blender 3D or animation master ?

[stefff285]

hi all

 

due to the fact i own do animated movies in 2d actually and too that i am under linux (ubuntu 14.04 xfce) i am in trouble about buying you your software and i have severals questions to ask

 

- only splines ?

- does it export in lwo format ? it would be great for demomaking process i take part of

- is it possible to export to other renderers ?

- is is so better than the 2006 version i try actually (bought in 2006) and why ?

 

blender i great too, that's why the annual version would be cool for me but i prefer asking you why this one, why animation master ?

 

thanx by advance

 

stéphane

[Rodney]

Hey stéphane,

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

I'll take a stab at answering.

(I've tried to use Blender on occassion. I'd really like to use it to augment A:M but it's just too painful. I'm sure that has a lot to do with 'first learned best remembered'. Blender is getting better though. Recommendation: since Blender is free use both A:M and Blender as needed.)

 

- only splines ?

 

Yes and no. It might as well be a yes though because with A:M you'll want to use splines.

Some people don't but I don't envy them.

 

- does it export in lwo format ?

 

Yes, .LWO, .OBJ, .3DS, .X and some other formats which I forget.

- is it possible to export to other renderers ?

 

Via the formats mentioned above yes. I'm not aware of other renderers that natively render A:M's file formats.

- is is so better than the 2006 version i try actually (bought in 2006) and why ?

 

Most definitely. Although the user interface is mostly the same.

 

I'm attaching a change log if you want to see the major changes that have occurred since v13.

There are other changes not recorded in the change log such as better integration of some plugins and external plugins aren't included at all. For instance most of the importers/exporters have all been updated since v12 because of a major change in A:M's file formatting to bring it more in line with XML. A lot of third party plugins released won't be in the change log either and the majority of those are free.

 

Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.

change log.txt

[Wildsided]

From personal experience I'd say Blender is a powerful and probably wonderful piece of software for those who are willing to dedicate time to learning how to use it. I personally found it very cumbersome as a beginner and it has an incredibly steep learning curve, there are lots of tutorials on the web for learning blender and you're definitely going to need to go through them. I'd go on record and say Blender is not a software package you can play around with and self learn.

 

It does have the advantage of being free though, so there's no reason not to download it and have it on your computer should you ever find the time to learn it.

 

A:M is in my opinion the easiest to learn 3D software available. I picked it up back in 2010 and from mostly just playing around with it I became pretty competent. The forums here are a great place for information and support. I've found the community to be very supportive of one another and criticism is only ever from a constructive stand point. I'll be honest when I first bought a license I wasn't expecting much for the price point, but I was more than happy to find a very capable bit of kit that has never ceased to surprise me as to what it can achieve.

 

Dan

[stefff285]

ok

 

thanx a lot gentlemen ^^

so i go search for an iso of my official hash2005 which is bad now (can't make a disk image after 3mo but perhaps it is protected after all ?)

and going to learn blender at first even if spline talk to me

 

thanx yet

[nemyax]

stefff285
Animation:Master has very powerful nonlinear animation tools in its choreography mode. Blender used to lag far behind in this department, but in the latest release it actually made a huge leap forward, and the coming version (2.75) builds on that further.
Blender's nonlinear animation editor is now roughly on a par with A:M's choreography feature-wise (but of course the implementations are totally different). So if lack of decent animation layering/mixing tools has been keeping you away from Blender, that's no longer the case.
A:M's neat pose system has no counterpart in Blender, but you can emulate it with the same NLA tools, and that would actually be more reliable, because poses don't mix too well with direct manipulation of curves.
Regarding interoperability, A:M really expects you to go all in and doesn't happily act as part of a foreign pipeline, whereas Blender imports and exports a load of formats and you only need to know a smattering of Python to implement support for more.
To summarise, I'd say go Blender and keep your A:M 2006 around for specialised uses.

[stefff285]

hello journeyman

 

ok i go blender soon ^^

kind regards

[Fuchur]

Sorry but i do not agree... if you are an newbee and want to learn 3d do not go with blender. it is not as easy to learn not near as intuitive as A:M and it likly will never be... it has many features but it still is a thrown together piece of software... A:M may not have all the bells blender has (it has all the once needed though) but the workflow is much better thought through and feels like out of one piece while different tools in blender feel like one person did one and the next did another and everybody did it the way they liked it... that feels like that because it really is that way.

