   Free 3D Animation Software
  Hey everyone I'm new here. I'm pretty young to be trying to design a game but me and my twin brother are going to try. I have blender and it's fine but I'm not sure if I'm using the right stuff. Of course Blender has a game engine but are there any other free 3D Animation Programs that would be better for the job? I'm basically asking which one is the best for designing games. Thank you!   
  Wait, what are you asking for? Your thread title says 3d Animation software, your thread mentions Blender's game engine, and you also mentioning something about software for designing games.Blender is first and foremost a 3d modeling and animation package. As far as cost for performance, Blender is about as good as you can get!Blender also happens to have a built in game engine. I'm not very familiar with it, but from my understanding there are some reasonably cool things you can do with it. There are a wide variety of game engines out there, free and commercial. Which one(s) are best suited for you depends on what kinds of games you want to make, how familiar you are with programming, how much programming you actually want to do, etc.As far as design is concerned, well, design is the process of making decisions of how the game will function. You don't really need software to do this, but I've found that Word for writing down ideas, Excel for tabulating numbers, and Visio for creating flowcharts is pretty useful [wink]   ;  If you are animating game characters you may want to start with 3D motion captured data (BVH files).  This will cut down on the time required to hand animate the models yourself.   ;  Well Zerowolf from what you say I guess I should just stick with blender. I was basically just asking if there is anything else out there that's better. I will do as much scripting as I need and since blender takes Python, I got a Python For Dummies book. I am making a MMORPG. Thanks!   ;  Hi, emm, not to put a damper on your ideas, and crush your spirts, but you are going to stuggle to create an mmorpg, this seems to be everyone's first project when they start programming.Sure, you'll learn loads, but the road ahead of you might end in a steep cliff followed by a long drop.Can i make a suggestion? I suggest you make a RPG or FPS first. Then deal with networking, which is a whole new kettle of fish.Obviously i wish you luck but i feel you might end up getting frustrated, get fed up and throw your computer(s) out the window.Take my advice and avoid MMORPG's when you start out. After your first completed project you see just how hard it is going to be.If you and your brother have your heart set on a MMORPG, can i suggest looking at the game creators website (google it). I attually send loads of new people here as it is a place where there are many different game creatation tools, ranging from begginner basic to c++ high level managed code (Dark GDK), there is also a new MMorpg game creation tool. This website allows you to quickly experiment and get a hang of computer/programming logic.Hope, either way that you make some progress and will enjoy programming.PureBlackSin   ;  If you really are set on creating a MMORPG, i recommend you take a look a realm crafter. I've barely used it myself, but it's an MMO creation toolkit. Probably the easiest way to make a MMO if that is your true goal.If on the other hand, you like complete control of how your games work out, get some programming practice in. I recommend python. Sure you won't be making a MMO anytime soon, but even the small games can be fun. My first game was written in python - a multiplayer text based dungeon-crawler game. Only took me a week or so, and I learnt alot by the end of it.