The topic of 3D Animation is enormous and there are many software applications available to provide the tools needed to get your 3D models into motion, rendering them to some sort of viewable file. Although I was taught how to model using 3DS Max, introduced to Maya Ultimate, and had a short run with Poser, I haven't really spent enough time animating in any of these to truly comment on their ease of use or quality of results. But one thing that I really can comment on is the fact that Carrara is an animator's dream come true! No matter what you've learned or what application you've learned to do it in, we are very lucky to have such power in such an affordable piece of software. While talking about affordability, one could compare Carrara's retail pricing fairly evenly with Smith Micro's Poser Pro, except that it's almost impossible to pay full price for Carrara, which cannot at all be said for the other. To me, while I must admit that the latest Poser Pro looks to have some very inviting new feature that continue to beg me to purchase it, it just seems like an off-balance comparison. Carrara, again... to me... being a hands-down better bang for the buck. But I didn't come here to say which is better. That wouldn't be fair - as both are incredibly reasonbly priced for anyone choosing to get into this realm - and both have an enormity to offer that makes them vastly more valuable than what one must pay for the license of use. Like Head Wax pointed out to me, it's great to have both - as he uses Poser Pro as the ultimate Carrara plug-in. I'm inclined to follow him in that endeavor. Perhaps soon.
Animation Features
Carrara has its Sequencer tray to work in for manipulating where you place key frames, what you set the tweeners to do, adding and blending the powerful NLA clips and poses, etc., and I find it to be more comfortable to work in than any other key frame editor that I've seen or used. The new keyMate and grapgMate plugins for DAZ Studio, by GoFigure, seems to give a similar usage to DAZ Studio users, which looks very cool. Unfortunately I doubt that I'll ever know for sure. Although I am fully gearing up to use DAZ Studio Pro as a strong, essential part of my Carrara workflow, key framing animations is not part of that!
Using the sequencer, you will notice that we have the ability to add keyframes for a multitude of different things within Carrara scenes. Changing shaders, modifiers, scene effects... making things change over time is such an easy thing to do in Carrara - without having to learn any sort of special, technical jargon. Most of how it works just makes perfect sense simply by looking at it - changing what you wish to change where you want it to change in the timeline. Carrara's interface is actually more helpful to me than a good book for other software. By the time I learn what the modifiers does to my mesh, I can already assume ways in how I can change it along the timeline.
Beyond all of that, Carrara has many, many automated animation features built right in to it. The Realistic Sky Editor includes methods of putting clouds in motion automatically. Fire, Ocean, Fog, Volumetric Clouds (amongst other things) have animation settings built into them. Just fill in the worksheet and, again... everything just seems to make perfect sense, and Carrara will do the rest. Truly amazing are the effects that you can apply in this manner to plants made using Carrara's Plant Editor! Adding rustle and wind strength and directions can also be changed along the timeline.
Carrara's Texture Room includes shader options to allow for various things to happen to Particles emitted as well. I think that it would be a fun experiment to collect many different versions of Carrara to see how some of this might have evolved over time - and what was just already here from the start. Version 6 (or was it 7?) including Non-Linear Animation (NLA) features is something that I am forever grateful about.
NLA (Non-Linear Animation) controls are such a fast and easy way to work with animation sequences in different ways. Once you create a NLA Clip you may add that to your character in the sequencer and stretch, reverse, loop, or otherwise change the clip data. You can make various clips that work together, use tem to transfer data from one character(or anything, for that matter) to another and save these clips into the browser for future use. We can easily experiment with blending one clip into another - having them overlap... it opens up a wide range of non-destructtive ways to work with animation.
Target Helpers and IK can play a huge role in what happens in your animations. They can even override the data in a NLA Clip - which seems to be otherwise nigh/impossible! It's a fairly straight-forward endeavor of having this follow that and placing that where it needs to be, while making sure to have IK set on this to control what happens between it and its parent. Follow that sentence through, and you'll have it, as cryptic as it might sound!
