Actually, Houdini’s Autorig might be exactly what you’re looking for (assuming you’re rigging a biped). There’s no bones or anything you need to worry about, just positioning the controls and then painting the weights on the skin. Takes a lot of the work out of rigging.
Sidefx.com has a free personal learning edition too. (It’s called Houdini Apprentice.)
XSI Foundation is a great package and the best character animation package around. And I tried pretty much every one.
However, animating a character is an art. And it is NOT easy or simple.
BUT if you wish to ‘rig’ a character/beastie to pose it, and maybe wiggle it’s tail or some simple animation like that. Then you can do that within minutes in XSI if it is a biped or quadped.
XSI has ready made ‘guides’. A Guide is a structure which you can pose into your mesh. Once done you can convert that into a fully functioning rig with the push of a button.
Then with another push of a button you can envelope your selected character with that rig.
After that the mesh is controled by the rig. You can grab handles and lift a foot while the leg follows correctly or select the hip controller and laugh your a** off while you make your character dance the hulla hopp…
With XSI foundation you would also get a really cool render engine. Cinema quality. Maya and Max ues that as well.
In any case… be forewarned… there is no simple button within XSI. It will take a bit time to get used to things. But a simple geometry import and riging it so you can pose the thingy. That is REALLY easy.
Creating materials with the render tree, and then creating sophisticated animations and then tuning that is not easy. But there is no other program which supports you better than XSI in performing that animation task.
If you can wait a while and you are not under pressure. I would wait and see what the Luxology guy’s are up to. Brad Peebler is usually a very verbal character in the scene and lately they have been awkwardly silent regarding Modo compared to previous activities. Due to the fact that I saw animation with Modo life on screen in late 2005 I am sure that they will have something in a ‘resonably’ short period of time. Looking at the inovative modeler and renderer I am sure that it would be something to consider. However, those are only speculations.
If you need something now go for XSI.
Cheers
Lemo
PS:Once you enter the realms of animation the whole game becomes expensive as you need more and more tools to be efficient. And you will have to calculate in a steep learning curve as the game changes from still pictures to animations. Lighting starts to flicker all of a sudden, textures start to shift, geometry deforms oddly, materials behave badly, and your dead lines switch from goose bumps to crushing panic attacks… Which means you invest a multiple than the license cost in tutorials and third party advice. Don;t consider animation a hobby unless you try to switch from your frequent domina visits to something more painfull.
PPS:Houdini… yes… nice… but once you import your mesh you cannot export it again to ZBrush or another format with the free aprentice edition. It’s one way. Still… might be interesting to explore if you can spend the time and you can stay in the houdini environment which they give to you to explore.
Thanks Lemo for that long info. 
I think yes, XSI will be the best solution for me and my comics if zbrush 2.5 is sheduled for launch in christmas of 2007. Well we all hope thats not the case.
I am liking the concept of “Guides” - its sounding to me the way zbrush sounded to me for 3d mdoleing the first time round. later I realized I can even create illustrations.
For my first comic issue I am using zphere resposing method,but then you know how tiring, time consuming and imperfect that method is.
After the launch of first issue , i will dig up some time for learning XSI and then buy it ,if it works well for me.
Btw I dont need to even export any textures- i just wanna export my model , repose it and then reimport it in zbrush.
lemo- the reimported model will have any uv probs with texture? ( of the original zbrush model)
I’ll make a small tut about that. Zbrush to XSI and back to Zbrush. So you can see how easy or complicated that is. The UV’s are staying intact. Nothing changes. However, XSI has a great modeling app build in as well. But I don’t want to complicate things. As mentioned, I’ll make a very simply recording of a crapy XSI mesh dropped into XSI and then ‘rigged’ there and posed, saved and put back into ZBrush. Just as proof of concept.
Lemo
PS: Also keep in mind that the ‘guide’ rigs are ‘relatively’ simple. BUT you can learn how to create your own rigs as well. But honestly… without a lot of time and engineering aspirations I’d try to stay away as long as possible from that. For me… the guides (which have quite some quality (foot roll etc)) are doing a great job. Even if ZBrush 2.5 comes out, it won’t let you animate your ‘thing…’.
