Any animation software to use with Blender?

AWad457W · Feb 2020

Everywhere I go, I end up seeing Blender as rather mediocre. Even any decent models I do come across end up having pretty disappointingly low quality animations. That being said, I do know Blender does have potential to make good quality things... If it's able to work with other software like ZBrush and Substance Painter, then even I'm willing to stick with Blender IF I can get a simple answer that I can never find anywhere else:

Is there a software that I can find where I can import a model I make in Blender to rig and animate in that software? Would KeyShot work better, or K3D, or Modo? I can never get a straight answer as to whether IClone works well with Blender or not, but would that work? What are any software that can serve this purpose?

3dsMax and Maya are out of the question because 1: Everyone says that as the go-to for animating, and I get it! And 2: I already tried it, but my computer is a _____ that won't let me install it, so that's why I'm looking for anything that can work with Blender that actually works right...

RN · Feb 2020

Was there a forum error? I remember there being a great post by @kanga in here, talking about Autodesk MotionBuilder.

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Anyway, Blender is very accessible. You go to the website and download it, and that's it. This means that a lot of amateurs will use it and the quality of their work is variable. Unity also "suffers" from this (it's not a bad thing, if you think about it). So the software tends to get a reputation from the work that is being done with it.

But it's just a tool, same as 3ds or Maya, and it doesn't do the work for you. The fact that Disney artists use Maya won't make your animations have the same nuance and appeal as theirs if you also use that program.

Most of the work is done with pose blocking and then breakdowning, and all of this is done with standard position/rotation/scale keyframing and the editing of the keyframe curve tangents (i.e the easing between keyframes).

When skilled animators use Blender you can see the difference it makes: https://cgcookie.com/course/parkour-character-animation-in-blender

Watch the trailer for that course. I watched that course, he uses standard keyframing and this block->refine workflow. The quality comes from the artist, not the software (EDIT: well, and the character rig you use is very important too, it needs to be capable of serving the script and storyboard).

What are you going to animate? Do you want to animate for use in games (which would require exporting the animated models)? Do you want to render your animations as video from within the software? Blender can do both, and any animation skill you gain while using it will translate to other packages too.

Panupat · Feb 2020

You have some very wrong idea AW. Animation skill is not dependent on software. Give a good animator a good rig and he'll do a good job regardless. Blender is just another tool and it's more than capable of doing professional work.

Some example.

Adorable doggy.

Dutch full feature animation

Like mentioned, Blender is very accessible so ofc there will be lots of amateur works but they by no means represent the limit Blender can reach. That is entirely in the artist's hand.

kanga · Feb 2020

@RN thanks for mentioning MotioBuilder, and thanks for the headsup. This is the second post that has disappeared, so I think te polygods have it in for me!

BTW great answers above.

Eric Chadwick · Feb 2020

Dunno what's going on with deleted posts, we love us our daily dose of kanga. : )

kanga · Feb 2020

@Eric Chadwick yeah its a sign. You guys need a break.

melviso · Feb 2020

Maybe try this addon for rigging and animating in Blender:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6NG_13RadU&feature=emb_logo

kanga · Feb 2020

melviso said:

Maybe try this addon for rigging and animating in Blender:

Wow!
And Akeytsu. Saw it here on: https://polycount.com/discussion/179144/star-wars-redemption-fanmade-project#latest

melviso · Feb 2020

Akeytsu is awesome. Also Cascadeur:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvaEDBQw5xk

kanga · Feb 2020

melviso said:

...Also Cascadeur:...

WooHoo! A mind blower.

AWad457W · Feb 2020

I appreciate everyone's advice. I'll look into these different things. Maybe I did misjudge it quite a bit, and was probably just really skeptical about Blender's ability to animate good considering the many mixed answers I've come across before either saying "Yes, it's good," or "No, it's bad". The fact that the graph editor to edit animations looks like a total nightmare also continues to throw me off.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/z3/j08l881gmk6b.png

Apologies for late response. The newer post asking the original question in better detail got deleted for whatever reason. This post was also just sitting here for a while before then, so I just gave up on it..

BagelHero · Feb 2020

I don't really use blender, but this looks like a pre-2.80 version. The current graph editor doesnt look like that.

AWad457W · Mar 2020

BagelHero said:

This looks like a pre-2.80 version.

That's true. I've currently been using 2.79 for now. I heard the animation tools for 2.80 were worse than 2.79, so I've stayed skeptical about that. That being said, I will say the current 2.80 graph editor looks a bit better to manage at least. Are the animation tools really better than 2.79, or was what I heard turned out to be right?

Any animation software to use with Blender?

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