Tutorials and other Information
There are a number of good tutorials available on the subject of animation. In my opinion, not enough good things can be said about the generous, valiant effort by our resident Cripeman as far as his services of increasing our understanding what Carrara has to offer. So much that I decided to work on indexing his lessons in a convenient table of contents for Carrara users to have at their fingertips: Cripeman Tutorials Index
Amoung that list are a few of special interest that I feel a strong urge to share with anyone reading this article:
Below: Special Presentation: Eadward Muybridge - Grandfather of Animation
Below: Creating Motion Paths
Below: Compositing Tips
Below: Exporting Animated Poses from Poser to Carrara
There are many, many more useful video tutorials by Cripeman. I believe that I have all of them in the Cripeman Carrara Video Tutorial Index, even though I still haven't organized the videos on the bottom of the index yet - but they are all named - so it's still easy to use.
Further, my older article: AniMating in Carrara, has some tips and tricks on how I use aniBlocks to help create animations beyond their original, intended motions. The article also includes several links to some more great video tutorials, including some from Jonny Bravo and instructionals from GoFigure on using aniMate 2 to your advantage in getting the most out of your aniBlocks - great stuff that I strongly recommend.
Finally, before I conclude this introduction, I really must include Mike Moir's Walk Cycle Creation Videos to show his endeavors in creating his walk cycle on the man model he made and rigged all in Carrara. The first one is all about setting up the model... ahh... I have it all explained in that post. The whole thread is a great read - I just linked to the video index post I made.
The big thing to me is the fact that, as powerful as Carrara truly is, it is also so incredibly simple for any and all of us to use! Sure... I am, very much, the DAZ 3D Carrara poster boy... always cheering it on as my favorite software application in the whole world... well I only do that because it's true for me. I really loved using Poser when I began animating people. There were certain, necessary features missing from it, in my opinion. That put me on a rather heart-wrenching path towards trying and find something that filled the gaps. I totally lost that battle for some time - simply because none of my searches took me to Carrara - for once I've found it, my search was over! Back then (Carrara 7 had just come out) the product pages for Carrara at DAZ 3D were much more impressive to me than what they have now. It was like looking through a Sears Christmas catalog when I was a kid... reading through all of the cool features - gazing at the WIP illustrations they had... Wow - the ability to model, automate landscape/scene creation, displacement modeling, 3d painting, super-powerful shader editor, all those animation tools... particles, physics, volumetrics... Ahhhhh! okay I'll stop for now. I'll be focussed again when I return
This post was just about my lack of understanding of the formatting here. Holly directed me to the solution (Thanks Holly!) so I'll write more animation stuff instead! 
There is much more to say about the power that we have, as owners of Carrara, towards making great animations - and the future is looking very bright, indeed for Carrara and the new Genesis (1 & 2) figures, along with the previous generations as well. Part of animating characters is to make sure that their clothing and other accessories fit and follow the figure as they move about the scene. I am currently playing around (happily, I might add) with the notion of modeling clothing that conforms to the new Triax figures, using the Instructions provided by the good folks at DAZ 3D. Digging around in those pages while working directly on the subjects opens up some amazing possibilities. The funny thing is that you can even follow a near-identical procedure within Carrara that works out nearly the same way - with the exception that we may then only share our work with other Carrara users, whereas the methods linked to above return a product that shows up in the Genesis library system, with all files placed where they belong within that library - pretty slick. The other advantage being that it utilizes the genius work included in the new Triax system for following any morphs that you have for Genesis.
Alright, I know that Genesis seems to be leaving a foul taste in some mouths around here. Looking further into our bright future at DAZ 3D, all I can say is that I am very excited with everything that's coming forth for this excellent system - and I'm glad to be on the band wagon. It does take some patience and experimentation to find just the right things to do with your new Genesis models. But I recall having similar issues with any of the newly released generations, while moving forward always proved to be the best way to go. For me, Genesis' ability to transform into monsters so fluidly, with custom UV Mapping to match up with the new shape... Bam! No brainer for this kid!
