non-AD Character Animation?

[Bullit]

Who can afford to wait 2 years at which point you'll need another viable solution immediately and will have to switch in an insanely fast time frame?

Supposedly there will be a v.2015 so technically it will be up there until say March 2015, then give it a more year or two depending on competition development pace.

Since companies take more time to change than individuals might even be need of Softimage knowledge for a while.

We don't know how the market will react. For example i think one result is that companies will want to develop more stuff in house to not be held to ransom.
This is an opportunity for Fabric Engine btw.

We are also in a sort of transition period technology wise. Two years later bugs have been fixed, better processes, techniques, more/easier tutorials/learning.

[Chris_TC]

Whats going on? Have Eric and LucEric swapped brains?

Hahaha, that was hilarious, thank you!

[sonictk]

Oh boy animation discussion! As an animation student, I personally do not like Blender, but apart from XSI/Maya it is the only package I feel that has a UI suited for it. 3ds max is alright, depending on the rig (no CAT for me thanks...), but ultimately there isn't anything else that comes to close.

Modo...doesn't really offer a UI that I feel works, for animation yet. (The dynamic parenting and stuff they showed is cool, though XSI/Maya I can always build that into the rig, but it's nice to see a global feature for it) But of course, they are still young so there is plenty of development that could go on that I don't know about. But right now I need motion trails, I need dope sheets that work, I need fcurve editors that are easy and intuitive to manipulate...so I can focus less on silly UI and making my poses as good as they can be!

I haven't touched blender for awhile, but back during Sintel days I started playing with it and trying to animate basic cycles. It was alright...but I really don't like 3ds max-style MMB viewport interaction. And yes I know you can change it to Maya-style, but it just seemed that the design philosophy behind the UI wasn't really very...nice? I imagine a lot has changed though, so I can't really say personally. But I know for sure I've seen some great AM students use blender to create really nice pieces.

[angus_davidson]

I think waiting will be the best bet. Personally I think Houdini and Modo are the ones I will explore.

I am really enjoying just how visual Modo's 701 animating tools are. I am still working on rigging and weighting but you can get an idea from Richard Hurreys Vimeo links

https://vimeo.com/63720234

[Nizar]

Confirm what Mathaeus about blender viewport. With an empty Modifier stack viewport is good (expecially abilitating VBO and with add display tool can handle 10.000.000 polygons and many object without too much issue). Animation fluidity and playback is good in my opinion, better than modo.

This is a blender/maya comparative in animation workflow:


Modo viewport is more weak and the totally absence of a hystory is a drawback. Also rigging workflow is awkward for me. In general seems modo developers has love for overcomplicated and too many clicks workflow. Rigging process has some node implementation, but in my experience is very distant from ICE rigging. Modelling part can be customized and you can mitigiate some bad and annoying workflow, not the rigging process. I bet next release will have a focus into animation and and streamline the process, just into 701 Foundry touch was clear with a lot of workflow progress. The release can be very imminent.

Hoidini IMO to complicated for a freelance and not generalist and friendly like softimage, is unbalanced and his field is clearly FX. I cannot see it work fast like softiamge.

[Nox]

Blender have worst viewport performance of all major DCC apps.

[Nizar]

Not so bad, in my experience modo, LW and even Houdini had worse performance



However, is a tool, is free, don't hurt at all install learn a bit.
fear I seems a blender fan... No, I'm not a fan, simply I found it useful in many tasks.

Edit: I forgot to mention Blender Foundation working on viewport performance, viewport FX is on the way, probably around release 2.72 (blender release follow an (usually) two or three months cycle, actually we are on release 2.70