They've got a deal on poser 7 for $50. I don't really need big time animation capabilities and don't have that much time to get deep into animation anyway.

What do you think of Poser, and is it pretty easy to learn? Is it good for animations other than figures?

I use makehuman and blender (both free and open source). They seem to be good alternatives to the spendier stuff, although the interfaces aren't quite as intuitive as the larger packages, they have alot of power.

I've got blender on my laptop, but it is not a very easy program to get up & running on.

$50 for a program to make two clips that I need, would way more than pay for itself if it's a pretty easy learning curve.

I'm not sure if Poser will actually generate the animation (I could be wrong, haven't looked at it for a while), you may still have to end up in blender (or other 3d package) to do the animation.

Skeletal rigging using MH and Blender:
YouTube - makehuman / blender rigging tutorial 1 (http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=zeLM7EZTcqY&feature=related)

Human rigging using MH and Blender:
YouTube - MakeHuman & Blender 3D pt 1 (http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=tc72cNLuoYo&feature=related)

I've done some reading & it seems like one of the main functions is motion animation. Are you saying that it can do the animation but then not render out an HD video?

I'm really looking for something that is intuitive and gets quick results for simple animations. My experience with blender was pretty frustrating, but maybe I'll give it another try??

I'm not sure what Poser does as far as animation and rendering. Last time I looked at it, I thought it was just for generating a model to be used in a animation/rendering package... It was a while ago, I could be wrong.

Just read this on a site & that was my experience with Blender. I'm sure it's a great program, but since I do everything on my projects, including original music, I want something fairly simple.

"Blender is powerful and can create games in addition to creating videos and graphics, but it just can’t beat Cheetah3D’s simplicity as even professionals in other 3-D rendering applications often have difficulty learning Blender."

I tried the free Cheetah trial & it was pretty nice, but still seemed like a lot of work compared to Poser with the included people clothes hair, some animals, walking, lip synch etc.

Guess I'll just have to try the trial version.

I've moved to Blender 2.5 and found the interface much improved. To make the transition easier for me, I switched the preferences to use the left mouse button to select and turntable rotation mode... at that point, it works much like other packages (especially now that 2.53 moved the add menu back under the spacebar). The rest is just watching tutorials (blenderunderground.com, etc.)... after those hop over to youtube to see stuff happening in action and you'll get the sense of it. The CC.net stuff specifically moves forward from a non-3d using standpoint and works up from there.

Any updates? I was just looking at Poser. I'm looking for an entry level program for animated shorts.