Animation, Rigging - Standalone Programs

[steveblake]

I'm not sure about free programs that do this, other than blender.

..at the lower price end i'd maybe go for messiah:studio...not at all bad for the price....workstation verison is $299, and it leans towards programs like Lightwave/ Maya in it's workflow. Which may be good if you ever want to learn these packages in the future..You also have Animation Master, but I hear it's fairly quirky and (was) very buggy..

Ideally tho, go for XSI:foundataion, at $495 it's a steal - especially if you're really serious about animating and rigging.. If I was starting out, from everything I've seen, heard and read it'd be my first choice for sure..

[Dann-O]

I use Messiah (that is what I use) it is quite good has a nice renderer to boot. No modeling but hey that keeps the program simple. Later down the road it can be used as an animation plug in for Lightwave Maya or C4D.

Animation master has its fans but really can only work well with itself. Imported models can"t really be rigged and the modeling method of the program is very different from the rest of what is out there. If you like to use modelers liek S-Patch and Hama PAtch then have at it. Otherwise...

XSI and Lightwave are also pretty competitive pricewise. Both do a lot more than rig and render. But the downside is tha tyou have a lto mroe to learn and things are not as streamlined. XSI from what I see is a bargain. I know XSI and Messiah have demo versions available.

[Jahmaica]

Hi Steve, Dann! First of all thanks for answering ;)

XSI is huge and really cheap comparing to Maya, 3Dsmax; I'll give it a try

Thanks

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