 

for a beginner i find blender more than frustrating because of that. if you know what you are doing already it may be different and blender can be a good option... the problem is that many users never reach that level with blender because it just is not that consistent in its own...

 

see you

*fuchur*

[Rodney]

Keeping nine year old software rather than spend $79 to get the current release of A:M?

You were doing okay until that suggestion Nemyax.

 

It's amazing what people will do to make their lives harder.

 

When moving into Blender one question that might need to be answered is, "are you a programmer?"

If the answer to that question is 'yes' then a focus on blender might make more sense.

[stefff285]

hello all !

i just bought it for a year \o/ so thanx for cool answers ))

i have to make pixel art and after, right after i will make it sens

 

thanx a lot i think it's a better way for me, because of blender too rude for me and my taste to cartoon making

as i done on my website: http://labonneanime.fr

 

sorry for url if no place it right here

 

two other questions:

- is there a pdf help ?

- what about external renderers ? free as possible ^^

 

 

regards and see you soon

 

stéphane

[nemyax]

It's amazing what people will do to make their lives harder.

What do you mean? I paid my $79 last summer. Didn't make my life harder or easier.

 

- is there a pdf help ?

There's a set of tutorials and a UI reference: http://www.hash.com/manuals-24-en

[Rodney]

You are going to love A:M!

Welcome aboard.

 

- is there a pdf help ?

 

There are some pdf files you'll want to keep handy

The first is 'The Art of Animation:Master' that takes you through a series of tutorials.

The second is a technical reference for when you want to dive deeper into technical settings.

Both are located here: http://www.hash.com/training-13-en

 

I would recommend diving into some of the many videos that are available.

For instance there are videos that accompany 'The Art of Animation:Master' manual.

 

Those are very basic but will get you up to speed quickly. My recommendation would be to run through those quickly and if you get stuck ask question here in the forum.

This forum is the best way to get your questions answered and folks often make custom videos addressing your specific needs too.

 

There are a lot of additional videos demonstrating use of A:M.

Just point out the specific area of specific interest and away you go.

 

- what about external renderers ? free as possible ^^

 

I know very little about exporting to external renderers... although I have used Renderman etc. in tests with .OBJ exports.

A:M's renderer is more than adequate for most of my work.

 

A:M comes with Netrender which we can use to launch and render projects in the background.

I use that on larger projects.

 

I have other recommendations for you as a 2D guy but will save those for later so you can focus on getting up to speed with A:M.

There are a ton of free applications you can use with A:M but I can think of only one that I think you absolutely need. My number one suggestion would be BlackMagic Fusion which is an external node based compositor... $900 for studio version... standard program... free. I've found it to be a near perfect fit with A:M. But save that for a rainy day and concentrate on A:M.

[zandoriastudios]

I just watched your demo reel, and i think that you will be very happy with what you can do with Animation:Master! Welcome to the forum!

[stefff285]

hello new friend

 

yes i think i did the right choice

the fact is i have severals books on blender 3d i have to give now to persons interested by

i think the 79$ annual rent is ok for new version coming or else

so then i just read the fact to "make" radiosity on this software. cool render

and yes i hope to make my cartoon being 3d

time to go bed now ^^ 1.30am here in france

 

regards to all

[Rodney]

i have severals books on blender 3d i have to give now to persons interested by

 

Don't be too quick to give those away... you may want to use A:M with Blender later.

 

Nemyax even created a handy export program to get models out of Blender into A:M (into A:M's format that is).

 

Sleep well.

[stefff285]

hi rodney hi all

so then i woke up and go to prepare with other friends an exposition of vidéo, scupture and all

i give a look at taking a cofee and then ask you about messiah 3d. it is really necessary ? i mean i saw on hash website that am does radiosity ? could you please tell me more about it ?

and yes i think i done right buying it because what i do is animation and this is FOR animation

thanx a lot for help

 

stéphane

[nemyax]

messiah 3d. it is really necessary ?

Messiah's development has halted, and there are complaints from people who have have paid pmG and got nothing for their money. The company has turned into a hoax, and I don't think you're able to buy their software any more.

