"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:4b86e11c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I did a character with bones and an animation (based on tutorials) in 
> Blender. It wasn't excruciating, but it was bad enough that I have to 
> believe someone has done better. Whether that "better" is less than 
> "enterprise/professional" price range, I can't say.

In my experience, rigging is hard, no matter what the tool, or how "high 
end". A lot of the expensive tools don't make it particularly easier, but 
they do add more options. For example, it's often harder in cheaper tools to 
combine rigged joint rotation with object deformation or morphs. Some of the 
professional packages have "muscle" objects that will automatically deform 
the skin as a bone its attached to rotates.

Rigging and modeling don't have to be in the same program, though... I know 
lots of people that model in Wings, Silo, Hexagon, and/or ZBrush to make a 
finished model before taking it to another program to rig.

Carrara isn't insanely expensive, especially if you get the discount 
membership (Platinum Club) at Daz. I got the "Pro" version, which has all 
the bells and whistles, and I like it the best, but there are cheaper levels 
of it. They've got a new version in beta now, so there'll probably be sales 
coming up soon. When the last version (7) came out, they gave away free 
copies of version 6 in some magazines. There's a good user forum at Daz for 
Carrara, and a less active one at Renderosity.

Cinema 4D has a much more intelligent rigging system that can guess where 
you want the bone influence to go, and that's pretty nice. C4D is really 
expensive, though. They had a sale last year where people with a competing 
product could get it for the upgrade price, so I picked it up then. It does 
make a lot of what I was doing with Carrara much easier, though, and I 
really do like it.

I think that Anim8tor is still around, and free, and it has some sort of 
rigging system. I think it can do modeling, too, but I can't remember if its 
models can be exported or if they have to stay inside it's environs.

CG Society has good user forums for several specific software tools, as well 
as general forums on all sorts of CG concepts, including a rigging forum.

--
Jack

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