Quote: Original post by ShotgunNinja
Yeah. I'm going to go with the majority of the repliers before me and recommend Milkshape (Website: http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/) or Blender. But if you have the cash, I would recommend Maya or XSI|SoftImage/XSI Mod Tool. They have the best and easiest GUI systems, the most features, and the biggest reputation (Maya made Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children, and XSI Mod Tool made Half-Life 2 and all it's episodes.). But yeah. You can get free versions of XSI Mod Tool and Maya 7 Personal Learning Edition, so they can be used for a little bit. But get Milkshape too, if only because it's free and it has soooooo many compatible import/export filetypes (*.ABC models? *.TXT models???) and is open-source.
yes yes yes get the maya personal learning edition and save yourself the hassle of trying to mess with blender i got blender months ago and still havent been able to add geometry and manipuilate it! frustrating is not the word for blender just more like #$%^%^&&^$%#@$^&*(@!!! would work best for its description.
and no maya was not used for final fantasy advent children, i own the 2disc dvd and they even said they built and programmed their own software to create it because there wasnt an existing software to accomplish such magnificance,go look all over google bet you wont find a single word on maya being used for advent children the only time maya was used on final fantasy was the games itself!(i am the number one ff series fan!!!)
so in other words get the maya personal learning edition,get xsi foundation,get milkshape and have a whack at them all til you find one that suits you best!!!!!
i am using maya 8.5 unlimited,3ds max 9 and cinema 4d with zbrush and endorphin as my pipleine.....and yes i paid for it all!!
u said you wanted to do simple animations then just get a copy of any of those programs(excpet endorphin,ill tell you why in a second) then with those 3d modeling tools export you characters into endorphin and they have a sample library of game animations all lifelike and ready to go,endorphin is heavily used for dynamic simulations and offers your characters behaviours(i.e. if your players get close enuff to eachother they will be forced to lets say kick or tackle one another but the control is all in your hands) all these progs come with extensive manuals and tutorials. get on the boards like 3d-resources.com and ask questions or read others trials and errors.
hope this helps,take care and good luck on your endeavors!!!!