How good is that quick enveloping in XSI? Does it produce muscle bulges?
It’s fairly simple by default. The skin’s deformation is controlled by a weight map. That’s it. If you wish, you can create extra expressions and control more bones or deformations with that. You could link an angle to a bulge deformer and when the arm twists it also bulges the muscle. But by default the system is a weightmap based deformation. The advanced rigs which come with the XSI foundation make it a steal…
Lemo
Thanks Lemo Will be waiting for the tutorial
Animation is not in my books at this point of time, but then its always good to know a rigging tool, it may come handy for small animations like waving hands, or tail etc.
Pls give me link of its website.
Here we go… Please don’t download it if you have ‘only’ a MAC. XSI won’t run on the MAC… If you have an Intel Mac and would like to check it out, be my guest! XP runs on a MAC and thus XSI would do it as well.
http://www.neophysics.com/images/crappyrigging.rar
(16MB and 15 minutes funny Lemo english)
Disclaimer: This is a crappy tutorial. Just quickly thrown together so you can actually see how quick you can get results with the XSI ZBrush combo. I am not a professional rigger nor am I an animator. So the recording can cause brief periods of digestive problems and or blindness if you are a professional in those trades.
If you are mildly 3D CG challenged, as I am, you will at least see that it WORKS and not read about it in a weird newsgroup full of plant’s of the product in question ;-).
Enjoy! And if you got any value out of it and will buy XSI Fnd because it’s the best deal for what it does out there, then write an email to Will Mendez at Softimage who is giving Lemo such a hard time with the annual Maintenance fee ;-).
Enjoy and have fun!!!
Lemo
PS:besides a few other ramblings and omissions I did NOT hide the guide… I only hid the top NULL of the guide because I did not select the entire hirarchy before hiding it. So it all looks much cleaner in ‘reality’. But if you are in the same situation, you can see that you can still see something in all the controller, guide, mesh, skeleton rig cluster mess.
PPS:Animating the guy to wave at us would take only another 5 minutes using a few keyframes and deformations.
PPPS:recording made with camtasia. Codec if necessary, can be found on the techsmith.com website.
PPPPS:XSI is made through a magic process by Canadian Elves hidden in a Montreal Basement wearing hodded sweatshirts and sold by Will Mendez a nice fellow New Yorker who has been banished from the states for charging to much for maintenance contracts. Their Website is www.softimage.com.
PPPPPS: There is a free XSI 4.2 version called MOD TOOL on that site. You can do what I showed but you can only save in the demo-format. But you can also render… So download that, see how you get along with it and take it from there… And … Mod tool means that if you own Valve’s Halflife for example… you can save it in the Valve format and import your stuff into the Game eingine. You can create set’s in the Game engine and have yur characters run around… I leave the rest to your fantasy and the Valve/Softimage website.
Man I heard of this website before, How did I missed XSI ?
btw lemo I am still downloading it- the tutorial can be crappy but still worth a lot to many like me who are looking for such rigging softwares for zbrush models.
I will call for Ryan or Aurick to place this in tutorial forums and in wiki. it will be real good, instead of searching it here in some thread which will be lost in threads of hundreds in coming months.
Anyone there - Ryan - hello - 
Better if its converted in a pdf as well.
cool little tut kind if you for putting this up. I was shown how to do this by my friend a while back after spending days learninig how to rig in 3ds max. Only trouble I had was the weighting. Takes so little time to get it to this stage but ages to weight correct. Of corse having the edge loops, edge flow correct helps alot. A T pose man will help a good deal.
Na, for a tutorial 10 more minutes would be invested well… This is just a little info… Hope it creates ideas.
Cheers
Lemo
PS: C4D and LW are also on the less expensive side initially. But once you start to use it you will have to buy a few plugins and might upgrade and quickly be on the expensive side. Really… no better deal than ZBrush plus XSI. That combo does it all.
Well its still downloading.
I checked the softimage site, the mod size is 200 mb, man That will take lot of time even if use DAP. 
Its 6 am here, I will put it on download when I sleep.
ya currently I am living with USA timings, best way to talk with you people, but very bad effects on the body clock system lols permanent Jet lag.
