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.