There has also been a lot of talk about Genesis 1 becoming outdated far too quickly. Like any other generation transition, it is only the modern technology that gets left out. The figures are still there for us to use and make new features for. I can feel the vibe of how Genesis' ability to be male or female is still going to continue as a popular choice - especially for those of us whom wish to have a blast modeling attachments, hair and clothing, right within the assembly room, and then following the instructions above to get these new additions that we make to sit nicely in our libraries carrying with them the powerful ability to follow Genesis in all that the individual user has installed for changing its shape - truly and amazingly powerful for any animator wanting to work with living creatures. The new DAZ Horse 2 carries the same power. So we now, with the assistance of DAZ Studio Pro, have the incredible leverage of being able to simply model anything we want to work with the figure.
Even further, we can even make our own morphs for the Triax figures themselves, which will automatically work the morph followers with whatever items were made for that base figure. There is information within those pages that teach us how to do it. And the training is free from DAZ.
the replies are formatted... If you go back and edit the original post, the formatting will stick. Sorry. I'm working on this one...
You are, however, responsible for making it as cool as it is, and I am thankful for it and many other things you've done for us - Thank you!An interesting fact that I'd like to share. Who knows... maybe someone reading this doesn't yet own a copy of Carrara and wants an inexpensive option:
When I bought Carrara, Carrara 8 was still in beta. Buying Carrara 7 would get you Carrara 8 free once it was released at that time. Well I bought the book "Figures, Characters, and Avatars" by Les Pardew, which included Carrara 6 Pro and Hexagon 2, along with DS 2.3 and a slew of excellent content. The book is a great resource for lessons on natural posing, making faces, animating, a very good read in my opinion. Well I've just noticed that you can still buy the book at Amazon. Buy it new, and I believe that DAZ 3D will grant a license of use for the copy of Carrara 6 Pro that comes with it - along with Hexagon. Great deal if you don't have them yet.
With the current Carrara 8.5 promotion, the upgrade price is effective for any version of Carrara, I believe.
But when it comes down to it, Carrara has been excellent for many versions. I am too hooked on the benefits of 8.5 Pro to go back at all. I love the new Carrara, and really look forward to the updates to come - which should really make it sing!
I am planning to get some actual video tutorials underway. We'll see if I can make that true. It seems that with each passing year, the days just keep getting shorter and shorter... to bad... for there is still so much to do!
Great little article, Dart, and I 100% agree. I'm very new to animating, but already I've been bowled over by how easy it is to do in Carrara. I learned a couple of things I didn't know from reading this, by the way. I had no idea the plant modeler/editor had animation controls built in. How cool! I can see making a forest come alive, with wind rustling through the branches and swaying the leaves 
Thanks Jon,
Glad you could pick up something useful from it
Using the principals used in the product I've made, Woodlands, where I duplicate the same trees over and over again, with a relative few master plants, this becomes incredibly efficient!
Watch this, but pay closer attention to what the trees are doing instead of my beautiful wife walking wet:
There were only about five trees to set animation controls on, since I chose to "Edit the Master" rather than "Create New Master" when entering the plant editor to set them up. That is fully automated storm action going on - and it can get (the storm) much worse! Even at this setting, the most swaying tree just behind her bent so far down that it made the trunk flicker on and off in the final render. I used the rotoscoping tools of Project Dogwaffle Pro: Howler to paint the trunk back into the animation. It's cool how I can now save my animations that get funked with Howler's rotoscoping. Basically, it's a curve tool that you can key frame and then use for any number of functions - even save the animated tool for further use, if you want. The rain was made in Howler, too, using the AnyFX plugin by Pixelan, which came along with the CoolCreativeBundle. Really cool (and right now only $59 USD) bundle contains the following:
- Curvy 3D 1.6
- Archipelis Designer 4 (3D rapid prototyping)
- Project Dogwaffle PD Howler 8 - Digital Painting, Animation, 3D
- Texture Anarchy
- Pixelan AnyFX for PD
- Pixarra Twistedbrush Pro Studio
- Genetica 3.0 Basic (Texturing)
- DJ d'Artgnan (Trance/Electronica royalty-free music)
- Mediachance Dynamic Auto Painter
Pretty sweet suite, eh? 
