Pfiuh, finally done with this. Started learning the Blender software a few months ago and wanted to learn every aspect from modelling/ riggin/animating and rendering. Here’s my first work.
I’m not too much satisfied with it but I’ll improve along the way.
I really enjoyed rigging and learned alot along the process. I’ve used my Maya knowledge and managed to build pretty p flexible controls for a first character.
Rigging some of the stuff was quite hard as documentation (good ones) can be hard to find. I have some cirticising to make on the animation workflow though.
I think it’s time for the Blender devs to start adding more functionality to the timeline slider. I can’t understand why it lacks the basic functions to allow the user to quickly edit his keys from there (just like in Maya).
The dope sheet is nice but takes space on the screen.
However, I’m quite happy as how the rest of the software holds up.
For your first animation (I’m guessing only first animation in blender) this is fantastic dude. Keep it up.
I agree about the timeline, it seems blender forces you straight into more detail than might be necessary when editing keys. All the functionality is there; but more basic, usable functions for simple stuff would be nice.
Regarding your question about the lack of animations: I think the reasons for that are quite simple:
A) IMHO animation is prolly the toughest art-form available. All decent animators I know (I am not one) are people worth proper training and a formal background. They are trained on software which is more suitable for animations (Maya, LW you name it). And when they are used to it, they hardly can grasp the rather… “basic” animation tool set blender offers.
B) Still-frame-people really like blender and they are doing great work with it Thus Blender-Dev seems to become highly focused on the pure 3D and technical issues (ie cycles etc), while hardly (kind of) ignoring the tools for animation… I man I don’t think you are the only one who finds the “timeline” display utterly usesless and the rigging… oh well…
Maybe there is still a lack of formal background and experience in blender-dev but I think the main reason for that is a lack of dedicated feedback. And if ppl don’t use blender for animation because its too “basic” for them, blender-dev won’t get any decent feedback and thus they can not provede the tools the sophisticated animators would like to have ;(
very professional. Really makes me wish I could do charackter animation too