DAZ Studio?

I saw that this is a free download, and can read Poser files. Has anyone used this for making animations? How is it, considering it's price? Better/worse than Qavimator?

Daz Studio is free, as in really free, the company makes their money in selling
content.

I have not done animations myself so I wont be the best source on that topic
however I have read they they did make some effort to create or improve
their BVH file export. If you have Poser I believe that most of the expert animation makers in SL use it. But even if you do not end up using DAZ for
your anims it is a very good 3d studio that also has a excellent and fast renderer. So there are many things you can use if for in conjunction with SL.

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i have to admit imma little impatient when it comes to
delving into figuring out, and learning programs

i found Daz to be convoluted and inefficient to learn,
operate and use, whereas QAvimator is easier.

so for my purposes i have stayed with QAvimator ...
but that is not to say that QAvimator does not have its limitations,
or that it is better than Daz ...

it really depends on the purpose and needs of the individual,
and whether a program fulfills enuf of the objectives of the user.

admittedly, Daz does have more features than QAvimator

and one could also say that it would be unfair to compare them to each other.


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I haven't done a lot of animations, but I found Avimator/Qavimator too much effort for anything but simple sits and poses, as you have to set each joint position individually. However, Qavimator at least lets you see where keyframes are set, which is a big plus.

I used Daz Studio for a walk animation and after a lot of frustration managed to get it to work for me. It has inverse kinematics, which means you pull the hands and feet around, and the rest of the body moves appropriately (more or less).

DAZ has a feature called Puppeteer that can be used to create walks and other repeating animations. You set up a few poses and circle your mouse around to cycle through the transitions between them. It's difficult to get a precise animation this way, but if you are trying to do a free-form dance it would work well.

Bottom line is that creating animations of any complexity is incredibly finicky, time-consuming work (at least with these amateur tools) and I have enormous respect for people who can make them look good.

I have used Poser 5 and Daz|Studio and now I mostly use Daz. It took a while to learn. It is a very different approach, more intuitive and less tedious entry of numbers. But it is difficult to do precise work. On my latest project I did the best I could in Daz and then took the bvh from Daz into Poser for fine tuning the timing and to get a better "seam" on the loop. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZRYJC9RV8 for a nice demo on DAZ's puppeteer feature.