CompuServe Messages

David, No problem as your description accurately follows along with the press release, but I'm curious to know if someone specifically stated that it was not an I.K. system? Puppeteer is a motion capture/editor system, which is its primary purpose, but it does have nodes and links which can be moved in IK fashion along with rotational constraints etc. So you can create your own motion paths from scratch. From the text provided by GY regarding the R4 IK and the emphasis 3DS has as animation package, the IK system will be designed as a motion creation system, much as the 3D Builder is a modeler. The best reason to have Puppeteer is that if you don't want to create your own motion data sets or you want to create your own through hardware, you will be able to capture them through FOB hardware available for Ascension Technology or obtain MotionSets ™ produced by Biovison from Viewpoint Datalabs. But you can also create your own sets through ASCII text editing as well as edit dataset files you've acquired in this fashion. Once you have the datasets, you can edit them and use Keyman to reduce the number of keyframes. Also you can use the data sets on a variety of different models, just by creating a new puppet for the particular model you want to apply the data set to. Everything translates proportionally. As I've said before I think both systems will compliment each other very nicely, all based on needs. For some the R4 IK system will be more than sufficient, for others Puppeteer will be a logical extension. I hope you got a demo version, if not, e-mail me your address and I will insure that you get one.