Is AniMate 2 still "up-to-date"?
mwasielewski1990
Posts: 341
Hey everybody,
I want to get into animation, I tried the default DS animation system and it's a bit clunky.
My question is - is AniMate2 still the "best" or "newest" tool to use in DAZ, or is there (or will there be) something else on the horizon?
I see it's heavily discounted now so I wanted to snatch it. Just wanna make sure it's a good buy.
Comments
Search for DartanBeck's posts on here and you get lots of examples of what it can do
Thanks for the answer, although I already (somewhat) know what it can do, I was just asking if there is something better that that. I don't mind paying more for something better - I have little to none experience in animation, hence I don't know the market for all the good stuff :)
Unfortunately, the "something better" in this case is using basically anything besides DS to animate. I'm an evangelist for Cascadeur, which can export animations to DS (although I believe that's now only available through a subscription plan rather than being part of the free tier). Blender and Houdini are both free to use and have incredibly powerful animation tools (although, again, the free Apprentice tier of Houdini can't export FBX). I haven't used Carrara, but that's incredibly affordable and is a much more fully-featured program than DS.
I do all my animation in blender. I use diffeo, animate with the simple IK rig and can easily bring the keyframes back into daz as a pose preset.
It depends on what you intend to animate.
Animate 2 was way ahead of its time but was not really realized by the user base at the time (which was to pose and render still frames rather than work on animations).
Thanks for all the answers people :) I know there are other tools, just wanted to make sure about DAZ.