Hi Guys.

Currently, after looking at rendering engines and other engines, i decided to use Ogre 3D because i like the way its coded and it is very OOP-like which is an advantage to me. Anyway i managed to create a game template for my game with Ogre and now all i need is to animate some meshes i made but i have a problem. Which animation software is best for a advanced programmer which has never done 3D animation before?

What would you say is the fastest tool to animate some meshes as a beginner. I tried : Blender, Maya and Shade 14 but most of the tutorials are videos which i absolutely despise and do not consider them learning resources, i prefer text with pictures or just text.

I am not asking for a absolute perfect piece of software but more in terms of speed and the shortest learning curve that i can import into my Ogre 3D game.

I would highly recommend using Maya 2014. Really easy to get the hang of, very simple to use (and fantastically easy to get into an engine).

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~cariesta/MayaCourseNotes/html/body_bouncing_ball.html
For absolute basics and intro to the graph editor, here's a tiny tutorial-esque thing that might help, though I'd ignore the render settings part (I only wish I could link my course files from last year). It's for an old version of Maya, but it should be simple enough to decipher.

http://lemoney92.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/how-to-animate-in-maya.html This goes over basics for a rigged character, though I'd suggest that for a rigged character you also use Character Sets.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?18328-Maya-Character-Sets&s=ec17d3ed2fab8e78ce332e91ff8b0d76&p=53123#post53123
That explains how to set one, and what they do is make it so when you press "S" to set, it doesn't set EVERY bone, it keeps some clean. Can be really useful for doing your work in passes, eg, just the spine, just the head, just the legs, just the arms, then finally the facials. I usually have a Leg set, Arm set, Core/Torso set and Head/Facial set, personally.

For additional info, see the official docs.

Thanks a lot BagelHero i will check these out. Thank you for your input, i aprreciate it.