Free animation/rigging software?

News & General Discussion
1

Whats a free animation/rigging software?

2

Blender. 2.5 is much easier to use than previous versions but you have to do command line exporting until it’s out of beta, or you could use pre 2.5 versions.

3

Unfortunately Blender 2.5 is a real crapshoot as to whether it’ll work well with Unity right now. Sometimes it does… sometimes it doesn’t.

Stick with Blender 2.49b, even if the interface is a bit yuck. Anything you learn in it won’t be too hard to translate when 2.5 is ready.

4

blender looks like a lovely piece of software, I download it every 2 or 3 months… add subsurf to the default box, render it, and then I give up’n’delete because it kind of looks like an F-16 from inside, but that’s only because I never took the time to learn properly.

5

Blender is too complicated for me. At least thats the way it looks. I wanted something simple like Animeeple.

6
7

I have seen that. I know the TornadoTwins use it. But I have a PC.

8

If you can deal with a PC, you can deal with Blender. :wink:

9

Woah woah. I have windows 7. Windows 7 is awesome. I would choose it over mac os x

10

Maybe you should have a look at Softimage ModTool:

Haven`t really tried it myself yet, but I have some experience with XSI, which was pretty powerful and easy to understand.

11

Couldn’t the same thing be said about a Mac? Because the only thing that makes Blender ‘complicated’ is its different interface. Learn the interface (and your hot keys), and you’ll actually be getting stuff done faster than you would in other programs.

Anyway, as far as something truly “free” goes, Blender is as good as it gets, IMO. Regardless, I’m obligated to suggest trueSpace 7.6. Can’t say that I like it though.

1 Like
12

trueSpace was pretty slick back in the day. I remeber when they added Metaballs :drool
I was going to mention it as well, but its interface is pretty horrid.

13

I agree with cyangamer.

Blender is quite easy to use, just has a big scary interface.

There are plenty of tutorials out there to help you get started.

14

Blender FTW. Every bit of effort you put into learning it will pay you back many times over. And the excellent Blender support is what drew me into Unity in the first place. You need to stick with 2.49 for full Unity suppport for now, but presumably Unity will support 2.5 when it comes out of beta. I’d love to hear a confirmation of that.

I’m slowly being won over to the new (2.5+) interface paradigm; I think it will be easier to learn for some folks. The 2.5x features (i.e. workable sculpting, voxel effects, scripting interface) are very cool.

15

If you want low cost and good, go with Blender. Here are a few resources to get you going:

Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 @ Amazon

and good, free videos at

http://www.blendercookie.com/

and the also have a great, but paid, character modeling series:

http://www.blendercookie.com/2010-blender-training/

Hope it helps,

TheLorax

16

I’m going to take that a step further and say “If you want good, go with Blender.” I like it better than any paid software (though I’ve not tried Softimage or 3ds Max). That said, I thought Maya, Cinema4D, modo, Sketchup, Cheetah, Zbrush, 3DCoat, and Houdini were all pretty terrible, and Blender was only slightly better than any other. (Silo may have been okay but it doesn’t have enough features for me to have put much time into it.) Photoshop’s 3D component is a joke as well. 3D software on the whole is the most hacked-together-and-bandaged-with-duct-tape form of software I’ve even encountered. So really, “Blender is the rotten apple core on top of the garbage heap.” 8)

17

Though I’m a well learned Blender user… if you’re looking for “easy” software to make 3d stuff… well, the thing of it is, 3d just isn’t easy.

The only apps that do make it easy and intuitive are sculpting apps like 3D Coat, or Sculptris, and you can’t really use them directly for your game models as they’ll produce far too many polygons and will no deform well with animation.

So pick a software, and learn it. Seems most people recommend Blender, and I agree, as it’s free, extremely powerful, and really not that hard to learn once you get past a few bumps. There’s more free learning resources than you can shake a stick at as well.

What you do learn in Blender will pay off later, as you’ll be able to use most any 3d program. Though you may find you won’t want to. =)

1 Like
18

The last part isn’t true at all. I’m not a 3D guy, but i have used others software and i can’t use what i have learn there in Blender…because it works TOTALLY different, EVEN a simple task like SELECT an object works different.

Grab Blender today again after few years… after 10 minutes i was already frustrated…
This programa still LACK tons of FRIENDLY interface, common sense and clear information.
As a “new user”, i should be able to do something after 5-10 minutes, but not with Blender, everything works different to other 3D/2D programs.
I can see now why after all these years is still an underground 3D software. A good software should be endorse new users and Blender don’t do that… and no, not an easy one.

19

just download Blender Sensei and stop necroing threads from literally 8 goddamn years ago.

2 Likes
20

Sure, but once you get past the atomic actions, the underlying fundamentals of what you’re doing are similar across the board - it’s the buttons you use and the things you click that are different.

In (almost) all cases you’re making some kind of mesh by adding, removing or deforming faces/edges/vertices, and then mapping textures to the resulting shape.

All of the packages mentioned do that same fundamental thing, they just present it differently and give you different workflows or tools to get stuff done. Workflows, tools and buttons are important, which is why Blender has had such a hard time getting traction despite doing mostly the same stuff without its competitors’ huge licensing fees. With that in mind, if you’re looking for a job I’d recommend looking at what commercial studios use where you want to work, because then you’re learning what they’re used to which makes you more attractive. Otherwise, I agree with what’s already been said here: they’re all hard until you learn one, so if you want to do it then get stuck into it and just do it.