non-AD Character Animation?

[Hirazi Blue]

When I started using XSI, long before the ICE age, the software was renowned for its character animation tools. As I have never really looked all that much at the competition over the years, the current situation raises the interesting question, what would currently be considered the best option purely for modeling, character animation and the rendering of the result, with an emphasis on the animation (and rigging) side of the story?
And let’s just say, for extra points, I wouldn’t want to use Autodesk products for some inexplicable reason…

[McNistor]

Modo, C4D as generalist apps. Zbrush along with Mary for a character focus.
For more of a "serious" investment in both time and money - Houdini.

Oh, and not to leave out an important aspect - my experience with these s/w is as follows:
C4D, Modo - limited
Zbrush - extensive
Mari - relatively familiar

Houdini - extremely limited

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, but what would you recommend specifically for CA (in a "one-app" world - "poor man walking")?

[McNistor]

Okay, but what would you recommend specifically for CA (in a "one-app" world?

Modo, C4D can be picked up relatively easy.

Houdini is a lot more powerful and obviously a lot more expensive money and time invested wise.
Needless to say, Houdini can open some doors as far as hiring goes. As far as I know (heard) is great for rigging/deformations but not so smooth regarding animation (the actual keyframe-ing). If SideFx would suddenly wake up in the middle of a hoard invasion of animators, given the company responsiveness that could change in a single version.

The choice is with the chooser.

[Hirazi Blue]

Would you really say Modo is already there yet? It was my understanding that, while it's catching up fast, it's animation toolset is still a bit limited.

The choice is with the chooser.

That's a statement to frame and hang above my bed, coming from a thread where I seriously ask some advise (and thus deem myself unable as of yet to actually choose).
;)

[Mathaeus]

just in that order, if not Maya....
In 'creature' category, which I believe still holds about 90% of non-game characters, Blender seems to be a king. Very good, XSI like kinematics system. XSI like = it's even able to read the global transform and automatically convert it to local, making some typical SI tricks available. Not nearly as consistent as XSI, but, well.. at least, for example, developers don't shy to admit that they just forgot to add the scaling to mentioned feature. It even has simple command for transferring the envelopes. Cycles path-tracer can go just fine with just a few low poly, subdivided creatures. Tons of tutorials, examples, whatever else.
It's unusable for heavy models, having a lot of operators, but this is not the goal.

Otherwise, if not Maya again. Theoretically, it's possible to cook something in Houdini, but... I have impression that they are simply not focused on this field, for long time, since 2008 or so. How much of work to put it 'on the road', seem to be unknown.

Games, if that considers mocap, motion re-targeting and such.... AD only, I'm afraid.

[Hirazi Blue]

Thanks for your reply. I already was afraid I'd have to rethink my stance on Blender!

[kiwimation]

Im no charactor animator but there is lightwave. There is alot of bad press about its CA tools but you also see some nice CA come out of it.

Not exactly CA but i thought this was nice https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/article/all-eyes-on-this/

But alot of lightwave guys do use blender for CA and then render out of lightwave.

[McNistor]

edit: nothing to see here, read the next post

[Bullit]

What about waiting for 2 years and decide then? or when something better appears.

[EricTRocks]

What about waiting for 2 years and decide then? or when something better appears.

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?

[luceric]

I think it's worth waiting, because after a long sleep, I've heard there are various parts moving again in character animation technologies, at different companies.

[Pooby]

Whats going on? Have Eric and LucEric swapped brains?

[EricTRocks]

God I hope not!

One thing is for sure, while I've stated that I'm heading in the Maya direction (mostly out of the amount of market Maya already has over the rigging/anim space) I have no faith in AD to be innovative. All I've seen from them is reactionary / acquisitory (<-- Look I made up a word!) over the past years. Look, this app is doing this. We'll put it in. Look this company does cool stuff with lots of data, let's buy them and hopefully just plug that into something else... :\ 0 faith in AD. I'm realistic though and need to continue to do work while not relying on a discontinued application.

Just as an aside, we can kind of take what Luc-Eric just posted as a validation of the rumor.

[MauricioPC]

Just as an aside, we can kind of take what Luc-Eric just posted as a validation of the rumor.

Just like Hirazi said ... maybe they are not allowed to talk anything. After the announcement, maybe they can, who knows.

As for animation ... Houdini maybe an option. There's also Animation Master (never used it) https://www.hash.com/index.php?pcode=software_details.

[Paulrus]

A cheap option for character work is also PMG Messiah.

It's a bit dated at this point and I think they're down to just one developer, but I've always heard good things about it.

-Paul