Animation Programs

[xkdjs]

I have used animation master and took a year class with it the basics are pretty easy to figure out and mine came with a little guide. Once you get into sprites it gets a little hard as i imagine all animation does. Their bone system is pretty good. Animation master is not a movie making program like maya7 if you want to make stuff motion picture quality get maya or something else.

[Tfast500]

I have always had an intrest in learning to model and animate on 3D modeling programs.. i use Adobe Flash CS3 for little stuff

[The_Computer_Wizard]

comming from someone whos going to college specifically for this
i think it depends on the level of what you want to do, like if you want to just mess around a little then blender, or gmax is fine, or any other free one

if you want to do something you might make some money off of one day, go with maya or 3ds max
while its good to learn the other ones and they will teach you good skills, if you want to ever do it professionally you might as well learn them because they're most likely what you're going to use (at least at this point in time, software is always changing as you know)
personally i like maya, i find it easier to use than 3ds max (but then again i have the most recent version of maya and havent used 3ds max in a few years) also a nice program for stills (at least im pretty sure it cant animate) is zbrush, it has a lot of cool features (like being able to increase the poly count in a few seconds, preset textures, its pretty much the closest thing to molding clay in the computer) also my school uses a program called rhino, but i havent used it yet (heard good things though)

[godofcereal]

I use solid works, its ok but a major move and it freezes.

[i_fallenhero]

i've never heard of Coin3d, where did you find it?

[TheMindRapist]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=coin3d
Don't make posts without trying to find the information on your own.

[i_fallenhero]

ok thanks Mind, ill be sure to follow your advice in the future.

[Y2KRaveN]

I've used 3DS myself, it's a pretty good program, very useful in creating clear and vivid models. I mostly use it for 3D worlds and Car models, nothing too amazing. Blender is also very useful, but takes a while to get used to the interface, it is a strange interface indeed because besides being a 3D modeler it's also a 3D Game Designing engine. Milkshape, which I've seen is very seldom used, is geared more towards low-polygon models, but i've found it very useful in creating precise models of animals, people, and really small things, plus it has plugins to import 3DS, Maya, and from other modeler apps.

[The_Computer_Wizard]

Y2KRaveN, lol milkshape now theres a program i havent heard of in a lil while (not saying its bad at all)
i used to know people who used a version to make hilts and weapons using that for Jedi Academy

its pretty good, especially for lower end games where you need to limit your poly count (like sabers in JKA werent actually round, they were hexagons mostly)

just out of curiousity, has it progressed at all over the years? or is it pretty much the same?

[Y2KRaveN]

Pretty much the same in my opinion. Still a low polygon modeler, 64,000 triangles was it's max i think, but I've created some pretty good models in it, even though it is tedious to drag and drop each individual vertex to actually make something look like a shape.