There are many software for animation that are at the moment available to use by learning animators who are new in this industry. When starting in 3d animation software free download, you will want the best 2d animation software free download. These questions will be answered after reading this article. You’ll search for answers to questions like “what is the best 3d animation software?” or “what’s the best software for 3d animation?”, among others about 3d animation software free download.
Best 3d animation software is used by the creative people to express their feelings, emotions, ideas and so on with the help of graphics. But choosing the right 3d animation software is very challenging for beginners. That’s why I created this post about best 3d animation software for beginners.
Akeystu
- SoftwareAkeystu
- ApplicationKeyframe Animation
- OSWindows
- Price$179/year
- Formatsakt, fbx, obj, dae, bvh
Akeytsu is by no means a new piece of software, having been around for several years already. It has steadily made progress, however, and has a clean, uncluttered UI that gives you the basics to get going in the world of animation.
Akeytsu also isn’t the most complex of animation software out there, but it’s fairly priced (starting from $14.99 a month) and has the option of a 30-day free trial, giving you the opportunity to get to grips with it before you purchase. It gets better if you’re a student, because it’s free for a year in that case.
A big part of Akeytsu’s appeal is the UI and simplicity of use. Key to this is the software’s “spinner” which is a floating circular widget that covers transformation for your model. Auto-Rig allows you to create a bipedal character in just a few minutes too, asking of you only parameters, hot point and joints before applying skeleton, weights and controls automatically. Being easy and intuitive is a key characteristic of this software, a theme that continues across its many features. Having supposedly been designed by animators for animators, it shouldn’t take long for any animation enthusiasts to feel at home here.
Blender
There are many free 3D animation software out there, but it’s hard to look past Blender as the best. This open source 3D animation software can be used for every stage of the 3D pipeline, from modeling, rigging, animation, and simulation to rendering, compositing, motion tracking and video editing. It also supports 2D animation.
Blender can be used for a wide range of applications, including advertisements, animated feature films, TV series, video games, visual effects, architecture and art.
As a 3D animation movie software it offers a number of high-quality tools, such as envelope, skeleton and automatic skilling, B-spline interpolated bones, custom bone shapes for fast inputs, unwrapping, texturing, fluid and smoke simulation, and sound synchronization.
Blender also offers excellent rigging tools that you can use to design a skeleton and then define and location and mobility of limbs and their relationship to one another when creating a framework for your 3D character. You can even define the influence each of the bones has on the limbs in this vicinity. You can do this manually or automatically with the help of commercial plugins.
Overall, it’s a great film 3D animation software tool, and great for developing moving 3D models for video games and other uses.
This software is also a good choice for directly drawing in 2D and 3D, with excellent workflow freedom. You can combine 2D and 3D right in the viewpoint, while the software has full animation support with Onion Skinning and layers and colors for stroke and fill.
Blender also supports input from motion capturing software, and you can even use facial motion capture using markers painted onto actors’ faces. It offers excellent clothing simulation that can be manipulated by the armature for added realism. You can also combine live-action footage with animation seamlessly with this software.
With its flexible python-controlled interface, you can easily customize the interface layout and colors and create your own tools and addons. Blender may be a free 3D animation software, but it’s still one of the very best around and is a viable alternative to top paid software like Maya.
After Effects
After Effects is a motion graphics and digital visual effects application developed by Adobe. This tool helps you to easily remove elements in the film.
Features:
- This tool provides more than 100 options for selecting effects.
- You can preview your playback using GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
- It allows you to animate titles.
- You can combine images and videos to create animation.
- This tool provides more than 100 options for selecting effects.
- You can remove an object from a video clip.
3ds Max
- Software3ds Max
- ApplicationMotion Capture, Keyframe Animation
- OSWindows
- Price$1,700/year
- Formatsstl, 3ds, ai, abc, ase, asm, catproduct, catpart, dem, dwg, dxf, dwf, flt, iges, ipt, jt, nx, obj, prj, prt, rvt, sat, skp, sldprt, sldasm, stp, vrml, w3d xml
3ds Max is one of the major commercial 3D animation software suites on the market. Its comprehensive feature set makes it a popular choice for game development, visual effects production, and architectural visualization.
This 3D animation software features particle and light simulation, a cloth-simulation engine, and even brings its scripting language to the table (MAXScript). In terms of 3D modeling, it is capable of creating parametric and organic objects with polygon, subdivision surface, and spline-based modeling features. Among the other techniques is the ability to create models from point cloud data.
The 3D animation capabilities of 3ds Max are comprehensive. It features two character animation tools. “character studio” that is designed to work best for bipedal characters. “CAT” can rig and animate non-humanoid characters. This 3D animation software also comes with a tool that allows setting up and controlling scenes with large crowds of people, dubbed “Populate.”
Take full control over your 3D animation with “Motion Mixer,” a tool that takes its cue from audio editing. It displays separate tracks for motion data from each body part that can be edited for speed, transitioned, looped, and more. Among the other tools in this 3D animation software are motion paths that let you modify animations directly in the trajectory as splines, giving you instant feedback in the viewport.
Recently, Autodesk has added two new features to 3ds Max – baking to texture and a weighted normals modifier. The former approximate surface effects and allows for objects to be rendered in real-time without the need to recalculate other elements such as the lighting and shadows. As for the latter, that improves shading on objects.
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk’s Maya is widely regarded as the best 3D animation software, and with good reason. This software is widely used throughout Hollywood and has been used in blockbuster films such as Harry Potter and Transformers, TV series like Game of Thrones and South Park, and video games such as God of War and Halo, which gives you an idea of the exceptionally high quality this software offers.
This software does everything, allowing you to create complex characters, realistic effects and vast worlds. You can procedurally create dazzling effects using the Bitfrost feature, which allows you to build custom graphs or use ready-made ones for effects like explosions and weather.
For creating characters and scenery, the Arnold feature is an advanced renderer that allows you to switch seamlessly between CPU and GPU. There’s also an easy-to-use auto-rig tool that can process quadrupeds and winged models.
Other useful features of this 3D animation and movie making software include geodesic vortex binding for quickly producing production-ready characters, a native motion library plugin, and a range of automation tools for animation along curves and paths. It’s also great at modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering, with a feature set including particles, hair and fluid simulations.
Like other professional 3D animation software, Maya comes with a sophisticated CG compositing program, MatchMover. This allows you to combine 3D rendered elements and motion data from film sequences recorded on set by tracking the camera’s movement.
With a highly customizable, user-friendly interface, Maya isn’t reserved for professional animators, although this extensive software does take some time to master. As you can probably imagine, Maya doesn’t come cheap, with a one-year subscription costing $2,479. However, as the best 3D animation software on the market, it’s well worth the price. There’s also a 30-day free trial version available.
Conclusion:
Opting for the best 3d animation software free download may not be the best idea if you consider the fact that it is free. Overtime, you can expect to discover some loopholes that is why you should hire the right experts that will guide you on how to work on these programs.