3D animation softwares. Any suggestion?

Hi all,

Besides 3Ds max, blender and Maya,
what other affordable(around usd 300 or less) and stable 3d animation softwares could do excellent 3d animation?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Happy Sammy,

Funnily enough any 3D animation package will produce excellent 3D animation :) The packages you mentioned are the best high cost, medium cost and no cost packages available for 3D animation.

Any reasons why you need to look at other packages over and above them? I mean, what are your requirements that can't be satisfied or issues you have with these packages? Such information will help people make suggestions.

Personally, get Blender it's the complete dogs danglies and now with excellent .b3d and .fbx export.

I use Milkshape to model and animate, however, I wouldn't say it was excellent 3D animation, but it is certainly affordable.

You could try Caligari's game space there are two versions the light (which is free with some restrictions and is at v1.5) or the full version ( currently at v1.6 soon to be 1.7?)

Forget GameSpace. Trustme.

The best option for you Happy Sammy is Silo3D 2.0 and Fragmotion.

Silo3D 2.0 = $159.00
Fragmotion = $30.00

If you want some physics based animation making then you could add Pacemaker to the list.

Links below.

Silo3D - http://nevercenter.com/
Fragmotion - http://www.fragmosoft.com/
PaceMaker - http://www.goddysey.com/

I think I will have to get these my self.

Silo3D - nevercenter.com/
Fragmotion - www.fragmosoft.com/
PaceMaker - www.goddysey.com/

I would agree (silo at least)

Also consider XSI: Foundation, its only $100 over your budget, and will allow you todo alot more than just the silo/fragmotion toolset will allow

Wings3D could be a good and free alternative to Silo.

Personally I kind of like Animation Master ($299), but it's not particularly suited for creating models for 3D games, as it's not polygon based.

Wings3D doesn't do animation. Didn't the last time I looked, anyway.

Neither does Silo. But Silo is much nicer IMO.

Thank you for reply.

Sorry, I should be more specific.
What I mean "3d animation" is 3d animation movie.

Softimage XSI Foundation.

1. Does XSI: Foundation not cost US$ 495?
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/

2. For Animation Master, it is said that it crashes a lot, lack of customer support. Is this true?

Thanks in advance.

>Sorry, I should be more specific.
>What I mean "3d animation" is 3d animation movie.

I suspected as much. Still say you should go with Blender. Don't spend any money until you absolutely need to, and in the case of Blender you probably wont have to.

Check out these links.
http://www.elephantsdream.org/
http://www.plumiferos.com/index-en.php
http://peach.blender.org/

All made using Blender and in the case of elephants dream you can download ALL the source files for the film to study or modify as you wish. Peach will be the same but is in the very early stages of production.

1.Yes Softimage XSI Foundation costs more than your budget (by $200 almost) but is probably the best you'll get in that price range for making 3d movies.

XSI has a excellent animation interface
Using Keyframes
or altering fcurves
or staticpose blending which is awsome via animationmixer

The Ability to add you own control interface for animated models is fantastic infact you can rewrite you own interface for the whole XSI engine from within the app itself using scripts which you will find all over the place

It also has tools that will allow you to transfer animation from one character to another with samename bones
Using this method you can build up a collection of poses for all your characters of similar build and animate them with the click of a button

my only gripe with xsi is the lack of upto date online tutorials
unless you gonna buy the vids average $40-50 each
also most of the tutorials ive come across are Essential and Advanced based so will cover tools not available in Foundation

Happy Sammy: Animation Master had lots of stability issues around v.9, which sort of gave it a bad rep. I don't know how the lates version is, as I haven't upgraded (I'm currently at v.12). As for support, I've never tried. They do have an active forum though, so it's usually easy to get answers to questions. Some of the developers post there reasonably frequently.

If you're looking to make a short film, AM might be worth a look, it just depends on what you want.

XSI Foundation and Blender are good choices too. I I were you I would test some of them out first. There is a demo of XSI on their site, and Blender is open source, so you can just download it. AM unfortunately doesn't have a demo, though they do have something like a 30 day return policy. So you can buy it, and return it if it's not up your street.

@ardee

quote = "get Blender it's the complete dogs danglies and now with excellent .b3d and .fbx export."

what exporter are you using and where did you get it?

I'm looking at using Blender but the latest download doesn't include an exporter?

Hi Derek,

B3D exporter here:
http://gandaldf.altervista.org/b3dexporter.htm
works perfectly, hats off to Diego.

FBX Exporter is now bundled with the official package of Blender. Info and instructions here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Scripts/Manual/Export/autodesk_fbx

Thanks.