what is better bento buddy or avastar?

[winniethepoohh]

hello everyone i hope all of you is having a lovely day or night

i was wonder what do you like more Bento buddy or Avastar?
i wanna start creating stuff for second life but im gonna start with poses first but i don't know what addons i should pick for Blender

is there any free trial for both of them to see what you like more or no?

[Stephanie Misfit]

On 4/3/2024 at 4:15 PM, winniethepoohh said:

hello everyone i hope all of you is having a lovely day or night

i was wonder what do you like more Bento buddy or Avastar?
i wanna start creating stuff for second life but im gonna start with poses first but i don't know what addons i should pick for Blender

is there any free trial for both of them to see what you like more or no?

Bento Buddy sometimes gives free trials, and I think the first month is cheap. I like Bento Buddy, it is well-supported, with an active Discord and lots of tutorials. I have not used Avastar so can't compare them. See if you can get a trial of Bento Buddy.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

I had Avastar 2.0 a while back. 80% of the tutorials were for version 1.0 and the "help desk" never worked, but they didn't tell you until after you filled out the information and clicked "submit" and "The Help Desk is not operational at this time".

Bento Buddy is an ongoing fee. If you want to export the animation file for upload into SL you have to have a subscription. If you aren't in a serious business of creating animation/poses then this is not a smart choice. BB is quite pricey. I'm not in the business.

The only advantage (for me) either promised was the ability to do detailed animations of your fingers. I've had very little trouble using Qavimator to make the poses in my photos, but I'm not paying that kind of money (Avastar was $44 USD initially and $22 USD annually and Bento Buddy can get upwards of $125 USD for lifetime subscriptions). Once upon a time there was a Bento version of Qavimator but it mysteriously vanished with no explanation.

[BinBash]

20 hours ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Bento Buddy is an ongoing fee. If you want to export the animation file for upload into SL you have to have a subscription.

You got the name right, Bento Buddy, everything else is misleading.

I'm guessing that the frequent activity of misinformation that I've run into lately, including your post, is because of the recent update to Bento Buddy, making it compatible with Blender 4, where other tools are still lagging behind.

To address your post...

Bento Buddy's introductory offer, as of 5/13/2024, is only L$999.  The previous offer was not even close to what you suggested.

There is no life-time subscription but there is a "stand-alone" version that doesn't require any service.

The Express accompaniment, which is the product that you are probably misinforming about, is a life-time of updates for a one-time payment.

Additionally, we have giveaways at events that we host on holidays and just when we feel the fun bone start to wiggle, not requiring any payment what-so-ever and often I will just hand out Bento Buddy to someone that asks politely.

Bento Buddy has a massive amount of tools for things other than skinning, which a lot of people call rigging.  I am the single person responsible for all of the code written for Bento Buddy.  I am the only programmer which means that when something goes wrong I know how to fix it, and fast.

Dissuading someone from the only 2 Blender tools that have any chance of successfully, and consistently, conditioning content for use in-world does not appear to be very helpful.

 

 

Edited May 13 by BinBash
I forgot to add a thing O.o

[BinBash]

On 4/3/2024 at 1:15 AM, winniethepoohh said:

i was wonder what do you like more Bento buddy

You can give Bento Buddy a try for free, just contact me in-world using a notecard and I'll throw in some course material.  You can get a faster response from me in Discord, check my profile for details.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

[BinBash]

1 hour ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Yea, my initial reply doesn't change just because you wanted to show one of our most valued products, and thank you for that by the way.  Express is a life-time of updates for Bento Buddy, never having to pay again, and I think the price is well worth it, too low in fact.  For the cost of just under 5 years of Expression, you get a life-time of Bento Buddy updates and it's nice to not have to worry about that when time is critical.  Though this product isn't for everyone, certainly not for you, we do have the glaringly obvious L$999 entry that you display so beautifully in your example image, if you even choose to keep that in your post after reading this.

I hope you'll continue to complain about our product, spreading the name to those that have never heard of us before, it's people like you that raise our base-line significantly and, while I know you're not interested in paying for anything, I would offer you a free term so that you can actually experience why it's so useful to so many people, including animators.

I'm guessing a lot of people don't know what Bento Buddy does and are left to assume that it's a replica of another tool.  Our Bento Buddy is far from being a clone of anything and any similarities are minimal compared to to suite of tools available to the creative mind.

 

[ConnieG Sorbet]

I went to Bento Buddy and all I got was a ban...so I still don't know if it would have been easier than Avastar.. which I don't find easy actually.

[AdamZadig]

For me Bento Buddy is amazing. I just want to practice making animesh to make something for Halloween and 'maybe' make aniesh items for my store. 
I literally just paid a small fee to activate the export feature. It cost me less than 700 lindens for a week of being able to export the animations from the addon.
Avastar would have cost me 11,000. Instead i've paid less than 700, and been able to create the animesh I was working on. I genuinely recommend Bento Buddy. Really easy to use, works perfect. I will now be able to use the addon to create all the animations for a batch of items, and when i'm ready to export, pay for a license to export them from Blender. its incredible. Anyone is welcome to message me in world if they want more info on my experience with it.