Blender

[RonHiler]

Who uses Blender? Shane?

I'm at a point where I'm about to give up on TrueSpace as an animation tool. I can model and rig a character, give it poses and snap keyframes, it all works, as long as I stay in trueSpace. But the minute I try to export those animations over to a Collada file, all hell breaks loose.

Anyone have any animation experience with Blender? And especially with exporting to Collada?

[RonHiler]

Never mind, I found the answer. Blender won't natively support animations through Collada, although there is apparently a way to get them in there through a converter tool.

I've gone ahead and ordered Maya. I hate to give up on trueSpace, since I know it relatively well and learning a whole new 3D package is going to make me non-productive for a while. But if I can't get my files into my engine, it's useless to me, no matter how well I know it :)

[Shane Christopher]

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner Ron. I know a bit about animating in Blender and I can export to .fbx or .x files fine. I have no experience with Collada though.

I'm sure someone in the community has a custom exporter for it, that's the great thing about blender. But if it is easier to use Maya then just go with that. You've forked over the cash now anyway :)

[RonHiler]

Heh, yeah. There is a tool for Blender to convert to Collada that will bring animations across. The deciding factor though was that learning curve. As it is, I'm going to lose time while I learn a new modelling app, and in order to keep that to a minimum, I had to go with the tool that was closer to what I already know.

Autodesk is cool and all, they have good software and all, but jeez they are expensive. Ah well, I'm looking forward to learning Maya. From all I've heard, it really is a good platform for game modelling. Perhaps it'll make even my relatively weak modelling skills look decent (asking a lot from a chunk of code, I know :) ).

[Shane Christopher]

I'm a complete blenderhead, tried modelling in 3DS and I just can't see why anyone would use it instead. Never tried Maya though.

Blender does have a long steep learning curve. Took me the best part of 2 years to become really comfortable with most of its functions.

[RonHiler]

I'm a complete blenderhead, tried modelling in 3DS and I just can't see why anyone would use it instead. Never tried Maya though.

Blender does have a long steep learning curve. Took me the best part of 2 years to become really comfortable with most of its functions.

Heh, you'd probably not like it :) From what I understand, it is less friendly on the modelling end than 3DSMax, but much better on the rigging/animation end (not that I've tried that part yet, but that's what I've been told).

It's all about what you are used to, I think. I'm used to tS, and am having quite a rough time adapting to Maya. Which is exactly what I expected. I can see bits and pieces where the power of a really well designed tool are peaking through, but I still haven't grasped the overall workflow yet, and it may be a couple of rough weeks until I do. For sure right now I'm WAY more efficient in tS, simply because I know it better. But that'll change over time. I'm already getting better. You should have seen me struggling the first day I installed it :)