OK , let me explain what I like to do and what I hope some day Blender or some version of it can do. I make music and music videos, I also want to create short sci fi films.
Blender is the closest I have found that can do this BUT it is extremely complicated.
So I was watching a video that was done using the video game Rust, and I thought to my self that would be awesome if Blender could incorporate some of these features they used. Such as the ability of when talking into a head phone set the character talks(mouth moves pretty damn close to what a player is saying), in this video they have players playing the characters and moving around just like they would in a video game using the AWSD on the keyboard. But keep Blenders camera animation features.
I would love to see characters already rigged, I know I can bring characters into Blender already rigged but a lot times there are issues
What would really be awesome is that there be some type of Cinema mode for Blender with tons of presets.
Examples
Preset characters with preset skins and rigged
Preset scenes complete with preset lighting and fog conditions
Preset animations like Mixamo(I know we can bring those over into Blender but I always have some issues.)
Basically I am begging Blender devs to simplify Blender. I would definitely pay for a simplified version as I am sure millions of other artists would. Maybe it could be some shell of Blender but with the ability to go into regular Blender when you need more complicated things to happen.
I have thought of it many times, if Blender is supposed to become an easy to use tool that would allow the robust creation of animations -or- remain a tool better suited for VFX specialists.
Blender by nature of existence, belongs to the of the field of CG, and is targetted to VFX specialists, as far as I have learnt all these years, there is no active interest (specifically from the Foundation) to steer the software towards this direction and make it easier.
In some way there would be a chance that some Python addons can offer a certain ease of use for some tasks, but is something like automating the usage on-top of the existing software as it is. Is not like you get a ground-breaking environment that is easier and faster to use.
That being said, about making Blender easier, the most immediate alternative is to use a movie-making environment.
It goes without saying that anything you create in such environment, gets you vendor-locked (in a sense your data are locked and you gain no reusable technical skills – except for soft skills such as cinematography and directing). But is fair to say that using such an environment allows anyone to create very impressive things with minimal effort.
The point here is if you could combine these together, ease of use + Blender efficiency.
I have a feeling iClone combined with Character Creator might suit your specific needs better. Getting both should cost $450 as a one-time purchase if you get it before the end of the Black Friday sale: https://www.reallusion.com/store/product.html?l=1&p=3d
I haven’t tried the latest versions, but I have bought iClone 7 and Character Creator 3 in the past and they are a lot of fun to just toy around with, and you could easily make an entire cast of realistic humanoid characters quite quickly in Character Creator and animate and light them almost as quickly in iClone. The latest version seems a bit more generous–I had to pay quite a bit extra for a “3DXchange” software license just to import my stuff from Blender or ZBrush to iClone, whereas now it’s as simple as auto-rigging your stuff made in other software in Character Creator and then importing into iClone. Plus, it seems rather generous with the free iClone assets (props, backgrounds, lighting setups, basic animations that can be tweaked, basic FX), meaning you may only have to spend more money on some extra backgrounds and nothing else.
I personally haven’t had as much use for it, or even pre-made assets in general, since I want my 3D animations to look different from the status quo of the standard Disney stylized look or triple-A video game look (basically, more abstract in a way generic pre-made assets or AI-generated models can’t help me with). But if you’re fine with your Character Creator assets looking “standard” so that you can have more time to direct a music video with them, at least consider playing around with it during the free trial. If you like it when the free trial ends, then make sure to save up for it during next year’s Black Friday sale, if not, at least you saved $450.