Animation for free

Hi,

I am not yet a Unity user... but already had some interesting talks about it in the IRC Channel.
Currently I only own a PC.

So... I will have to buy a Mac before I can use Unity. I am not sure if I got insane after I saw the power of Unity... but yeah... I guess I'll buy a Mac only coz of Unity.

Because my budget is limited I have to save as much money as possible for all other applications I will use.
I am a Blender/Milkshape3D user since some time and like it.
But I read that e.g. Blenders animation is not supported by Unity.

Are there any freeware/shareware tools out there I could use to animate e.g. my characters and import this animation into Unity ?

 

i haven't tried it yet but the new milkshape supports fbx.

 

Ahhh... Alias FBX. My older version doesn't have this export extension.
Thx for the hint Pete.

I guess another solution could be to create the model with Blender and then use this dim3 Inspire to create the animation.

Does this make sense ?

 

I would also find this helpful! My attempts to use dim3 inspire have been less than productive. There seems to be a lack of HELP documentation.

 

me-3

i just downloaded the milkshape demo to try it out later (working now). hopefully i can get blender models uvs into it somehow, blender seems to be the only low-cost program i can tolerate modeling in. the milkshape docs seem a bit sparse unless i'm missing something. does anyone know if you can bake lighting to a texture in it? (you can get blender to do it but its kind of a hack - would like something a bit less time consuming)

 

Good luck with your new direction! What Macs are you leaning towards? Still thinking iMac maybe?

 

meh, milkshape is PC only : (

 

>>blender models uvs
the geo for sure but not through the .blend format. you should be able to get uvs in also. you'll need to try different formats. i'd start with 3ds and obj (iirc they keep uvs). now that i think about it... what's up with .x? i wonder if that will export animation out of blender. pretty sure milkshape supports it. could be a solution for the blender animation pipeline - use milkshape as a conversion to fbx tool. probably not the best workflow but for $20 total well hey...

>>bake lighting
don't know for sure but i doubt it. milkshape's a handy little tool but it is pretty low end.

[edit: yes milkshape is pc only. so $20 plus the cost of a pc ]

 

I have successfully animated models in Inspire and gotten them into Unity. Inspire is not nearly as easy to set up a skeleton in as Blender is.

My current project animates Blender models through the meshmorpher component instead of using bones.

When the Collada plugin for Blender supports animation, Unity will, too. So if you can be patient, eventually you can do all your work in Blender.

 

I think that Blender has several upsides and downsides. The defining quality is that it is FREE. I'm using it now, and this is starting to show more and more. I can't use it to do any animations yet, and to start my game I must have at least a basic character and guns.

Does anyone own Milkshape? Can we use it with Blender (either do the modeling and animation in Blender and import or do the modeling in Blender and the animation in Milkshape)? How well do the models/animations import into Unity?

 

Blender imports and exports everything under the sun, so I don't imagine there'd be any problem animating a Blender model in MilkShape.

If you plan to animate via bones, the app you animate in has to export fbx.

If, OTOH, you are an insane maniac who doesn't mind saving every keyframe in your animation as a separate model and then animating them via the meshmorpher then you can do the animation in Blender now.

 

Hey Im currently a Maya user but I'd like to get to know blender as I can use it at home, Can anyone suggest good sites for blender tut's?
AC

 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

http://www.cdschools.org/54223045235521/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=55205

; )

 

Yay!
Got to try that in the holidays.

I have found this one to be by far one of the best: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
[EDIT]Jones got there before me! Well, you got two recommendations for that tutorial now

 

I saw an iMac for €1.000. Refurbished. -It's sold now... just saw it. Crap.
Well I need some more days to clarify the financing.
And first wanna read some more posts and articles here... the last game engine I bought wasn't really worth the money. So this time I really need a neat one.

Whats up with Clockwork 360?
No public testing atm? :cry:

 

Dr Jones n Socksy-
Cheers for that, I spent a couple of hours on it yesterday-Blender looks aOK so far. I also downloaded wings 3d too. I might hunt round the forums and find that post that said the cheapest way to get all 3d stuff done. It would be good to sus out all the licenses to find an effective way to model and animate for free in a comercial sense.
But free blender is awesome ay?
AC