Which IK is more powerful Carrara's or Poser.  Also can I do constraints and animate them in Carrara. Between Figures. Lets say figure A puts his hand on figure B shoulders and pushes so figure B falls to floor. Or Figure A lifts figure B by grabbing it by the hips and figure B holds unto it by grabing figure A left shoulder.

That type of animaton ideally needs IK that can be made on for some frames and then taken off to others or ideally types of constraints that can be keyframed.

Poser is really weak in this area. Something like Motionbuilder is easier to do this sort of animation. Now how powerful is Carrara in this regard?

Hi Simon, I'm surprised that no one has responded yet. You've got a couple of subjects here. Carrara does have nice IK and constraint features. I personally prefer them to Poser's simply because of work flow in Carrara. You can key frame IK motion. As for subject A hitting subject B and subject B falling, Carrara does not provide for that level of dynamic, multi-character IK/physics interactions. Carrara does have physics but it doesn't function at a multi-IK chain level like that. Mark

Wow, Mark! I have been listening to your online VTMs and didn't realize the moderator of the Renderosity Forum was the same person. This is wonderful! I have already gone thru all the free ones and will be joining VTC in order to be able to listen to the whole series. They are a great introduction to Carrara that anyone who wants to understand the program and its capabilities should be exposed to.

Now to clarify my question. This is for pose to pose animations, not physique engine assisted. I have a series of video clips of wrestling matches I have taped off the TV  that I am rotoscoping. This is my source material for a Poser product I'm working on. A series of wrestling animation poses. Now the best I've been able to do to help me in keeping an attacker hands or feet into position thrughout the animation on the receiver figure and vice versa is "point at" or try "parenting" the hands to the other figure which makes all sorts of distortions in Poser.

Seems like I might be able to animate this easier in Carrara with its IK & constraints tools (which I honestly have never used). But after the animation work is done... will it be easy to transfer the animations from Carrara to Poser in order to build Poser .PZ2 animated poses? I need to generate a .PZ2 for each one of the fighters that once loaded will generate the animation in Poser.  Also will the animations transfer from Carrara into Poser without distortion?

Oops, you had already responded on a previous post to the second part of my question, my apologies.

"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. "

Actually what you need to do is an old 3D animation trick. To be clear, you are talking about a sophisticated 3d move. Let's assume a 3 phase motion: [1] A runs at B, [2] A grabs and throws B, [3] B flies through air and lands. You will need 3 "B" chacters that appear and hide at critical moments during interaction with "A". At the moment [1] and [2] connect, you duplicated "B". The the very next frame you hide the original "B" and parent the second "B" to the hands of "A". This way "B" will track "A"s motion. At the moment of release between [2] and [3] you again duplicate "B" hiding "B #2" and un-parenting "B" #3 so it flies and lands with it's own animation and IK. Sounds more complex than it is. It's really fast to do. Mark

That might work if I can stitch the three animations of B together into one since ultimately it needs to go into a single PZ2 animated pose. How many constraints types does Carrara has? Also can they be keyframed on and off?

The Constraints can't be turned on and off by key frame but the motion itself can be keyframed within the constraint. The constraints travel and reorient with your figure as it moves (if your figures rotates 90 degrees on their foot, the IK'd contraints follow appropriately). The constraints sets for Carrara are: None, 2D Plane, Axis, Ball Joint, Custom, Lock, Shaft, and Slider. Mark