I have decided to finally strike on Blender 2.5. Well I made this model, rigging, texturing and animation. 2.5 is a lot easier to operate, plus animation system seems to be greatly improved against older versions. More capabilities…really good.
here is the animation Link:
Amazing work. 5 stars from me 
Great. Really impressive. GZ!!
Awesome model and great animation! Keep it up!
great job…one question…i was wondering how you did the render and then added the rig preview segment…was that just post proc??
Yes my friend it was post-processing. I rendered a few frames from the Camera port view.
Then in the VSE I loaded these two strips ( The full Rendered and the one from the port view) one on top of the other. Then I added a cross effect, in Blender 2.5 in the VSE press N, then the properties window will show…select the cross strip, unclick “Default Fade” then the opacity option will show. Now the most beautiful and simpler thing that 2.5 has is the creation of F-Curves…set any fade value, press “I” and that will be one key in the CrossShade F-Curve …just built any shape of your curve along the strip time…in my case I never made the Shade=1 so its highest value was 0.5 so kind of so so shade.
Blender 2.5 is definitely much better in all aspects…easy easy to work…it is very intuitive…if you need something, almost your six sense will go straight for it, you will find it almost immediately. The NLA editor works much simpler and powerful you can select strips or the actions in a more intuitive way. The Graph-Editor is lovely. Few things are still not implemented like Bone groups to show in the Action Editor, grabbing keys in the NLA among other handy tools.
Also I recommend everyone to start using vertical menus…I have always used horizontal…however for blender 2.5 is much better go for vertical…in no time you will get used to.
The latest 2.5 build by now April-6 can be found at:
http://www.graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=877
agree blender2.5 is much better when animating. 
it’s awesome. Nice breakdown also!
Fantastic Work! I really like the the animation, especially the way the bulges of skin move vith the joint deformations. I agree about 2.5, loving everything about it, though as you said, for animation, I hope the action editor will have collapsible bone groups back soon…
Armando, I sense a dinosaur short in your future… I would link the pictures on the rigs page of your site, would make navigation easier. Keep up the good work.
3Dmentia, thanks for the observation on the rigs page, I just added the links, thanks for your comment !
I saw your site, nice Flash Design. One thing that caught my attention was the service that your Company Provides? I watched the video, believe it or not I worked for Baker Hughes for 10 years, we were used to travel to the Odessa Training Center in Texas. People around the world gather in the same classroom, Indonesia,Mexico,Venezuela,Colombia,USA,Alaska…well that was a fascinating experience on my part, definitely the Company spend lot of money. There is another Training in Argentina, Comodoro Rivadavia…very cold though.
Well it would be kind of interesting to develop some sort of Online Blender University Program…kind of Animation Mentor…they charge $ 16.000 per student. Well keep it up my friend, Cheers !
