a ***** program if all of these features were addresses properly but they obviously won't and these are obvious features such as the IK system, and the 3rd party plugins so it does make one question the true motives of Metacreations.

Getting a little back to original thread. IK and bones are different. They are often used together, but I've seen other applications that had IK, but not bones. You can even have bones without IK, in which case you have to do all the motion yourself, but the bone still deforms the mesh. I believe trueSpace also had IK before they had bones, it's not unusual. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Getting a little back to original thread. IK and bones are different. They are often used together, but I've seen other applications that had IK, but not bones. You can even have bones without IK, in which case you have to do all the motion yourself, but the bone still deforms the mesh. I believe trueSpace also had IK before they had bones, it's not unusual. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Getting a little back to original thread. IK and bones are different. They are often used together, but I've seen other applications that had IK, but not bones. You can even have bones without IK, in which case you have to do all the motion yourself, but the bone still deforms the mesh. I believe trueSpace also had IK before they had bones, it's not unusual. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Thanks.

Well, Eric said it 3 times, but he is correct. IK (inverse kinematics) simply refers to the a system of animation in which the chain of movement in a tree is backwards. So called 'Forward Kinematics' means that when you move a root object, all of its children are transformed also, but never the roots parent object. IK simply provides a method by which moving a child object (a hand) moves a parent object (an arm), instead of vice versa. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com

Yeah, thanks guys. We concluded this debate Monday morning and IK is the system. The object skeleton is just a visual methon of control for the IK chain. Yep I did my homework and Metacreation is within the bounds of IK procedurals. What haunts me however is the how sloppy they were done for Carrara, especially after doing Poser. The results the IK solution in Carrara is Pitiful at best.

This seems like yet another compelling argument for import/export functions or plug ins to facilitate bringing Poser figures into Carrara. -Kolschey

According to the Carrara Dev. team, that was their intended Bones support was a good Poser importer. They knew that it wouldn't be ready for Carrara's ship date, but intended on releasing it later. I'm not sure where these plans are now that the products have been sold to different companies. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Damn I love this forum!