Here is some simple animations I did to demonstrate some simple animation concepts to a friend of mine who is just getting started in blender.
My goal was to achieve a very cartoony motion. Something along the lines of “Veggie Tales”. I used the “stretch to” constraint for stretch and squash and a curve deformer for bending. I learned this technique in Maya, and I was quite pleased when I figured out I could do it in Blender as well.
So here are the links. Each is about 200K, so those of you on dialup get to watch too :). Quicktime format.
Why not? For the second video, get Adobe Premiere, or Ulead Media studio, and add some music, text, graphics, and voice-over. That video is just right, (maybe extend the end a little bit longer via “still picture” and have a piece of text with a catchy slogan.
how did you get the stretchto work so nice with curvedeform?
i tried to use similar approach (judging from your description) on a toon-train (one mesh, with vertexparented wheels), but it didn’t work nicely so I abandoned it for the time being - tbh i only mocked up the lowpoly concept.
do you care to post a blend (you can swap the character with a simple cube … ) or just describe the setup?
i assume you worked in x-z space for the jump, i used x-y space and animated the train mesh in y-direction (locY), also the empty for the stretchto constraint in y-direction with offset (locY). I wanted the train to wiggle when stopped and to spread when accelerating.
maybe i just gave up too quick.
edit: other thing I’ve noticed: when a curvedeformaed mesh has something vertexparented to it, deformations work a little weird - I used the inteloptimized build, but maybe there’s something other under blender’s hood that’s causing trouble.