[stefff285]

ok thanx i go make renders with am

[nemyax]

 

i have severals books on blender 3d i have to give now to persons interested by

 

Don't be too quick to give those away... you may want to use A:M with Blender later.

Seconded. As a 2D animator, you may want to check out Blender's Grease Pencil toolset. It's an animated painted 2D overlay for the viewport; you can use it for annotations, in-view storyboarding and even full-blown 2D animation (with 3D effects if necessary). Example: vimeo.com/113610809

[stefff285]

hello @journeyman

 

yes i go still keep my blender books. i just tried by .lwo or .obj format to render in blender and i really prefer blender render.

to be true i go see to animate and render in animation studio and render in blender.

i saw some artefacts due to format change ? but i'm completly noob and i need first to learn anime studio

but just one question : how do you export to blender ? i saw a text on a website about making faces on anime studio from splines before importing in blender

 

thanx all for welcoming and advices

 

stéphane

[nemyax]

how do you export to blender ?

You don't. There's no support for animation interchange formats (FBX or Collada). There's some support for BVH, which handles bone motions, and you can export geometry separately. You'd have to rebuild your work in Blender piece by piece if you took that route. You could also export posed geometry (one file per frame), but you probably don't want to go on that adventure.

Do it all in A:M.

[stefff285]

hello journeyman

 

yes you're right please accept my apologies . i go learn about it soon.

this software is cool and powerfull. i go learn soon

 

regards

[stefff285]

i just discoverd the radiosity option ! great ! no doubt blender books are going to stay unread, i go learn soon and i'm happy of my choice

[Fuchur]

cool . yes radiosity is very powerful.

 

...and actually there is an animation exporter... you can not change it well afterwards but obj+mdd should be working for rendering in blender. at least the soulcage department uses that to bring their work to modo for rendering.

 

it will export the animation of the objects based on vertexes.

[stefff285]

hello patch worker

yes the render of blender is pretty cool. but the fact is AM without radiosity is strange in render . the fact is this kind of render is plastic for me and can be used in a weird proposal. so then i have to learn to make animation ^^ and radiosity after some years i think. and blender render also. so then i'm happy

[bcgreen24]

Blender is not a difficult package to use, and you don't need to 'be a programmer' to master it-- as Rodney said, it's a matter of which package you started with. I started with Blender and find it very intuitive and easy to use, particularly the latest incarnations of it. It's also just as appropriate a package for a beginner to start with as any other; there are plenty of books and tutorials out there to help get the beginner up and running quickly. That being said, there's no reason not to use any number of tools depending on the job at hand-- and since Blender is free, there's no reason not to have it in your '3D Toolbox'.

 

Bryan

[ypoissant]

hello patch worker

yes the render of blender is pretty cool. but the fact is AM without radiosity is strange in render . the fact is this kind of render is plastic for me and can be used in a weird proposal. so then i have to learn to make animation ^^ and radiosity after some years i think. and blender render also. so then i'm happy

Since radiosity seems to be essential for your project, before you invest a lot of time learning either animation or radiosity one after the other sequentially, I recommend you setup a very simple animation, say a moving cube inside a room, setup radiosity in this room and render a few seconds of animation. Just to get a feeling of the time required to render a frame of radiosity and the radiosity effect in an animated sequence.

 

In general radiosity for animation requires quite expensive settings, which translates into long render times because of the required indirect illumination consistency between frames. Radiosity is nice but there is a price to pay.

 

Maybe you will then opt for a non-radiosity render but with well thought out materials and lighting. This "plastic" look you mention is not intrinsic to A:M renderer. It is the result of poorly setup materials. Radiosity will add indirect illumination to your renders but it will not improve a poorly designed material. If your material are designed like plastic, then they will look like plastic without or with radiosity. With radiosity. it will look like plastic but with additional indirect illumination. Designing good material is an art in itself. And designing materials for rasiosity render is even more of an art. You might want to add this into your list of skills to learn.

[stefff285]

hello sirs !

yes i gone to blender some times, just the way to make a very simple animation and rotate it with an anchor point

thank you so much for answers, i go be back on a:m later because i begin soon drawing a cartoon, 20 pages ouch

it is new for me

animation master will be installed under wine on linux and then going to learn

 

thanx a lot

 

stéphane