whats a good 3D animation program

I'm using a cinema 4D demo now and i like and thinking about buying it but its hard to animate it is there any better 3D animation programs or all they all the same?

What have you used in the past?

Asking which is best for animation is sorta a crap shoot. Some people will say keep using Cinema4D - I found it quite easy to animate within it. Some will say 3ds max - which is an odd beast, but it's what I'm used to.

And some will say Maya... which to me, is a program that's deceptively simple looking (the interface) but awesome output and power. Learning curve though... very steep.

And what do you want to animate that's causing problems within Cinema? After a while, you'll find out that once you learn one software, most of the basics apply everywhere.

I realy like swift3D for flash. I havent used any other 3d programs but from what I can tell you gain more from the rev4 rendering to swf or thier own swft format then you would get from having more in the way of options in the 3D program, but this is ll comeing form a flash develpoer, designers point of veiw. If this was for any other type of work I would say you can't go wrong with 3dmax or other one big (forgot thre name). From what I'v seen they both have about the same level of options to work with.

Softimage - XSI ...best in the industry..i use to use max but switched over to XSI:)

what exactly is hard to animate in c4d? i really cant think of anything you could`nt achieve in c4d, and compared to the industry giants like maya,
3dmax and xsi it`s the easiest to learn imho.

you should definitelly check out the cinema 4d R 10 demo. the character animation system has improved a lot.

some great openSource 3d package is Blender:
http://www.blender.org/
it´s strength are supposed to be in animation
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/
I use Blender mainly for special texture baking stuff because I can copy the application folder without trouble to multiple computers and split big processes into smaler pieces.

but mainly use 3dsmax with lots of plugins combined with many specialized tools for special tasks such as sculpting, unwrapping.
CAT from XSI for max is a very good animation plugin with lots of nice features though character Studio wich is already included in max will do most for most character animation stuff.
If you want ot animate simple things almost any 3d package will do.

I think 3D Studio Max is the best choice ,and some others have the same opinion here :
http://www.astahost.com/index.php?sh...rt=#entry13241
If I don't remember wrong you can get it in **********.com or Amazon.com .
oR you can download it there :
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...udio-Max.shtml

Muahaha, you have opened a thread sir, that will get you so much arguments its unreal ;)

But heres my opinion. Maya modeling as a base mesh, XSI for some more complicated approaches, and Mudbox for the best texturing you can get from any 3d application.

but all in all, I beleive Maya to be best, not due to the fact that others have said so, I used 3ds max from v 5, and recently made the jump to Maya due to the fact that Modeling is much easier, and there are better modeling tutorials out there, (quality over quantity ;)

symetry with subdiv. sucks alot in maya- and so it never was an option for me for modeling- its purely pain in the ass. The interface is horrible (win 3.1 with a ton of drop down menus) SO that makes at least me not such a maya lover.

Mudbox lacks alot features zBrush now has they need to improve alot in order to compete with zBrush on a large scale. Btw. recently there is a new competor called 3d Brush wich has some nice approaches and is alot cheaper as the other ones.

I also can suggest silo and modo for subdivision modeling they are far more advanced as most basic 3d packages regarding modeling.
At least silo will run after the trial as a free file format converter and education or learning version.

At least max and maya will merge imo. at some point in the future

3D Brush is mainly for texturing, not modeling although sculpting from primitive to final image is possible. I just wouldn't call it as refined as Mudbox, Silo, zBrush and the like.

Mudbox/zBrush would be similar products in regards to creation of models and the methods used to do so... and they're not too bad.

can u import c4d, lwo, 3ds, 3ds max ect. files into a 3d flash program?

at least I dont know any real 3d flash program,- perhaps something like swift 3d as standalone though it is extremely limited compared to real 3d packages.

most applications should import alias obj files, lightwave (lwo) is also often supported- but most certainly not c4d as it is a minority.
usually one can find out what file types a package supports by looking on the website.

As for converters it seems that milkshape supports almost any 3d format and can convert it into alot different ones. Same for silo wich is even free as a file converter. Blender also supports some formats but is a little bit buggy sometimes from my expierence with obj files and some others.