I’ve complained about blender’s UI, bug, rendering etc,. before, but blender seems easy to use for animation.
In blender, things go as I intended unless I get confused with the function itself, but in some other 3d app, simple movement or rotating went wonky, and simulation was totally complicated. (though I’ve only tested very simple animations.)
Blender also seems very easy to use for simulation.
I don’t have experiences in animation and simulation. Is it Blender being easy to use for animation, or is it just other apps have different mechanism?
I’m curious because, the app I wanna buy have different animation functions and I’m having headache. and it can’t harvest Blender’s animations very well.
With Blender you can always add another app, also experience, knowledge and skill are in large part transferable over…
Anyways, even if you’re more a hobbyist, stick to Blender and join the Cloud.
After a while you’ll smile whenever you’ll remember the dilemma.
If you’re only starting you can also get a 3 years license for learning Maya (if later you want to work in the industry, it is the standard with lots of work/jobs on the market). Also since everyone is going rental lately, there’s no more need for being tied to one soft forever. Rent as needed and bill to client.
Tho, First & most important thing is to learn about animation itself…
So organize self. Clear an idea of your intention & goal, then you’ll see a path showing you the way.
Complaining about open source software won’t get you very far, if you don’t like it’s features contribute to the development fund so changes can be made faster.
Trying myself would be nice and I was already doing it, a software I wanted to buy have different way of animation and simulation, so I was re-considering the purchase.
My goal is making low-poly independent shorts, so…I don’t think I can afford Maya. (even the rental is expensive)
I was wondering if Blender is way far easier than other softwares for animation and simulation? then I won’t purchase other apps and invest my time on Blender.
Just needed other people’s opinion.
I’d definitely say this software is the most comfortable to me. I can’t speak for you or anyone else, but the few things I ever did, I made the greatest progress using Blender.
It won’t be easy no matter what though. There’s the software, but mainly you just want to get it out of the way of your work. The work itself is what remains difficult. You can learn Blender inside and out and still have things to learn about the art itself.
Yes indeed, but in my case it’s other way round. I’ve learned 2d/cinema first and have worked shortly in that field before, now learning 3d is most difficult part for me.
I’ve done rigging (I’m not the animator, however) in both Maya and Blender on different projects. I personally find Maya to be easier for building armatures. It’s no slight toward Blender, which is also very functional. My brain just readily understands the Maya organization and process a little more easily. One thing I don’t appreciate is that Maya blend shapes (shape keys in Blender) are a bit of a hassle if you’re adding them after a mesh is skinned. Not usually a problem with planning, but sometimes things change and the extra steps necessary in Maya strike me as odd every time I have to muddle through it. In Blender, the process just works the same as it did before parenting to the rig.
Thx for sharing your experience. Though I can’t afford Maya, I’ve read many people recommend it for animation. It seems Blender was also good in your opinion. I wish Maya was not that expensive.
Blender is perfect then. Got many tools, addons, scripts… and off course great community all over. It’s an open house
Take it as it comes, do join the cloud, much great asset & knowledge available…
Also look into Akeytsu (free beta) (indie $79/69€ early access) if it can add to comfort…
I find Maya way too clunky; you can stretch your imagination a lot farther creating a rig in Maya, but once you get to animating, YEESH. It’s like driving a tank with your mouse. Blender, to complete the analogy, feels to me more like a sci-fi sports car; it’s fast, it’s responsive, and the workflow is (as far as I’m concerned) drastically improved by Blender’s native hotkeys. But the feature set is what it is. You can get neat little addons to take your work a bit further or speed it up even more, but it’s not as extensible as Maya.
In short: just do it in Blender. Blender’s less annoying to animate in.
well blender has various options, besides riging, i to create tweans between position rotation (do a quick camera path often with i)
but also game engine can be recorded into animation (physics) i think thats powerfull i’ve used it and not sure if other software has that too. as for rigify thats easy to use and extend too (adding more bones).
personally what i find a bit too complex to create is a walking path, there have been some automation scripts for that but they walked like robots. ofcourse i can make a walking path but i find it to be to complex for usefullnes, ea if you want to create an architecture show with walking people, most time spend shouldnt be in the walking part.
I think Blender is perfectly suited for what you want, you don’t need to do very complex things or work with 100 people. Both Maya and Blender a complex software and hard to learn. I found Blender a bit simpler but that’s my opinion. I don’t think using that software or another will change the deal , they are only tools , and it’s up to you to make something cool with them.
To be honest I don’t really get your question. If you cannot afford a paid app like Maya (LT) what other options do you have?
The best way is for you testing Blender on concrete tasks you would like to achieve.
Modeling a PERSON is already a headache, I was trying to make a small animal walk, it was not that easy.
Fortunately a project I have in mind only deals with non human, non animal characters.
I don’t wanna mention the other app’s name, don’t wanna inflame which software is better discussion.
I like it because it has physically based rendering and much faster render for same quality.
Anyway, I decided I’ll use blender for animation, and also would buy that software for small tasks.
