Animation Advice

OptimisticMonkey

I am an indie developer busily working on my next game....and I have finally gotten some skeletal animation working on the gpu. I am currently using md5 (id Tech ) models and animation.

I love 3d work and have been slowly learning modo and zbrush over time, and I am very happy with them. But neither of these support rigging with bones so I have recently started to learn Blender. Blender 2.5 has a better ui than before, but I use a mac and the middle mouse button is less than stellar.

I have started eyeing Maya...but am afraid it is an even BIGGER investment in time to learn.

I need some advice from Animation gurus...

My question is:

Should I invest the time to learn Rigging and Animation in Blender, or is Maya a better choice?

Or maybe is there another good animation package ? (alas 3dsmax does not work on the mac :-( )

I guess I could fire up windows for 3ds max and UDK...


Thanks in advance for any advice/feedback

Ben Apuna

Sorry to hear Blender isn't working out for you, as that would have been my first suggestion.

We Modo users can only hope for CA in 601... until then have you looked at Cheetah3D?

There was a great deal on PMG Messiah a while back, though I've heard the Mac(wine) port is pretty horrible. Still there are probably some folks out there that would sell (or maybe even give) a license to you.

EDIT:

There's also Lightwave and Cinema4D to consider.