Help: best tool to make simple animations

Hi,
im a good programmer, trying to learn some graphic artist's skills (don't laugh, please)
i have used MED, and blender (powerfull but complex),
well, i can make something with them, i think they are ok for modeling, but i find difficult to assign texture wrappings and animations.
What is the best programs you are using to unwrap/wrap/texture skinning? What are the easiest? more powerfull? is ultimate unwrapper really needed?

And for animation, what makes easier and faster the process of animation, view the animation, adjust vertex/bones?

Im thinking about the following programs:
MED (difficult for animation, i dont understand well skinning modes)
blender (powerfull, too complex for simple things)
fragmotion
Miskshape
3d Studio (well, i think its too expensive for me)
Wings 3D (i dont like the way it works, but perhaps it is good)
Coat 3D

Thanks for your comments!

Unwrapping and Animation needs a lot of learning. It is not easy and probably never will be. There are some nice unwrappers doing alot of the tasks automatically though. Modo can do it well and Blender is also not that bad.

Animation is a task on its own. You can study animation an entire life. Some people are pure animators and still have to learn every day.

The easiest way to make animations is to use MED (very basic but easy to learn), after this you can use Fragmotion (still easy and a bit more powerful) and then you could switch to Blender (the most powerful but hard to master). If you master Blender then you can switch to everything else like Lightwave, Maya etc.

But if you really do it right then you have to read books about animation, movements, expressions, body language, facial animation and more. You have to go through tons of tutorials and you will not have time for programming anymore.

But if you just want to have some stickman animations for a prototype then I would suggest to stick to MED. It can handle the basics well.

Med ----> (a can of worms dont use!)
Blender ----> (if you like the interface good luck but if you have time its worth learning and its free and complete!)
Fragmotion ----> (cheap and useable!)
Milkshape ----> (cheap and useable!)a link to show how fast or how slow milkshape is in animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpXS_bjObxY
3d studio ----> (expensive dont use!)
Wings 3d ----> (free but no animation! Wings3d is by far the easiest modeler to use!)
Coat 3d ----> (not an animation program last time i checked!)

MED: Not bad, but don't use it.
Blender: Free, and cool. But i don't like it. Give it a try!!
Fragmotion: I have no idea.
Milkshape: Cheap and powerful, download the trial.
3d Studio Max: Very expensive to death, but it's powerful.
Wings 3D: Not bad, but don't use it.
Coat 3D: Huh?? It's not a modelling program. AFAIK it's an engine.

My workflow :

-Modeling : Silo (cheap, very easy , fast for modeling)

-UVMap,basic texture painting, rigging, animations : Blender indeed !


For animation, don't sure Fragmotion and other cheap tools have
Inverse Kinematics :
Blender IK
It saves lot lot of animation time , and make moves lot more natural than animating individual bones

UVmapping : you just mark the edges you want to be seams
and choose Unwrap : that's all : so simple , as simple as it exists in Wings 3D !
Blender Unwrap

Rigging is very easy and fast in Blender with Weight painting or with Enveloppes.
It can now bake normal maps also (it can do also basic sculpting in high meshes)
It is FREE , and if you put one week learning it (step by step :modeling , UVMap, texturing, rigging , animations).
You won't regret at final , and you'll have a very powerfull tool for all 3D art stuff.



I 'm learning Coat3D and i will integrate it in my workflow if i use normal maps !
(3D coat is essentially a very complete scuplting tool with powerfull retopollogy)

After a week you may have found out how to navigate in the workspace ...

In fact you need to follow from simple to advanced video tutorials on the Net if you want to learn easy and fast

Try on Youtube or Vimeo !

Like i said , it's so powerfull , lot more advanced than Milshape, frag motion , and it's FREE.
Another point, it is evolving fast, lot of updates with lot of new features have been delivered until 2.49

No arguing, please,
just post your comments about your preferred modeler/texture/ animation tools, (i think blender has a difficult interface at first look, anyway)
Thanks!

I have found fragmotion has IK, Milkshape seems doesn't have IK,
im not sure if fragmotion's animation procedure is easy, fast ,and export to 3DGS format is free of problems.

