Carrara does have character animation tools incorporated in it. And, as Mikeberg just mentioned, it's also a very good modeler. I've used Carrara for animation for broadcast for years and have never had flicker problem in animations. You have to be sure your settings in the render room are correct -- faster, lower quality anti-aliasing or not using the full ray trace mode can sometimes result in shimmer or strange artifacts, but when you're going at full quality, the image stands up very well. - Dex