Attached Link: http://jcharlesart.users.btopenworld.com

Hi there... I just bought carrara 2, and I'm trying to make a skeleton to manipulate the standard "man" mesh figure. As far as I can see I'm following the tutorial, but so far, I've spent all day to get one (RIGHT) arm moving, and nothing else will function - neither leg, nor the left arm. Any help and advice would be more than welcome. I've been duplicating with symmetry to create left from right, and then applying preset constraints like "Shoulder"etc . I can't undersand why the Right arm moves perfectly, and the left just won't budge? If anyone has a functioning skeleton that I could download that'd be just divine! Assuming I ever get this working... Can one attach more complex groups of stuff to a mesh model that is controlled by a skeleton? I'm thinking of making a fairly sophisticated robot type character. But at present, I'm stuck in the starting blocks... Thanks in anticipation.. John Charles

Do you have the Carrara 2.1 update? IIRC, the update resolved a bunch of problems. I"ve been working on a human figure that I've modeled and am in the process of creating a walk cycle and I've not had any problems like yours. Although I'm using Carrara 3, the bones (afaik) feature wasn't updated. I have noticed that you can also drag and drop constraints from one bone by clicking on the Constraints panel in the properites pallete, dragging it onto the bone. This seems to do just as good of a job as using the browser tray. Are you placing IK on each arm in addition to the constraints? I would remove the IK chain, detatch the skeleton and then re-attatch it. See if that helps. I've found that when I get the model and the skeleton where I'm ready for attatching the skeleton, I do a save as and save the file as a "ref" file; meaning that I have a "pristine" copy of the model and bones prior to any attatching. This way if I frell up the skeleton, I can re-open the Ref file and do another save-as and re-do the attatching thing. One thing I discovered this AM, was that I was having problems with making my model move horizontally, it would dip downward (Z-axis) and go back to the positition I set it to in the last frame. It wasn't until I went back to the ref file (to fix an unrelated modelling error) that, on a lark, I checked the hotPoint of the "root" bone of the skeleton and the model it was to attatched to. Not surprisingly they were not the same. I unchecked the "lock hotPoint" (that's C3, don't recall how to do it in C2...) and moved the hotPoint to be the same as the root bone. Then after attatching the skeletion I tried the horizontal movement (think of the Gentlemen from the "Hush" episode of Buffy) and it worked exactly right, no dips! You can drag and drop objects onto a bone in an attatched skeleton. You will retain all the behaviours and such that was applied to it. this Is great for having a helper object for making eyes follow. Remember to remove all objects before you detatch the skeleton and reattatch it, you'll lose all modifications and such, the object will be set to "still" and you won't be able to animate it via a Point At behaviour. For my human model, I modeled separate hair, teeth and toungue for her. The hair and tongue had their own skeletons and all I did was to attatch all the skeletons to the proper model. Then I dragged the root bone of the hair skeleton to the "crownBone". Now the hair follows the body, as if it was a part of the model. Same process for the tongue. For the upper and lower teeth, I put the uppers with the main "headBone" and the lower was dragged and dropped on the jawBone. Now the movement of the teeth are automagically taken care of by the parent bones. Play around with the custom constriants, in addition to the rotation, for robots the XYZ position sliders could come in handy. hth, mike r.

Thanks for the reply Mark I don't have the 2.1 update - so perhaps I should look into that. I've pasted your comments into a Simple Text file, and I'll digest them and have another go at making a skeleton at the weekend. Thanks for replying at such length. I actually tried the tutorial from the book too, where you deform a cylinder, using a Shoulder, Elbow, and Wrist joint - and that doesn't seem to work for me either - the cylinder just stretches, rather than bending at the elbow. I suspect I must be doing something wrong - but have no idea what. Ho Hum... Maybe your reply will help me get things sorted - looking forward to having another go at it. Cheers John Charles