I’m interested in character creation and animation.
I’m on a Mac
I was hoping that members might find it interesting to discuss character animation software and tutorials that are appropriate for beginners.
My accomplishments so far are:
Comfortable with MakeHuman
Discovered DAZ store
Very basic character animation in Cheetah3D
I’m hoping to expand my understanding of the options available to character animators, and will be grateful for anything you can teach me in that regard. Thanks!
Hi Richard, please note “new to 3D” and request for “appropriate for beginners”. I’m posting here because this is a big community of 3D artists. I will probably fire up Blender again when I have more experience, but for now, definitely not for beginners.
I would use Blender - it’s very good for character animation, in fact it’s very good for all sorts of animations and I do not use anything else!
You should find and study Nathan Vegdahl’s “Humane Rigging” Tutorials - very informative and basically all you will need to know for a very long time. :yes:
Thank you sincerely for the replies, but my question is not which animation software is the best, but which is the best for newbies.
I have Blender, have tried it, and will try it again. I’m not against Blender and am happy to accept that it is a wonderful program for experienced users. And of course the price is right. It’s all good, but not ideal for me.
Ahh… Well personally I find the animation and character modeling and rigging tools in Blender a joy to work with, and I’ve worked with most of the others over the years. Try and stick with it a bit longer. They all have a steep learning curve. I can’t think of any other serious 3D animation apps that would be easier than Blender. Although people sometimes say Cinema 4D can be a bit easier for beginners compared to some others but I never worked with it so can’t say for sure. But learning the concepts of 3D and one of the 3D apps is the most straight forward bit.
Animation is not made by software it’s made by people of course. And it’s a deep and crazy complex art and technical practice all of it’s own. One that you might likely be spending the rest of your life learning if you take to it. So I would always think it best to think leaning to animate rather than learning any software. If you want to animate in CGI 3D though you will obviously need software.
If you stick with Blender ( … which is a very, very good choice for this sort of work … ) One of the best beginners course’s must be the Animation fundamentals Course which is now free as a legacy course from CG Cookie.
Well, as I said in my opening post, I’m currently using Cheetah3D, which is definitely easier than Blender. So let’s leave it there. Thanks for trying.
Animation is the hardest thing to do. So there are no easy tools for beginners that are actually good at animation. CG is something that’s isn’t easy to get into. Most people start with modeling, then learn UV mapping and texturing, then shaders and lighting, rigging and possibly animation. Not everyone follows the same path or ever even learns how to animate.
Actually there is an easy tool for beginner animators. It’s called pencil and paper.
Do you think everyone here was professional before they decided to try Blender? Or was even experienced in 3d?
I wasn’t. And most of the people I know weren’t. We’re not genius level intellects either.
Everyone who picks up a program for the first time is a beginner, experience or not. No program that offers a high degree of fine control is going to be easy to learn. If you find Blender hard to handle the same may apply to other programs that offer a similar level of control.
Have you considered staying with Cheetah a while longer? It looks like it’s targeted at people breaking into the world of CG. Perhaps use that to gain the experience you mentioned. Then look further afield when you find it’s not providing you with what you need to progress.
Echoing the many sentiments already posted, Blender is a very good software solution for all levels of involvement, and while it may seem daunting at first, it’s worth staying the course to learn it thoroughly. I don’t know Cheetah3D so I won’t make comparisons, but if you can animate characters with it, then by all means stick with it while also learning Blender. A large majority of the animation principles you learn animating with any other package will also apply to Blender, it’s a discipline with a firm foundation that all apps build on. Once you feel Cheetah3D no longer fulfills your artistic visions, you’ll have laid the groundwork for an easier move to Blender.
This is basically what I did, moving from Maya’s student edition to Blender. At first I was solely interested in using Blender for a special purpose (normal mapping for game content) but soon found it had all the basic animation tools, some of the more advanced capabilities of that time, and a very helpful and encouraging community. I had been using 3D modeling & animation 'ware since 1992, so it was a shallow learning curve for me at first, but it still required a commitment of time and effort to learn enough to start pushing Blender’s envelope a little.
Keep in mind that 3D animation, and character animation in particular, is one of the more complex sub-specialties of the CGI field, so simply switching apps won’t guarantee the ability to do advanced work – that will take a significant effort on your part regardless of the software you use. When you’re ready to make that step, Blender is a good choice for many reasons.
Honestly, Blender is amazing and cool that its worthy you to step in this circle to smell his fragrance if you can adhere to do all the time.
For its clear and free UI layouts, you can see any threads about what you are gonna do. look, if we are in the WIP to animate something, the 1st step for me is that i am gonna cut 4 windows as the following pic shown: 1. Main 3d view (perspective) 2. Ortho 3d view (Front/Right View) 3. under they both, i will cut for a Dope Sheet window to see and check the Key Frames i did, its an important thing for user to get the clear thoughts. 4. The timeline as default layout gives us. *Additional Stuff: if we already done the Key Frames and move into the Polish process, just suggest that we can cut another window there about Graph Editor if you really understand what it can do for your animation. lol
Anyway, Have Fun!
(The Layout windows of my work: https://i.gyazo.com/c83e8aecbf44cc0b82f9c2378b732062.png )
