The Best Free 3D Animation Programs

A technician in 3D animation not only needs to master the animation program, but also understand the composition of shots, the rendering tools, and, most importantly, know how to tell the story written in the script. That's why it's best to have programs that let us do all of this easily and without too much fuss, powerful enough to satisfy every need. So here's a list of the best free 3D animation programs available right now.

Boats Animator

We'll start with Boats Animator, a free and open-source 3D stop-motion animation program. One advantage of working with this environment is its simplified interface, which makes modeling easier for novice users. The environment is still in development, and the programmers are teasing additional features in upcoming versions.

Some features of Boats Animator:

• Onion skin option: Shows the previous image as a transparency over the current image.
• The core of the program uses web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and WebRTC.

Blender

Without a doubt the most well-known and beloved on the whole list. Blender is already a registered trademark and the favorite of many professionals. It lets you create animation films, visual effects, interactive programs, video games, and architectural visualizations, all in a free and open-source environment.

Some of Blender's main features:

• 3D modeling
• UV mapping
• Texturing
• Bitmap image editing
• Simulation: skeletons (or rigging), fluids, smoke, and particles
• Skinning
• Rendering
• Video editing and compositing
• Facial motion capture

Clara.io

Clara.io is a 3D animation service that works from your web browser. Being an online platform, it works entirely in the cloud, allowing you to do collaborative animations, assigning specific roles to each user from its options. The platform has all the 3D modeling tools, but it specializes in VX for audiovisual projects.

Daz3D

Daz3D is a platform for 3D animation, entirely designed for users who want to take their first steps in 3D modeling. As a beginner, you have two options to start modeling. The first option is to buy a template and modify it to your liking. The second is to model from scratch. The platform has a large number of basic tools for doing animations and camera positions of the element.

SmartBody

We'll finish with SmartBody, a 3D animation program developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Keyframe animation and motion capture make character creation easy. You'll see all animations in real time in your workspace. With the utility's powerful services, your characters can pick up, touch, or place objects in the environment. You can also make them talk thanks to its lip-sync technology. Also noteworthy is its "auto-rigging" feature, which lets you change the character's physique at any time.

With these free 3D animation programs, you'll have several options for modeling depending on your knowledge and needs, and always with all the features to do it professionally.