We are discussing 3D Animation Programs. In this article you will find a list of the most used ones. Autodesk Maya, Blender, 3DsMax, Unreal, Houdini, Cinema 4D, etc, We leave you our ranking of the main programs to make 3d animation along with a summary and a link in case you want to download it.
- In any case, if you know of any other program that you consider essential to work in the animation industry , don’t forget to leave us a comment with your suggestions below.
Table of Contents
1. Autodesk Maya
- I must admit that Maya is my unfinished business. Every time I have had to use it it has been a real chaos. However, if we talk about producing 3d animation, this program wins by a landslide. In addition to being one of the most complete programs, it includes very specialized and really powerful tools for modeling, rigging and especially for 3d character animation.
- It has MEL, its own programming language, and Arnold Render , one of the most powerful and intuitive rendering engines on the market.
- It is the most exponential in the industry and has a full version, free for students, and a limited package of animation and modeling tools known as Maya Lite . I leave you 2 of his latest Show reels for Film, TV and advertising.
2. Autodesk 3ds Max (Before 3D Studio Max)
- Autodesk 3ds Max is the generalist program par excellence, a Swiss army knife that works for almost everything. It was first released in 1990 for DOS .
- However, his character 3D animation tools are still not the best. It is used for all fields, archviz, video games, motion graphics, 3dfx and of course 3d animation.
- Today 3ds Max is perhaps the most widely used software thanks to the multitude of plugins that exist. Later I will prepare an in-depth article on the best plugins for 3ds Max . Some of them are the VRay and Arnold rendering engines, the Thinking particles simulator , Itoo Forest, Anima XYZ, etc.
3. Blender
- Blender is a free and open source 3D animation and creation program . It is one of the few free animation programs that allows the entire 3D pipeline: modeling, rigging, simulation, rendering (Cycles Render Engine), lighting and shading, motion tracking, and of course animation. It has recently implemented the new Grease Pencil tools , an engine for creating 2d animation and storyboarding within the 3D space itself.
- It even allows you to do all post-production in the program itself with a multitude of video editing, composition and VFX tools .
4. Houdini
- Houdini is one of the most widely used VFX programs , mainly for 3DFX animation and video game development . This tool will help you to generate and animate 3d geometries through nodes, programming and procedural systems.
- Something very interesting about Houdini is VEX, its own programming language to create scripts and tools that allow you to carry out complex simulations, crowd animation (Crowds), auto-rigging systems and everything you can imagine.
- This software also includes Houdini Apprentice, a free version for beginners . In this link you will find more information about this wonder.
5. Cinema 4D
- Cinema 4D is one of the easiest and most intuitive programs to learn. It is also extremely powerful due to the number of tools it offers. Although it is a very complete package if you want to obtain good results without complications, Cinema 4D is a widely used software for creating 3d motion graphics .
- For both beginners and professionals, it is the perfect application for creating 3D content, it has a range of software packages at really affordable prices, to satisfy the needs of any artist.
- An intuitive operation, an organized interface, countless 3D Tutorials in Spanish and a global community play an important role in this program.
