May be the status quo but don't fool yourself, animators don't tend to need much other than a good rig and toolset around and decent performance, I don't think it is a defining factor and here at Realise we have tested it in production yet again.
With our latest project we animated using Maya for a number of good reasons at the time (service provider using maya, rigger available, animators available, tracking guys needing licenses) and I will regret all my life. The amount of paint inflicted on us because of Maya instability with muscles (major bugs there), or an extremely painful manipulation tools to create corrective shapes and poses, or substandard toolset for animators (yes, I am talking ATOM here) made yet another scar on my skin. To be honest, before animation we were 3 weeks *ahead* of schedule, when we finessed animation we ate that advantage so you tell me if it is the least problematic animation tool and I have a nervous laugh every single time. The good news is that I saw it coming and prepared myself for it so the situation was correctly managed (we extended everybody 1 more week too which btw means $$$) and we got out of it without affecting the quality of the project. Sorry to be negative here, Maya may be the standard and as such unavoidable, but like someone else on the list said, it is like making love to a cheese grater. jb On 31 Mar 2014, at 22:47, Raffaele Fragapane <[email protected]> wrote: > Currently Maya is the one that involves the least problems with animators, > and it has OK rigging facilities and is expansible enough to cover what gaps > are left.
