i like Maya over Softimage Guyon... however Softimage is technically Maya's superior.
Also i do like the way you can manipulate scenes that is pretty cool, Maya will always been my No.1 love - Max is kinda fun now i know it pretty much inside out, still alot i wish it know about it and Max6 is alot of fun... some well needed changes finally.
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that aside Milkshape is simple for animating for DarkBASIC, all you do is create the bones - attach them to the individual groups - then just plot away your keyframes.
as long as you have a simply template for the keyframes its easy.
for beginners what i'd suggest is getting a piece of paper, then draw a series of small stick figures doing the animation you want to do in Milkshape, make 2 lines for the top of them and for the ground try to keep the size the same then.
then all you do is scan in your stick figures and use them as templates for your bone positions
after you have the main animation done you then move onto tweaking it with more lifelike things, like for a person you want thier main foot to always been on the ground so you edit that up ... and maybe rotate thier body a little to accentuate thier main step.
ya know standard things really ... which its best to get out of your chair perform the action and take note of how you do it - then sit back down and try to tweak the model like that.
Animation is hard for newbies no matter the program, if you can't make them good in one program the extra tools in another won't help you - you'll still be crap and producing pretty crap animations.
The only cure for that is practise and observation.
an artist should always be intregied by things around him, its good to just goto the park and someone watch how say a bird flys around, lands and acts.
the best animators in the worlds don't rely on motion capture or overly use of IK physics and such...
a good animation i'd suggest you'd checkout is - goto www.playstation.com and checkout the Final Fantasy X-2 news, there is a 40mb film which is the starting sequence of FFX2 apart from having a quality song the animation in it is very realistic ... and before people view it and say "thats obviously motion capture", watch it very carefully i've yet to see facial animation from motion capturing and the entire animation of the people is very realistic but at time you notice the keyframes where it hasn't flown from the previous ... the animator did possibly one of the finest jobs i've seen in any CG in a very log while.
you may wonder why would observing a dog run around a park, or looking at half naked chicks help my animation of my dragon? but take not to what is moving, how mucles are being used ... what happens when they're used - look at them less as people and animals and more as objects doing a task ... even little neuance is there to be translated.
This is how the best work around, and this is what i mean whenever i talk about an artist eye. It's that ability to sit there and notice something and imagine in your head planning out exactly how you can achieve that within your program of choice.
you can achieve some truely breath-taking results but just paying attention to your surroundings.