Speaking of Project Dogwaffle Pro: Howler, it has many tools and functions that I feel beneficial to anyone animating. It is quite different from your average image editor, and contains many great animation tools. It even has the ability to read and create sprite sheets! Whether you save in image sequences or avi, Howler can load it and save it either way as well. Another learning curve? Absolutely! But it's fun and easy with the great (and free - on YouTube) video tutorials mostly by Philip Staiger, some by Dan Ritchie. I have made a set of playlists so that I could watch them in sequential order.
What does all of this have to do with animating in Carrara? Well, in my opinion... everything!
roject Dogwaffle is a digital paint program - not to be used in place of an image editor, like Photoshop, etc., but rather, along with it.
wonderful article!
So many times I was telling people, that Carrara is awesome for aniamtion, especially the time line which is a time line and dope sheet in one and so much more, I have tried many different software applications and Carrara so far is the only one to have this much wonderful time line, in other software you have to deal with extra windows to change tweeners, move keyframes around etc. but in Carrara, you can do this all in one beautiful time line.
And as far as I know, Carrara is the only 3D software application to has story board room,
The Sequencer (The Timeline) of Carrara
All too many times, as jetbird has noticed as well, does Carrara's sequencer remain hidden from the spotlight of what really helps to set Carrara into its own class of interface, beautifully designed to help the animator remain efficient and truly get the intended results. Let's just have a quick look at an example of the tiniest fraction of the power of this great little(?) window:
Open up Carrara and open a new scene. Let's go straight to the bottom of the work space and switch from Browser to Sequencer. I know you have a Camera in the scene, locate that at the top of the list in the Sequencer and open the hierarchy by pressing the little, white triangle. You see a list there: Motion Method: Keyframe, Visible, Cast Shadows, Recieve Shadows, Kind: Conical. Go down to "Visible" and click the white '+' sign. That's a little graph editor. Cool, eh? You can close that. Now look up above that list to the blue button that says "Sequencer" inside the button. Click the down arrows and change it from Sequencer to Graph Editor". That's the big graph editor. Okay now switch back to Sequencer. Now go back to the list and check out the hierarchy of the Motion Method. Open it up and then open whatever inside you can open. Notice that you have easy access to truly any aspect that you can possibly change about the camera. This is important to know. Why? Well because you've just seen how to access two views of a graph editor for any aspect of anything within Carrara. Why? Because it's Carrara that you're in. Knowing this means that you now know how you can edit minute details about any separate change that can be made. On the surface, move your camera along the timeline and you'll add a keyframe, right? Well now I've shown you that there are a lot more than just that one key frame! There's one for X translation, Y, Z... one for visibility, focal length... everything! This means that, if you need to, you can edit the tweener behaviors on a powerful level! Not all that unique, no. But to have everything right there, that easy to access and manipulate, damned right that's unique! I just wanted you to see something that is easily overlooked. I just had you look at a single thing in the sequencer.
Check out the simple, default shader. Open it up and see what changes you can animate - and then tweak those animations on levels that are eniterly unhidden from your complete control in this one, very nice and spacious work area - in front of everything you do! Dragging that area larger and back again is simple and natural. You'll amaze at how much enjoyment, satisfaction, and incredible results you'll get the more you get used to doing this - and here's one small example why: When you make a change along the timeline, you add a keyframe. So for this example, let's use a character and make the change by applying a pose. Whether or not you use a pose file imported onto your character, this adds a key for every joint affected in the pose. As animators, we already know that we should really go in and slide some of these keys around to make the motion more fluid and believable. You can do this same thing with various changes made to your camera, simply by opening up its hiearchy in the sequencer. Apply different tweener settings. Make changes in the graph editor - quick ones using the little graph, or you may switch the whole view to graph editor. Shader changes, Lighting changes, Camera changes, Morphs, translations....
Welcome to Carrara... Welcome to Power!
The more I use Carrara, the more I animate. The more I animate in Carrara, the more I realize how nicely animation is catered to within Carrara. We have just, like I mentioned, tipped over a very small stone on the beach of how amazing this software is.
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