I'm weighting buying Carrara Pro due to its animation capabilities. I'm pretty happy with Poser 7 animation tools but I used Motionbuilder for awhile and found it was much faster as well as responsive plus all the IK and constraints you could use to facilitate work was amazing. Poser only has the "look at" constraint and parenting which sometimes are hard to use between figures (hands to objects or other figures bodyparts) but so far I have been able to get by.

Now I have heard that animating DAZ/Poser figures bones within Carrara is very slugishly. Is that so and is there any improvements in this regard slated for version 6? How does Poser vs Carrara compares in terms of IK setup, constraints, animation graph? Which one would you use when animating 2 figures interacting (wrestling, struggling, dancing etc.)?

Hi Simon, I can't believe nobody has responded to this yet. Apologies for the delay. **Big disclaimer: This is only my personal opinion. Both programs have their quirks. I enjoy working in Carrara more than P7 (or P6) because it's simply a more robust 3D solution and has a little better workflow. The slugishness you've heard about in Carrara usually has more to do with the computer system and how the user works with the programs v.s. the program itself. I do work extensively with DAZ characters as well as rigging some of my own but use Carrara to create the rigs IF it's going to stay in Carrara. While Carrara exports .fbx, there are issues but that's really the only way to get rigs or motion out of Carrara. If I even THINK that the character (if I'm the one making it) is going to be used in Poser, then I'll rig in Poser. Stock BVH files import great into Poser but not so much in Carrara. There are times of opened a Character in Poser, applied some BVH and then imported into Carrara to finish. Poser has scripting. Carrara does not if that's something that is important to your workflow. I prefer creating morph targets from within Carrara because I can actually grab vertexes and polygons to drag them around instead of using magnets and so forth. They're both good programs. If you're looking for a more complete solution, Carrara is a good fit. Animation like the kind you're talking about doing with take some work in either program. I've done a tutorial series in Carrara and one is also coming out in Poser 7 shortly. So, in theory, I know what I'm talking about. But that's always questionable. :-D Post back if you have any more questions. Mark

Thanks, Mark. I took the plunge and got Carrara 5 Pro so you will probably see me more around here asking questions.