You want to create an engaging 3D animation. What are the best tools to use?

It depends of what type of industry you target and what is your aim but : - Blender is a free robust tools if you want to start - If you want to get inside the industry, learning Maya is really good - Other good software : C4D is really used for motion design in ads, Houdini is good but really complicated and finally 3DS Max is still used in some studios but might not be as standard for pure animation.

I have only seen shops using Maya, Blender, or Max as their 'core' software. When secondary software (eg ZBRUSH) are used, they are integrated through one of the three softwares mentioned above. As for the rendering engine, that is industry specific. Rendering can include any software from GODOT to VRAY

Core software I generally use for 3d would be; Blender, C4D and Maya. -Blender would be the cheap yet powerful tool. -Autodesk Maya tends to be more precise than both C4D and Blender. -C4D is preferred for post production, due to it's easy integration with Adobe After Effects.

From a technical viewpoint and software, I would say there is three categories : - Blender, Maya, 3DS Max for base modeling - ZBrush or 3dCoat for sculpting - Rhino, SolidWorks, Autocad for industrial - Houdini for environment and procedural modeling Learning technical aspect of polygonal modeling might be difficult as it is more related to other topics (edge flow, overlaps, two sided mesh...) but lots of youtube, vimeo tutorials cover this discipline. For a beginner to focus on creating things with some 2d ref and maybe take some Art courses as it can help and you !

Maya is generally what I use for general use modeling. For more complex character creation or sculping, ZBrush is preferred because it allows high resolution editing of 3d models.

Photoshop has some really great 3d painting tools. You can easily export UV and Depth maps for 3d models in several software.

Substance Painter 3d is a great software for giving a realistic feel to a model and environment and separate materials and UV paint are also easy.

Being mindful of the accurate gestures and movements used for the characters and their objects, By using motion capture, physics simulations for a natural looking motion. And also incorporating secondary motion such as: cloth simulation, hair dynamics. To add more realism to the characters and objects.

Maya is the best for character rigging and animation, from my experience, it also has advanced skeleton for rigging which gets all the rigging done in no time.

Octane rendering tends to be the king of realistic rendering. But default rendering software for most 3d applications can be configured to get close to these settings. Octane offers real-time rendering capabilities, but requires a large amount of GPU power in order to run most efficiently.

After Effects is a standard for basic post-production editing. Giving you hundreds of tools and effects within a familiar keyframe-based animation system. Flame from Autodesk takes a little bit more knowledge and understanding of the end product and process. But Ultimately allows you to create much more realistic and fine tuned special effects and finishing solutions.

On a more advanced level the afforementioned should go without saying, as they are production related aspects of the process, and I think they are merely to serve the concept. Which is what I think is the most important to create an engaging 3D animation, tailor the animation to the purpose it's intended for, balance out it's creative, original and aesthetic values, follow the creative proces and establish a plan from this.