I’ve reached that stage in my Blender Education where I need to get a good grip on animation. I’ve done bits and pieces before, a wave here, a walkcycle there, but now I want to make animated shorts. So, for anyone else interested in following the same path I’ll post some progress reports here, and some comments on the process. I’m not good at long term projects so there will be quite a few very short projects and exercises.
First up I’m working through Tradigital Blender by Roland Hess, which seems to appear in the banner up above fairly often at the moment. I like this approach. Concentrates purely on animation. It deals with a single project but you don’t have to model, texture and rig before getting down to the nitty gritty. Harkyman provides all you need. I’m about half way through and we have a first pass, very rough with constant interpolation of main keyframes only. Just transferring the storyboard to 3D.
I also played around with mocap files a little bit. Downloaded a whole swag of them from cgspeed. Here’s a short anim using a very basic mesh with the bvh rig.
On another note I’m a bit blown away by the rig that comes with an imported makehuman character (using mhx format). Wow, all those controls for so many different facial expressions. Not sure if it’s the same as the rigify rig or not (haven’t used that yet) but I anticipate using a lot of mh characters (and rig) in my shorts down the track. I’ve been doing my own character modelling for a couple of years now, but at the moment I’m looking at actually becoming productive.
Very nice first attempt. Yes the MH rigs are quite powerful, and as you continue your research, you’ll find it can also use the .bvh mocap files by adding a couple of add ons in Blender. It can save you hours of work.
So, a bit more work on this exercise. Some minor tweaks for anticipation and follow through, probably not obvious enough. And changed to bezier interpolation for a totally different style. Walk has only extreme poses at the moment. I’m about to tackle a real walk as distinct from a walkcycle (walking in place) as the next part of the process. Lots of timing issues to deal with. Interesting process.
Thanks for those links magastor. I actually have the baker tutorials downloaded but haven’t had a look through them yet. I’ve probably got far too many learning resources and now have to work out which ones to look at first!! I’ve gone with Tradigital Blender because it just concentrates on body animation (not face) for a human like character. BC Baker does a lot of other things too, especially face, and I like to leave that 'til a bit later. I’m trying to ease my way into it. Besides, I really prefer using books to VTs for some things, especially studying the relationships of a lot of components at the same time.
Actually, since this thread is mostly about the learning process, I could add that with VTs there is the issue of the presenter’s voice. Not saying it’s a problem in the cases you’ve mentioned except that I occasionally find American (US) accents a bit hard-edged and hard on the ear after a while. No doubt many people find we Aussies a bit hard to listen to as well. I love VTs and have a lot of them on various subjects, but I am very aware of voice, perhaps too much so. The rate at which presenters talk can also be an issue for me sometimes. I love Angela Guenette’s voice on the Blenderella DVD, although her pacing is an issue sometimes too.
One artist I love listening to is Christian Lorenz Scheurer. Check out the sample clip on this page.
Hokay, worked on the walk, added sound. Walk is pretty bouncy and still needs a lot of work but this is the first time I’ve keyed a person walking instead of trying to use a walkcycle (except for that mocap video I posted earlier). I’m really enjoying this and I think I can even get quite good at it. Sound effect was purchased audio file from istockphoto.
I’ve modelled another (low-poly) character and animated a walk. It’s a bit stumpy at the moment, and I’m looking for some crits on how best to tackle it. I’m more concerned about the legs at the moment, haven’t paid much attention to the arms. This is four keyframes per stride - contact, low, passing, high over 12 frames. Bezier interpolation but I haven’t attempted to tweak the curves at all. File is approx 108KB.
Workflow advice? I’d suggest the two following tips to make your life much easier and to help speed things up.
Work on each pose as a whole, rather than trying to do multiple passes for separate body parts.
Turn off bezier curves. Keep everything set to constant interpolation until the last minute.
There are two good reasons for the first point.
From a practical standpoint all bodyparts are connected, and have weight, which means they will affect other parts of the body, even if only slightly. Try standing still and swinging your arms forward and backwards, you should feel your legs adjusting to compensate for the weight of a your arms moving. The same thing if you swing your leg, your upper body will be react to stop you from falling over. So when you are adjusting arms, legs, heads, you’ll need to make sure that the hips, spine, torso etc are all reacting correctly and working together. In working on one body part at a time, you run the risk of having to jump back and forward to make corrections to all the other parts as you progress, which is terribly time consuming.
The second (and arguably much more important) reason is that the key poses you develop will define your animation. These poses should read well on their own; they should have a strong silhouette and convey the intention of the character. Each key you make should be able to stand on its own as an image. These are the frames you will be cushioning in and out from, so the ones you choose to favour will be the ones more apparent on screen and the ones the viewer will notice more.
As to the second point:
Keeping interpolation turned off will allow you to see problems with your keyframes and breakdowns. Having it on can muddy the issue, as you are then forced to work out if it’s your poses or just the interpolation that is the problem. This is even more so while you are learning. The animation should look convincing without interpolation; It may appear slightly jerky, but all the acting choices, arcs, anticipation etc should still read well and the movement should still make sense. If it’s not looking good under constant interpolation, linear/bezier curves simply make things a nightmare to fix.
It’s also important to understand the limitations of interpolation (for example, bezier curves can allow you some cushioning but will not introduce overlap) in order to make it work for you.
As a final note, the big thing to bear in mind is that the end result will be a series of images, which makes computer animation no different from any other medium. While in some cases the available tools in CG animation offer much more flexibility than other mediums, this can become something of a double edged sword. Being able to do things like automate interpolation, layer animations, adjust keys individually etc. are all very useful, but at the same time can cause major problems if used without understanding the underlying principles that are being affected.
Hokay, next phase. This tiny movie consists of an environment created and rendered in Vue with camera move animated (in Vue). Character was animated and rendered in Blender, and the two sequences composited in the Blender video editor using alpa over blend mode for the character, which was rendered as RGBA PNGs. Vue can render environments consisting of BILLIONS of polygons, and has excellent environment creation capability. Shown here is a basic procedural terrain with a standard (library) ecosystem and very standard lighting. In this example the camera move for the environment was obviously a bit fast. Just proof of concept really and getting the workflow under control.
Right, I’ve sorted out some compositing issues, and here is the result. Now to refine the animation, and complete a story. Excuse the nudity. Hair and clothes come next.
not to shabby. i’m horrible with walk cycles myself. are you using a stride bone in your rig? i noticed some foot slides and i believe stride bones are suppose to help with that.
And yes Blender Cookie is an amazing site to learn from.
