Spend $ on Renderer, Animator or learn Blender?
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First thing, I'm an amateur. I sometimes need to do animations to previz various projects (woodworking, remodeling, etc). And I like them to look pretty. I have been playing with Fredo6's Animator, and it has all the features I need, but I'd really need to spend $100 to get the Twilight Pro to get descent rendering. I have played with another animation package (last year) that uses Twilight Hobby to render, but I think the plug was about $50-60. I prefer the features of Fredo6's plug, though. Probably the most full-featured route I could go would be to learn Blender and get outrageous animation capabilities (and a lot more) but it is so insanely ALIEN to me. I've not had much success dabbling in it before. What would you do?
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If you have time. Blender. It will give you a future. If you love Sketchup and don't want to expand from what are it's know limitations, Animator.
As an architect, I would not go towards blender, It's incredibly powerful and interesting though it's going into the opposite direction of what I need.
There are other renderers besides Twilight, that work with Animator. I use Thea.
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You could also do your modeling and texturing in SketchUp, then using the SketchUp to Blender exporter (BlendUp - $35 the last time I looked) get the model (with texture intact) to Blender and simply do the animation there.
I must admit, Blender is getting exciting with the advent of "eevee".
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If you're willing to work at it and go through the beginner tutorials to get a good grasp of the interface, Blender will give you a limitless platform. It was because of animation limitations in SU that I ventured into learning Blender. Nowadays, particles and nodes are my big reasons to stay. What I like about Blender is that after learning the fundamentals, I find it fairly easy to use only for what I need it for.
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I use MSPhysics with Twilight Hobby or indigo RT
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