I'm a noob.

[Doofus]

I've been mapping for a few years now, but I've never really released anything worthy of praise. I make maps mostly for fun, and to entertain myself and friends. I recently decided for various reasons that mapping just isn't for me. More of a hobby then something I could look to as a career. I then got to thinking what else I could do, in terms of mod-work (specifically Half-Life 2). I can't draw worth crap, so no 2D art. I can't map. I haven't done anything relating to music ever. I've never tried modelling or animating. I do know some C++, Java, and VB. Although I realize that C++ is pretty much the most useful of the three. I've thought about going into coding, however I don't know if it's for me, way too much math involved, and I hate math (although I'm fairly good at it).

So here I sit. Thinking I want to get into modelling or animating. I've kinda decided in my mind that I'd like to try out animating, but I have no clue where to start. I've come here to seek your professional advice on how I can get cracking at animating to see if it's "my thing."

I probably need to know what applications I'll be needing (XSI is used for HL2 animating, correct?) and if there are any good sites that would be a good resource to me in my learning.

Let me know if this is posted in the wrong place, modelling seemed like the closest thing to me. :-?

[OL]

not sure if there are any animators here, but if you want to exclusively animate youll have to be able to rig too... youll have to find other peoples models to work with.

you can use XSI or max or whatever, i have no idea what the best app is

[jayrabbit]

http://www.3dbuzz.com/ is a good source for 3d design. Do you want to make high or low polygon models?

[Doofus]

I'm not looking to make models, I'm looking to animate them. I'll have access to several models from a friend of mine who knows how to model.

Needless to say, it's the Pokemod. I've heard (and logic would assume) that mechanical animations are much simpler than natural/lifelike animations, but I just thought I'd show you what my goal was.

[OL]

grandeur

[Doofus]

So... No ideas?

I just got The Softimage Mod Tool installed, with the Half-Life 2 plugin, so I guess I should just be looking around for Softimage tutorials, right?

[jayrabbit]

Softimage XSI is quite good for animations. Here's a very cool collection of tutorials: http://www.edharriss.com/tutorials/tutorials_animate_xsi.html

[Doofus]

Thanks for the link! I will see what I can do with them.

[marque_pierre]

If you install 3ds Max, you get a truckload of tutorials to go with it. Skipping straight ahead to the animating and rigging ones is definitely possible, and they'll take you from there...