Safety Animation

[ahudson]

This is something our team has never attempted, but we would like to try it this year. Any ideas on software that is easy to learn or how we should get started?

[dubiousSwain]

Blender
www.blender.org

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by dubiousSwain

Blender
www.blender.org

this program is nowhere near "easy." Blender has a very steep learning curve, and while it is a great animation program, learning enough before the deadline may be tricky.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by MikLast

this program is nowhere near "easy." Blender has a very steep learning curve, and while it is a great animation program, learning enough before the deadline may be tricky.

That being said, this is true with just about any animation software, but Blender has the added benefit of being free.

If you dig deep enough, you might find some user friendly software, but it will be very limiting in options and the renders will not be anywhere near the quality of Blender, Maya, 3Ds, etc.

[protoserge]

Autodesk sponsors FIRST. As a student, you can get licenses for all of their software on http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/all

[ahudson]

Thanks for the replies. We will start with these and see how far we get.

[Jalerre]

I would recommend Autodesk 3DS. I think it's pretty good but then again it's the only animation software I've used and have nothing to compare it to. I made our safety animation my freshman year (along with one other freshman) using it and was able to do it with no training or experience just based on playing around with it and tutorials. I was able to make the environment and props in Inventor since I had CAD experience and use it solely for animation. It had a little learning curve but wasn't too hard to figure out.

[dubiousSwain]

Originally Posted by MikLast

this program is nowhere near "easy." Blender has a very steep learning curve, and while it is a great animation program, learning enough before the deadline may be tricky.

While I agree that blender has a steep learning curve, its the easiest Ive ever used. To OP: I would recommend spending a day watching youtube tutorials and doing what theyre doing.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by dubiousSwain

While I agree that blender has a steep learning curve, its the easiest Ive ever used. To OP: I would recommend spending a day watching youtube tutorials and doing what theyre doing.

maybe more than a day.

[YoshiCity]

I'm from 133, the team that won the Safety Animation this past year. We used 2d animation by drawing sprites with a simple drawing program and a drawing tablet then put it together with after effects. This was the first year that we had a group of animators, and the production of our safety animation was done mainly by a small number of dedicated people. Good luck next year in your animation.