The world is going digital and graphical and 3D animation has a huge role to play in this digital generation. Whether you are preparing a simple tutorial for YouTube or you are into complex game development, a touch of animation can surely work wonders. You will find number of software to aid you in this task. To make it easier for you, we have sorted out a handful of sleek tools that can help you to set the right tone for your creations.

We have listed ten user-friendly yet technologically advanced, standard software that serve you with useful features for your animation character development.

1. Aurora 3D Animation Maker

This is one of the most comprehensible animating tools which enable users to create stunning animations. You can transform plain texts or pictures into astonishing creations. It has an easy to use interface which allows you to control several aspects of your animation like length, speed of playback, etc.

It provides you with more than 60 professional project templates and over 80 object style, and these are few of the features to talk about which are available in this animation character maker. Its trial version can be downloaded for free which means that as an animator you can check it out thoroughly.

2. Wideo

For all those marketers and entrepreneurs who are looking for expansion through some purposeful marketing, Wideo serves as a suitable answer. This platform is fit for creating basic, useful animations. It comes with built-in templates which can be customized to make short, meaningful videos. Starting from kinetic text to animated objects, Wideo offers numerable features to create unique animated videos.

3. Blender

Here comes a free and open source 3D creation suite that offers extensible features to its users. With a robust support for the entirety of 3D pipeline, it presents numerous opportunities to animators both amateurs and experts alike. Whether it is modeling, rigging, rendering, composting or game creation, Blender extends seamless help to its users at every phase of 3D animation through its built-in engines like Cycles and through its community as well. Blender has open projects, trainings and tutorials which can be used by amateurs to become a pro of this software.

4. Go! Animate

This is another online platform which stands to serve customized video animations for businesses, schools, and individuals. It contains tools which can be used to make presentations, storyboards and scripts more interactive. It has a huge music track library, over 50 template cartoon characters, and more than 200 props to choose from. You can even customize the voice of your characters with your own recording and automatic lip-sync.

5. Autodesk Maya

If you are an animator who is eager to hit it big in the animation industry, then Autodesk Maya is your pathfinder. With support for multiple platforms including macOS, this state-of-the-art tool can be used for creation of interactive 3D applications. This creative toolset is filled with powerful features for modelers, animators and VFX artists. However, one requires patience and practice to master this software.

6. Autodesk 3ds Max

Based upon polygon modeling, 3ds Max is one of the best animation software out there. You can create images like cubes, cones, teapots, pyramids, etc. that serve as bases for models. It enables animators to do easy yet powerful modeling and high-end rendering.

Suitable for big projects, it also works well when you strive to create sleek video games or movies. You can enhance its capabilities by downloading plugins as it has flexible plugin architecture.

7. Houdini

Developed by Side Effects Software, Houdini is exclusively meant for digital artists who strive to achieve realistic results with tighter deadlines. Built with procedural and node-based interface, Houdini comes as a savior to the animators who need to handle workload and at the same time maintain the creative process.

It is packed with features for modeling, texturing, rigging and animation of 3D models. It is used for high-quality graphics pipeline. This software has been used in popular animation productions which include Disney’s feature films Zootopia and Frozen.

8. Autodesk Mudbox

Mudbox is a software that stands out for any 3D animation studio or animator because of its exclusive use in digital painting and sculpting. Although Mudbox can be used as a design tool, its primary uses consist of normal and displacement map creation, texturing and high-resolution digital sculpting. It provides users with 3D environment and enables them to create movable cameras.

9. Anime Studio

Anime Studio is counted among the ultra-modern animation tools because of its rich features. One of the best things about this software is that artwork created in Anime Studio is independent of resolution. It also comes with a Physics engine for simulating reality. Apart from these features, it comes with lots of pre-animated content so that users can create and publish their animated movies with ease.

10. Cinema 4D Studio

This animation software has gained popularity because of its interactive interface and spontaneity. Especially designed for motion graphics, it comes with some classic features like dynamics, MoGraph (meant for procedural modeling), PyroCluster (for smoke and fire effects), Thinking Particles (based on nodes) and many more that makes it fun and interesting to work with.

Starting from marketing to entertainment, the purposes fulfilled by animation are endless. While the tools listed above can be really helpful for experts, people looking for advanced animation can tie up with a renowned animation company which can help them to achieve realistic, fruitful results.