This was not meant as arguing against anything. Animation is very complex, no matter what software you use. This is nothing to learn in a few days. You need to learn about edgeloops when you want to animate. This means that you need to learn how to model proper first. And then you need to learn animation. And you also need to learn your software meanwhile, which means in case of Blender a very special chapter. This is nothing for two or three cold summer evenings.

And that`s where my comment comes from. 10 days for learning how to animate? No way. You may have learned how to start your software after 10 days. Or, as i have said, how to navigate in the workspace

Hmm, what about Softimage XSI Modtool? Also free, and has a useful bones system too.

I guess with Coat 3d you mean "3D Coat". That`s a 3D sculpting, painting and texturing application. But it has no bones system.

@Tiles :

In fact that's lot of practice, there's no secret
You want to do good models: practice modeling.
In fact you must find the best simple tutorials that will guide you.

For modeling Jonathan Williamson have done some great videos for blender and he has done some DvDs, and there are also DVD training for Blender !

Effret character

And modeling a character by loops is very easy :
Just follow this tutorial :
Low poly character modeling
After that you'll have a good base and you will be able to modelise even with Xsi or other modeler if you understand the way

Anothe rway is to scultp the character and use retopology to make a low poly one !
3D Coat retopology
It can help beginners , caus sculpting is lot more natural and easy than drawing loops or faces !

In fact it's lot of practice not only tools !

It is not the first time I read this kind of comment
I am not a good artist, I would never dare to model a realistic human character however I have never had particular problems with animations

What I do is very simple

I create bitmaps using the prefabricated walk, run etc Poser animations ,then I import the bitmaps as a background in Fragmotion to create key frames

Honestly I get decent animations

Yes. This works. I am talking about expressive animations, creating feelings, body language, facial animation. A walk is simple and the first thing every animator will do. But a perfect walk is so complicated that many game developers use motion capture for that, because we all know how a human moves.

But anyway - the topic of this thread was: best tool to make simple animations. And a simple tool like MED, Milkshape or Fragmotion is indeed the best to make simple animations. It does not make sense to learn IK, spread-sheet tables and other tools just to do a simple walk.

do you think is it possible , apart from the skill of the animator , to create feelings , body language etc if you are bound to use no more than , let's say ,60 bones for your character ?
Our body is fitted with hundreds bones, tendons and muscles

Well some engine have morph animations :
You sculpt a face , you modify/sculpt a sad face and tell the engine to morph from one face to another.

Well, begin to make a game with simple movements , it will already be great.
Begin simple and step by step, i'm not sure you wanna make Metal Gear Solid 5 animations and facial animations

Try this with a horse

Yes. You can exaggerate some movements like in cartoon animation to express feelings just with a few bones. There is good literature available.

And for facial animations it can be good to blend bones animation (for the body) with morph targets (for the face).

something to keep in mind as well:
http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.p...true#Post271824

Did anybody try Messiah 4.0 ?
It is an advanced animator package at reasonable price
The rigging features seem to be very good

Yes, but i haven't played with Messiah much. Last time i checked, it was expensive.

I see the pro edition is $599 its on special for a short time. You have until july 19th. After that date its $999.

The walk-generator inside Poser is really a great and simple tool to get
emotional movement-cycles with less or more exaggeration within few minutes.

If you may be interrested to bring Poser animations directly into
Gamestudio (without the need of background pictures) here is my workflow:

Export the T-standing default pose and the movement-cycles from Poser
as BVH-files. Use one of the simple models, e.g. the stick.

Take an animation program which is able to handle BVH- and FBX-files (I use
XSI Foundation but free MOD Tools should work too). Import your model and the
BVH default pose skeleton.

Using the BVH default pose skeleton, match it to your character. Bind (envelope)
the mesh to the skeleton. Until your character consists of 10000's of polygones
this should not be very difficult.

Once your character is enveloped you can assign all poser generated animations
(within XSI this is simply done by importing the BVH and dropping it into the
animation mixer).

Plot the mixer to the skeleton and export as FBX.

Import the FBX-file into MED and enjoy.

Hello

About Bunsen's suggestion

Poser 8.0 has been released
Did anybody test it?

I also use Poser to export .bvh files

However I own Poser 5.0
The prefabricated skeleton and the animations generated by the Poser " Walk design " tool are , in my opinion, rather poor
Any significant improvement switching from version 5.0 to 8.0 or just to 6.0 or 7.0 ?

Thanks in advance