I've spent a few hours looking and really don't have answers, hopefully the knowledgable folk in this forum can help me..

I have C4Pro and have created several characters. Although the character animation (such as it is) is a bit more robust with the addition of Morph Targets and semi-useable IK chains, Working with setting bone influences and mixing morphs all within C4 is way, way too time consuming.

I can upgrade to Poser 6 and transposer 2 (although they don't quite "work and play well together' -- yet), so I'm wondering...

I know I can export vertex objects as OBJs that Poser can import and then I can assign bones and such to the objects, creating poser figures of my own. And then I can pose the figures and import the scene into C4 via TransPoser.

How involved is this 'round trip', that is, is assigning bones and such in Poser easieror quicker than in Carrara? Are Vertex Object Morph Targets in C transferable to Poser (don't think so) or would MultiMorph (a plug-in) be a better way to add morphs to Vertex Objets and then export them all and combine the figure and morphs from inside Poser?

So how does the Transposer interface look like? Is it anything like the RayDream Poser plug-in of days gone by? Can I adjust poses from within C using Poser-esque dials and such? Or do I have to create entire scenes in Poser and just basically use Carrara as a render engine? I tried going to the Eovia site and there's no detailed information on how the plug in actually works. Infact there's no obvious indication (to me, anyway) that Transposer 1 got installed with my copy of C4Pro.

I really want to use Carrara to create images for some comic stories I have in mind, so Actual animation is nice, but having control over facial expressions and body positioning is crucial.

Any information, commentary, opinions welcome and appreciated. I really don't want to haveto buy Poser & Transposer 2, but if I can get the results I want, I will.

TIA

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/carrara_addons/transposer.asp

For using your own figures, I would recommend using the Poser setup room to bring your characters into Poser for creating a bone system. Then you can animate it as you would any other poser figure with dials and such.

The way it works is you create your figure animation in Poser and then save as a Poser file. Then just open the Poser file in Carrara, all the textures and animation data are then in Carrara. If you want to modify your animation, go back and make the changes in Poser and resave the file. then just push the scene update button in Carrara. This will make the changes in Carrara. There's really not an interface except the scene update, the Poser files just open in Carrara.

Patrick

Message edited on: 04/30/2005 21:34

Message edited on: 04/30/2005 21:35

thanks for the info, Shonner and Patrick. As far as upgrading to Poser 5, I doubt that I can, as I only have Poser 4 and curious labs only has options to upgrade to 6 from 4, there's no path from 4 to 5 that I can see. I've checked out the Transporter help, thanks for the screen cap, Shonner. You've given me the info that I needed, guys! Thanks so much. One more question, is the fact that Carrara's Z axis is height and Y is depth and most other 3D programs it's the Y axis that's height and Z is depth something I should keep in mind when designing characters, or can I change the orientation of the imported models? Thanks again, mike

TransPoser will import Poser 4 files and is smart enough to orientate Poser figures correctly into Carrara scenes.

Cool, thanks for the answers, Shonner. Poser 4 really isn't an option for me, as I'm currently using Mac OS X and poser 4 is Mac OS 9. It's better for my workflow to bite the bullet and upgrade to P6 rather than take the time to constantly boot into OS 9...imho.

Poser 4 (tho not officially supported) will run fine in Classic. I run both P5 and P4/PP on a Mac.

Well, I had to re-install Poser 4 in order to get Transposer 2 to work, but I've imported several Poser 6 files into Carrara without any problems ( made sure that the compress files and save as binary options in the Poser prefs are not checked -- last tab in the pref dialog). Rather happy with P6 currently and Transposer 2 seems to be well worth the Upgrade.