I need to learn other software than Blender any suggestions for animation?

Not sure what you mean “more stable” but these add-on will enable Retargeting of mocap to rigify rigs or ARP rigs from various sources, in ways not really possible with Blender native tools.

Cascadure is for creating physics based motion and exporting as FBX as FK motion data.

One would still need a way to retarget the Cascadure motion data to an IK driven RIGIFIY RIG back in blender.

I’m saying the only tutorials I have found using Rokoko and Rigify is to animate a metarig.

I think you are confusing simple FK rig with metarigs.
People often use simple FK rigs for non essential moccapped Characters
who wont need any manual animation at all.

Just because an armature does not have viewport controllers does no mean it is a “metarig”

here is an example from CGDive
where he is demonstrating the retargeting feature of the Auto rig pro add-on.

It is a long video, but he covers retargeting to simple FK rigs as well as Blender rigify IK rigs

There’s a difference between confusing something, and not needing something like simple FK rigs.

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hahaha !
Yeah ok ! you can’t model a character, except Batman and Chuck Norris !

Well in depends on the types of animations you are doing

for example people doing arch vis

,and not telling character driven stories, may only need low poly background people milling about

with canned walk cycles& Idles.

This is a perfect case for using simple FK rigs where you wont be need any of the viewport controllers of a rigify or ARP rig for each Character.

In my case I sometimes use older (pre-genesis) DAZ figures such as robots/mechs

I import them already animated as simple FK rigs

I’ll be releasing some cast members for my short very soon.

Or just import it and render. Why make life complicated? :slight_smile:

The moral of the story here is either you go like this:

  • Remain a purist and use everything as it is
  • Seek for the best addons or plugins that enhance productivity
  • Seek for highly specialized software that do some tasks easy

Good news is that both software Maya/Blender right out of the box offer a prefixed set of features and capabilities. Though they are kinda of the best offer, a balance between offering enough basic features compared to highly specialized and niche features. This is what developers offer and kinda say “deal with it” because in human terms, they need to offer generic features with the hope they are useful in many cases, rather than spending time on exotic features that only a few users would use.

Without having any clue about Maya I just search about the best addons:

However the point is not to point out that Maya rocks. But instead to say that without plugins we are doomed.

Try K-3D and others from https://www.movavi.com/learning-portal/free-3d-animation-software.html

LOL !! I would not go that far :rofl:

But indeed I agree Sticking with the “vanilla” version of your 3DCC ,out of some “Purist ideology” is utter folly

No one is awarding trophies for you doings thing the hard way when there are plugins/add-on to enhance your tool set.

Failing with a sincere/purist intention is still failing

I’m similar… Character Creator, iClone and Blender. I like the Reallusion software, it makes life somewhat simple. Preset animations help with the workflow… Character bases with an ample amount of morphs and the ability to pipeline into Blender and Zbrush makes for a plethora of possibilities on creating characters of all kinds. and best of all… IT’S NOT RENTWARE!!!

I didn’t discover Daz until after my purchases… Although a little disappointed that I spent so much on Character Creator when this one was free… oh well… Live and learn. I am very happy with the software and it really does a hell of a lot!

Personally, I wish I could do everything in Blender ( I know it can be done, I mean knowing how to do it all LOL). I like the cycles render much better than the iray in CC and IC. I like that I would not have to export anything and can contain everything within Blender from concept to finished project. However, at my age, I have already bitten off more than I can handle with these three software’s to learn.

So I take the short cuts and compromise my goals a bit. I started out wanting to make games… looked at Unreal and was intimidated by the program. Downloaded Blender, again, intimidated by the program… took the fast track with CC and IC and was making little animations within a week or two…

Ok cool… let’s make little animations… shoot, I need content… scenes, clothing, hair… UG! So after spending, spending, spending… I sucked it up and opened Blender and jumped in. OMG, I was so intimidated but once you learn to navigate the menu, it’s not that bad.

Coffee kicking in and I am babbling… :rofl:

Moral of this story… Anything worthwhile will not come easy or cheap. It’s really up to you, your goals and budget. I’m cheap, I use GIMP, Inkscape over Adobe since they are “rentware”. Seems to be the norm these days with major software. You can buckle like everyone else or not bow down to them and use something else. I don’t bow. LMAO. Actually one of the reasons I have reallusion software… perpetual license. I like not having another monthly/yearly payment. Good lord I am “a la carted” to death… Everyone wants that monthly income hahaha.

Enough psycho babble :crazy_face:… Character Creator 4, IClone 8 and Blender and you should be set. From there you can go anywhere… Unity, Unreal… and so on and so on and so on… :+1:

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Until you need something other than a human character.

I did not do these but these were made from the CC Base.


one of the 1st animations i tried LOL :slight_smile:

It’s beyond my pay grade but it can be done :+1: :wink:

This is definitely going to keep me away from anything that can make such atrocities.

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To each their own… have a nice day :vulcan_salute:

I saw a video of iClone tutorial the other day and it looked really impressive. You could do all sorts of importing and editing, and would not have to touch a single weight map, or a skeleton rig…

Is as much high-level as it can get. Probably the next high-level is to outsource the job to an animator… :slight_smile:

I have iClone v7, imagine if Blender charged you for features like iClone: Blender $499 + $100 for character creator(Makehuman), you want their version of cycles free if you get character creator, grease pencil add $130.

Mostly design for mocap manipulation, facial recognition animation. I didn’t like it as iClone 7 was buggy till its last version meanwhile you had to put your projects on hold till the next quarter till they decided to fix essential bugs like vanishing and appearing out of nowhere keyframes. It really soured me on making any other projects with it.

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