I have used the animate pallet in Poser in quite a few of its renditions poser 4 through poser 10.. I see that Daz 4.9 has an animate built in.. I also see for $ 60.00 it has an add on animate feature.. My question is how do the two animate tools compare ? I am willing to upgrade but I want it to worth it..

First, I would wait for it to go on sale...it will.

Second, it's not awful, but I would also lower your expectations, as I have found the animation tools in poser and Carrara to be far more superior than Animate2 in DAZ. Thats just opinion of course. I've always hoped that DS would focus some development on animation...but it seems just like dynamics, they have left it to plugins that are just ok...

For animationg in Daz Studio My personal advice(other than buying Iclone Pro) is to invest in the GraphMate and keyMate plugins as well as the full verion of animate2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryUgvapGUG0

with these two plugins along with the nonlinear motion mixing aniblock system in animate 2 you will have modern keyframe editing tools that are superior to posers aged tools. the biggest advantage of graphMate is that it has Automatic "Clamping" along keys in the spline graph so you do not get that "'overshoot" before and after a keyframe, that occures in poser when you change a frames value.

Also with graphMate you can view the spline graphs of all three axises at once for a better veiw of where the problems are.

That said neither Daz studio or poser has a proper IK system with switchable foot& hand contact options which is why I use Iclone Pro for most of my Character motion creation

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I agree, if you go the Daz route, graphmate and keymate are needed! iClone I like as well!

And in waiting for sales, AniMate2 is included in one of the bundles making that a best buy if one is not in a hurry.

I view Graphmate and Keymate as essential addons to do animation in DAZ Studio. AniMate2 is very useful also, especially if you want to use some aniblocks in your animation. I have AniMate2, so I'm a little vague on the difference between the free AniMate Lite and AniMate 2. I might be fine with just AniMate Lite, but definitely need Graphmate and KeyMate to do animation.

"so I'm a little vague on the difference between the free AniMate Lite and AniMate 2. I might be fine with just AniMate Lite,"

I have alway had the full version of aniMate but I believe the lite version does not allow saving your own aniblocks nor baking aniblock to studio keyframes.

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The full version is also needed to enable .mdd export.