I just want to share with you this link of a new animation tool that could save you a lot of time.
It uses FBX to load characters and to save animations.
It is very powerful, no need for a complex rig and the team need your feedback as it is its first open beta.
Please visit and try http://www.mosketch.com/
Very much appreciations.
Thanks, looks interesting. I’ll give it a shot and let you know.
Nice! Now that’s what I’ve been talking about (and working on) 
In the license they say you have to pay them a fee to use it.
Looks like someone read your blog post! 
Question Does this support root motion based animations?
I am looking at using this with Unreal 4 and IIRC it requires a Root bone to function properly.
looks fun… but where is the graph editor - or dopesheet?
How do you rig a character in this? Do you rig the character in other software?
From what I can tell you rig a character in another application like blender
Well, then you know it’s not something you can code in few months. The research part of it has started more than 2 years ago at the EPFL. We are hoping to bring a small revolution in the world of animation but for now we need some users and some funds to carry on the development.
Any feedback will be much appreciated at http://support.mokastudio.com/support/discussions
Thank you for your concern Lostscience. I’m not sure where you saw this but of course for the open beta you don’t have to pay anything. It won’t be free after the beta as we need salaries to work on it and reply to users requests.
But for now if you tell me where you saw this mention, I would happily fix it.
Thanks again for testing Mosketch.
I’m not sure what you are expecting as root motion based animations. If you mean being able to put keys on the root bone to move it, yes you can.
Could you explain a bit more what you mean please or maybe you could do a request in our Feedback & Ideas forum here: http://support.mokastudio.com/support/discussions
Thank you for your time.
Unfortunately, we haven’t got time to implement the graph editor. This is a feature that will come later on.
As for the rig, what Mosketch needs is only the joint hierarchy. And those joints need to be added in another software like Blender. You cannot add or delete joints in our soft, this is more a modeling tool.
Once again, many thanks for your interest. Please feel free to use our forums for any questions, bug report or requests at http://support.mokastudio.com/support/discussions
It is in your your terms of service.Here it is.
Payment and Refund
In consideration of the license granted in this Agreement, User shall pay Moka Studio a fee, via Credit-Card, PayPal or any other mean which Moka Studio may deem adequate. Failure to perform payment shall constitute a material breach of this Agreement.
User warrants that Mosketch is adequate to his needs. Accordingly, as Mosketch is intangible goods, User shall not be, ever, entitled to any refund, rebate, compensation or restitution for any reason whatsoever, even if Mosketch contains material flaws.
Thank you for pointing this out. This is indeed our terms for when we’ll be ready to launch commercial. So you know there will be a fee by license.
But at the moment we are running this open beta and of course there is no fee needed to pay. It is completely free to test.
We are happy to present you our tool and hope you’ll enjoy it.
@Albertofx, yes this is really similar to this sketching addon. We have solved very complex problem in 3D sketching and our IK solver is very advanced too.
I hope you’ll have a chance to test our tool with long chain of bones. It’s all GPU based so it is very responsive.
You are more than welcome to share your comments on our forums.
I did see where you clearly stated that in the terms of service.You need to be clear in it.
i think it’s great idea to show the “terms of service” of the final finished product. And in the meantime to use the Beta product without the fee.
The tool itself looks really great. If I were a Windows or iOS user, I would totally try it. But I also understand you can’t stretch to every platform very soon.
Yes maintaining Windows, iOS and Linux was really too heavy for our small team. We decided to concentrate on the most wanted features, more stability and we had to drop one platform. We pick the one which we think is the less used by animators.
We will eventually go back to Linux but when in time depends on the number of users asking for it.
Going to give it a shot. I don’t expect complex rigs to load correctly in Mosketch, since, in my experience, they’re never exported in their entirety via FBX. But I’m eager to find out how easily animation data on control bones can be imported from Mosketch and assigned to an armature as an action.