Which software is the best?

It looks like there are many softwares for the animation design. Which one is the best? Which one is the easiest? Who has the comparison list? Thanks.

For avatar animation, or for prim animations? Avatars usually are animated with Poser. From what I know.

What is the best depends on a number of factors - how experienced are you, what budget do you have etc.

If you are completely new to animation, then try QAvimator - it's a free package and designed only for use with SL, so you don't have to bother about a lot of things that you need to know about for more generic animation packages. There are also classes in world and tutorials, such as Torley's, to help you.

There are a number of other free packages, which I am not familiar with, so I'll leave it to others to consider the pros and cons of those.

Professional game animators often prefer Maya - but this is a very expensive package and it can take a year or two to become truly proficient in it. If you just want it for use in SL, then Maya is very much OTT.

Poser is somewhere in between - not so expensive as Maya, but it still has much more functionality than you need just for animating in SL, so it can still take a long time to learn and there is not so much help available in SL for Poser, as there is for QAvimator, but Poser does have many more features which make doing the animation easier and quicker - once you have learnt how. Poser is not supported on Vista yet (although it does run) and some graphics cards don't work so well with the interface.

You can get a trial version of Poser and there is a training version of Maya - so you can try them out before spending any money. These versions prohibit the export of any files, but they can help you familiarise with the UI and functons.

Hope this helps a bit - read the FAQs and stickys on this board.