A Little Survey on Character Animation Software !

Hello World !

I'm in the Unity world for few month and I'm working on an animated character whith mecanim.

I was wondering which software you are using ?

Or which program would you use if you were able to pay it ?

 

Well, back in animation class, I made all of my cartoon character animations, from scratch in Maya.
For 3D cartoon characters.

Maya is a paid software. Just like 3dmax and Lightwave.

But I mainly use Blender now. Because for me,............it's FUN!
Oh yeah..........blender is also free too.

PS: Or, you could use a trick that a 2D animator such as myself would do.

eg.

1)Make a 2d walk cycle sheet, of a human, or of your cartoon characters walk cycle.
You could do this on paper. Or scan the paper drawings, then put the scanned pic, in Photoshop, Gimp or Krita etc.

2)Then, in your 3D application or software eg. Blender or Maya. Try to look at, and copy each of the 2D characters poses/walk cycle pics, frame by frame or pic by pic.
And if you're successful. You have a walk cycle.

Note: This works really well if you're doing animations/movements, for mythical creatures like Pokemon or JRPG creatures that don't exist in the real world.

Or do they?

Gasp!
Lol!

Note: It's much harder than it sounds. But still, once you get the hang of it, gets easier, once you figure out what you're doing.

Hope that helps
Bye.

 

I'm mainly on C4D and I recently begin Maya.

I tried some "animation" software like "Endorphin" or "Iclone" or" iCloneMocapDevice" (with kinect) cause create a realistic animation from scratch is laborious ^^

But i'm not convinced by those. Are there some animating program interesting or professionnaly use ?

 

Yeah, I agree. Creating a realistic Animation from scratch is sometimes tiring. Even for me.

Oh, so when you say Animation software, you speaking about mocap or motion capture software?

Well, I just read that Endorphin, which you mentioned, was used for that game called Tekken 5.
Wow! I didn't know that!

Give me a bit more info on what you're looking for in an Animating program.
I'll be back.

 

For exemple, Iclone have specific tool that let you create animation in a simple way, cause it's made only for animation.

However, i don't love the interface and I don't heard about it anywhere, so i don't thing it's a good program ^^

And motion capture with kinect is reaaaaaly far to be good.

I was searching a good program ONLY for animation with a good reputation

Am I clear ?

 

The creator of endorphin, have two "pro only" programm called Euphoria and Morpheme.

Used in some great Game :

- Enslaved : Oddyssey to the West
- Red Dead Redemption
- Max Payne 3
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
- GTA IV
- Madden NFL
- ...

But not accessible to the Muggles

 

Thanks for going into more detail.

Wow! It seems that iclone is like the Top most program for Animating characters.
Everytime I type motion capture or 3D animation type software, iclone is like the almost the first choice on every list.


I found this one on the net. It's called Fastmocap.

Yes they did a Ryu, Ha Do Ken in the vid.
But it did come out a little bit slow though.
But it still looked cool though.

Here is Fastmocaps page http://www.fastmocap.com/?hop=oncalltech

Oh, I found this one too. It's called SynthEyes. http://www.ssontech.com/index.html

Note: You probably know this already but.....
Every animation software program, or motion capture animation software has it's ups and downs.
None are perfect.
Or have a perfect interface for noobs or pro's etc.
So you'll have to bear with the annoying interfaces and limitations of each.
And in some cases, if you find one with a "great interface," it may lack certain features, that you would like.

But so far iclone seems to be very popular.
But don't worry. I'll keep searching for more.
I'll be back.

 

I was just wonderint if they were some program i don't know.

Apparently ... No