Let me check it Lemo, if i understand it, and when I get time for xsi, I will create one proper tutorial on it( but its few months away for sure).
Thanks Lemo - but I am still waiting for good lightning/rendering tutorial in zbrush ;);););)-
I mean I still dont know how to use lights at all.I just position them and increase decrease the intensity- your view on that will be really helpfull- catch you in that post.
lemo I think it deserves to be in tutorial section.
For many noobs like me it will be like basics of rigging as well.
how well it will work with a high poly mesh ?
If instead of creating a displacement map, I wana just export a 2.2 million polygon character into xsi, will it work this smoothly ? and sytem requirements to do so ?
i wont be animating so its like just run with the high polymesh one and repose it as fast as possible - well can it be done ?
Why every animation software imports zbrush models inverse- i mean they dont like zbrush or its pixol theory or what ?
At SIG SoftImage showed a group of 6Mio Polygon models animated with reasonable performance on a 32Bit system… So… yes… with 5.x you can pose your 2.2 Mio Mesh. HOWEVER, you will need to max ot your Memory (32 Bit = 4GB on board).
Lemo
PS:With the 64Bit system I did some REALLY insane renders.
PPS:Yes Tez. But if your Geometry is ok, then you can paint the weights in XSI in ‘realtime’. I animated a Bird and to fine tune the mesh was not a big deal. If you have the Essentials Version, then you can also use ‘GATOR’ to transfer a lot of information from one mesh to a completely different mesh. THAT saves time. Check out GATOR at the Softimage Website.
Now I dont have even 2 gb of ram.
So displacement maps are required, meaning more work- time consuming,
One more reason Zbrush 2.5 is required to be launched sooner.
Thanks for posting this Lemo. We Mac users are (well, a lot of us, anyway) very excited about finally being able to run XSI on our Macs.
I remember when Softimage only ran on SGI or Alphas. (Back in the Jurassic Park production days).
It was then, and looks like it remains to this day, the best rigging/animation package for humanoid posing and movement. I like Messiah, but for this thread topic, it’s a bit pricey.
Although Lightwave is still the best ‘‘bang for the buck’’. all-around value when comparing complete 3D suites. (Max, Maya, C4D, Messiah Studio, etc.).
I’m still partial to Cinema 4D, myself.
The only downside to XSI, as I understand it, is that there is no upgrade path to the complete system, from Foundation. Maybe that has changed.
Well, to keep on topic, thanks again Lemo, for posting all this good information about XSI and ZB
lemo just wondered if you would be so good as to make a small video on weighting in XSI. It apears that it may be faster than when I tryed it in 3ds max.
Id like to see the common problems ironed out like joint folds armpit bad deformations e.c.t. I was once looking at getting xsi and still would if I could see that the weighting system wasnt a nightmare as I may have thought.
Personly I always thought that zbrush created meshes didnt have good enougth topology to be succesfully riged for animation? As we can see in the 2.5 update ryan showd how he had to add edge loops in certain places for correct deformation for animation. Of corse a base mesh can be made in xsi anyways so thats not a problem.
Thanks.
In the meantime I have a complete seat for C4D. It has more over all power than XSI and I get faster where I want to get with it. BUT, it is pricey. The animation part however is nill compared to XSI. It does not even come close. It is possible to animate in C4D, don’t get me wrong. But the precision and the ease, the corve editors and anything around it are way more pronounced in XSI. C4D’s strength lies in it’s rock solid stability and it’s generalized functions. Hair and other cool components are affordable.
I had no problems in upgrading from Fnd to Essentials and did that within the first year. The reason why I upgraded was the addition of rigid body physics compared to Fnd and the Compositing Software which saves one from buying After Effects or a similar program. Also certain expressions can only be created in Ess but that was not my concern. I pretty much did it because of the compositing software which is a tree based compositor and can be used for stills as well as for animateions/movies.
But Softimage is definitely NOT cheap when you look past the Fnd license.
I can barely justify my Essentials License.
Cheers
Lemo
PS:If I have am moment I’ll post a short weight paint mov. It’s as easy as vertex painting in ZBrush. The smoothing brush is great.
lemo only a quote ----no reply
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Give an old man time to finish… will ya
Lemo