after learning to rig and animate in xsi I now tried the blender version and most of the tools are there , quite workable.

and another pic

You're ahead of me, I can rig pretty well in Max, but haven't touched it yet in blender, too much to learn and not enough time.....

Congatulations! You're certainly ahead of me, too. Give it a little more work, and you'll have a piece worthy of recognition.

Glad to hear someone is having success with Blender. I've started thinking it's name is derived from the feeling in your head after a session  trying to follow documentation that in no way resembles the interface of  the version you currently have or ever will have. Also, how in the fingl do you get a decent render with the blasted thing?!? Antialiasing seems a bit shy of the mark even set to 16. Do people just like saying "Blender render" then off to another software to do the job? That out of the way, I do like the speed of the beast, hot keys are the best! I suppose it will be like most difficult things, well worth it in the end. Now if there was a way to rig props in Blender to be usable in DAZ without having to get Poser......hmm? I know borderline sacrelige, but I can't justify buying Poser @ this time to do a few props when I don't have alot of spare time to play around.

Cool! Good pose. Seems to be wisely built model, very well thought out bend points.

I had problems with weight mapping, but I think I just need patience. Envelopes are easier for me now. 

Also, I haven't been very succesful with hi-poly models, no matter what I use. Low polys or less dense subdivision models are workable, but with hi-poly models I can't seem to be able to make bone influences to work without ugly deformations.

Any comparison between XSI and Blender would be valuable btw. I would be interested just for the learner perspective; it's quite obvious that both XSI and Blender are used in very sophisticated projects already, but what's in store for us who do not have years of experience?

Attached Link: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials

I finished the rig and fiddled a bit with the texture settings. here is the latest pic in a kind of kungfu stance.

Ill added a link to a good source for info if you speak german, they also link back to the original english tutorials.

Attached Link: http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_Dokumentation

here is the german link  I think Wiki rules too, never buy an encycopedia any more.

I used XSI before and liked the animation possibilities alot, I entered blender expecting  there would be alot missing but to my suprise It is almost identical in options, well done Blender dev team.

I like what you've done. It's very natural-looking.

Nice ankle deform in the kung-fu stance :D
Interesting booty deform in the last one ...LOL

here is a animation I did

That's looking good so far. Keep up the good work. I know how hard it is get a decent walk cycle.

I don't think that you can embed a video in a forum page. Try posting a link, instead.

ysvry, cool start! Lively.

next time ill embed a link , thx for the coment.
 for now the link works so people if you want to see the anim just click the link.

Attached Link: Blender3DClub

Hey.. I just checked out your sig link. I really like the buildings you've made. I've been wanting to do some stuff like that with the arches and windows like that. You know what would go great with some of those.. is that Ivy generator program I came across awhile back. I'm going to borrow one of your models and try it out. That ivy generator works great. I've got a few samples on my site. I'm just trying to put together a collection of tutorials and a gallery of some stuff I've been working on. I have a link to the IVY software on my site as well. Here's a fairly quick sample I made, rendered with yafray.  Scott