List of programs to help you get started making your own 3d animations

Tweet

I have put together a list of the most affordable and best 3d software that will let anyone create professional 3D movies,games,and effects even if you have never done any 3d work before. #1-Blender http://www.blender.org/ The program called Blender is a fully functional 3D modeling and animation software package. Best of all it is totally free!It is also just as powerful as any commercial package. The only down side is that it might take a while to learn but hey its free! #2 Poser http://www.e-frontier.com/ Poser is not free but it is affordable.If you can afford an XBOX360 than you can afford this program. It costs $249.99.It is great for doing human animation and pics. It comes with already made 3d human models and with a huge community were you can get hundreds more both free and commercial this is one program that no inspiring 3d artist should go with out! #3 Lightwave 3D http://www.newtek.com/ Ok this one is commercial but if you are a student in either a college or in grade school than you can buy the full version at an educational discount.It costs $195.00 if your a student and $795.00 if your not. It is really easy to use and quite powerful. It is used in alot of shows that are on tv right now such as BattlestarGalactica,24,Heroes,and many others. You can buy it with the student at http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ or http://www.studica.com/ Both of these sites require proof of enrollment from your school. You can either fax them a letter from your school saying you go there,fax them a report card,or send them a scanned photo of your student ID.You can also send them a scanned picture of both the letter and report card. The only downside to lightwave however is that it is hard to to character animation with but the next program makes this incredibly easy. #4 Project Messiah http://www.projectmessiah.com/ Messiah is a character animation program that is extremely easy to use. It costs $299. It is defiantly worth it though.Unlike other 3d software were in order to make it so you can animate a character you have to put in virtual bones to move it,Messiah does this step pretty much instantly! Messiah does have bones to but the difference is that in other programs when you put the bones in the the character you than have to select every single bone one at time and group them to what polygons in the model you want each separate bone to move. Messiah does this automatically. All you have to do is just point and click on the model were to but the bones and your ready to animate! #5 ZBRUSH http://www.pixologic.com ZBRUSH is a little more expensive than the others.It costs $359.95 for an educational license. Zbrush lets you take any 3d model and make it look incredibly realistic. You can paint extremely fine details to a model such as wrinkles on an old person,veins bulging from a muscle, Cracked skin, or just about any type of detail you can think of to make your model look very detailed and professional. The other big thing zbrush can do is allow you to paint textures directly onto the model itself. In other programs this is usually very hard to do but in zbrush it acts just like if you were painting a clay sculpture! Well that was my list of what I think are the best programs to start out in the 3d field with.