Hello,

I've sneaked over from the Poser forums (don't tell them...) because I've been working on an animation project for a couple of years now and have had tons of trouble animating in my Poser Pro 2010. Most of my work so far has been on modelling and such like, so I'm only just starting to dabble in the actual animation side of things right now, but it's so confusing and time consuming. I'm wondering what the best software is for creating my animation; the story is based on a 24hr endurance motor race and will include, obviously, packs of cars racing around a circuit at high speeds, loads of lighting effects, hopefully lots of particle effects and maybe, if the software supports it, a large amount of physics too (cars hitting tyre walls, flying debris and such like). I'm also going to be focussing on key characters, which will require animating faces and syncing voices to characters. The only real limitation is that it has to be able to use my morphed, rigged characters from Poser, as I've made a lot of the characters already and would be very disappointed to have to start them all over again. My 3D modelling talents don't stretch to creating my own Human figures from scratch, unfortunately (I'm only really any good at structures and the odd object or two).

So, to sum up...

I need an animation package that can:

Animate lots of detailed objects at once and, in some cases, let me work with blur effects.

Give very lifelike results with lighting by giving lense flares, blooms and so on.

Animate characters intricately that have been created in Poser (same with clothes and props).

Allow me to work with dynamic cloths and hair.

Work with physics and particle effects (adding a wind source?)

I think I've covered everything I need, but like I said, I'm a newbie to all of this, so I might need something totally different. I have been thinking about using machinima, but I'm even more lost on that subject.

Can anyone advise, please?

Kind Regards,

Glen.

Any application from Blender to Softimage can do all of that. Some are easier to learn than others. From my experience, Cinema4D is the easiest to learn (I use Maya and Softimage, btw, because I like them better).

Ok, thankyou, I'll look into Cinema4D then! :)

I don't really do animation yet, but Carrara can use your Poser figures and has some nice Animation tool.  Will it do everything proabably but might ask in the Carrara forum about what you are wanting to do.  Either here or on Daz.

Quote - I don't really do animation yet, but Carrara can use your Poser figures and has some nice Animation tool.  Will it do everything proabably but might ask in the Carrara forum about what you are wanting to do.  Either here or on Daz.

Yes, I second that, depending on your budget, Carrara should definitely also be on your checklist, especially considering that you're using Poser, since Carrara, Poser, Bryce and Canoma all at one point had a common influx of user interface design (Kai Krause's way). If you're familiar with Poser you'll probably be pretty comfortable with Carrara too.

I've done some 3D terrain animations lately, nothing like you're describing, but still, if you're interested, check www.thebest3d.com/carrara for some humble examples.

If you're going pro with this at some point, Cinema or Maya, SoftImage, 3DS Max.... these may ultimately be the tools you'll use, but who knows. In the end they're just tools.Oh and shame on me for forgetting to mention Lightwave.

There is Also Messiah .. which is focused on Animation as well.  They have a special going on now it seems. It would require re-rigging but thye have tools for exchanging with other packages.  http://www.projectmessiah.com    They started out as the animation plug in for lightwave and others before they went stand alone I think.  I think MDD is what they use to go between not sure.

Thankyou everyone! Some of that Carrara work looks great, maybe I'll go for that then... I'll ask some more questions in Carrara specific places before I decide though. I must say, Cinema 4D looks to be my favourite, but it's sssooooo pricey! I mean, a little pee came out when I saw the three grand tag swinging on it. WOW! I guess it must be worth it though, right? O.O Maybe some day... Just after I drop the deposit on my Pagani Zonda, lol!

I'm looking at Messiah too. I mean, if I'd need to re-rig my characters then I wouldn't use it for character animating, but I guess I could composite animations onto each other or something, from various different applications. We'll see; I don't really have a set workflow for the animation itself yet, so I'm open to ideas.

Thanks again to everyone for your replies, much appreciated!

Glen.

I know that Messiah the pro version has some auto rigging and weight mapping. I unfortunatly haven't had any time to play at all with it.  Nor have I made the time to do what I have wanted in Carrara.  I wonder if MDD the file over to Messiah would retain the rigging.

That's a point... If the software I animate my characters in supports weight mapping of Poser characters then it's a bonus. I've never used weight mapping, but I've seen it's effects and I'd like to use it in my animation if possible. Thankyou for reminding me of that! :)

Glen.

blender is good for render.

3DS-Max and Lightwave got left out. Those and all the above will do the job. Blender is free and does a great job, but the interface is only ok. If you have an interest ingetting into games, Max is still the most used app there. Maya is the choice of all the big studios (that are using a basicly off the shelf software). Softimage got bought up by Autodesk and they seem unsure if they want to keep selling it of push the customer base towards their other software. Lightwave was by far the number one software in TV fx and was used in a lot of animation. They lost a huge amount of that market when they decided to rewrite every thing from the ground up and had nothing new for several years. They are working very hard at getting back up with new versions now and it's still in use and works well in a lot of small studios. The others get a fair amount of use all over the place.

Most will give you a free trial. Other then what will get you a job, the big thing is the user interface and price, of course. Check them out. A good way is to get the software and run through several tutorals by different people on each software. Not only do you get to check out the interfaces, you get to learn some animation stuff (a lot is some what transfurable from program to program)