Hi link500, you may want to ask some more specific questions about Bongo in the Bongo support forum which is here:
http://www.bongo3d.com/support.htm

But I think it's a plug-in that adds some basic keyframe animation capabilities to Rhino.


> simply an animation function found in maya,
> lightwave, 3ds max etc.?

There are many different variations and kinds of animation tools, these tools like Maya, Max, etc... have a lot of different types of animation that they do, including things like characters bending and flexing and stuff like that. I don't think that Bongo handles every type of animation like that, I think it's more focused on things like rigid object movement. But you should ask about it in the Bongo newsgroup to get more details on it.


> if you create an object in moi3d, can you simply animate
> it in an animation package like maya or 3ds max?

Sure, you can just export your model to those programs and animate it over there just like you animate any object over there. MoI constructed models will probably not be a great fit for character animation, since for things like bending and flexing limbs you often want the topology and polygon structure of the model to be specifically set up to match with the plan you have for animating it.

But certainly just having objects fly around you just import your MoI object into that animation package and use its regular tools to animate it.


> does bongo do anything different from the maya or 3ds max animations?

Not directly, I believe its advantage will be that if you already have Rhino and you want to do some simple animation it will probably be both cheaper and easier (lower learning curve) to use Bongo for that rather than diving into a full animation program that has a zillion things in it to learn.


Again though, you should ask on the Bongo support group to get the best information about Bongo.

- Michael