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Before we animate a complex rig, let's understand the core principles on animation (Reference: AP_BCC)

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The Blender Character Creator

Our Udemy course will teach you all you need to know to create rigged characters for video games.

You're welcome to download, fork or do whatever else legal with all the files!

How To Use These Files

You can download the latest state of this section, or go to Commits then download to get our project as it was at the end of any lecture.

Section 4 Animation Principles

Before we animate a complex rig, let's understand the core principles of animation (Reference: AP_BCC) Here are the lectures of the course for this section...

1 Section 4 introduction

  • Michael Introduces Section 4 of the course

2 What Is Animation?

  • The illusion of motion
  • In Blender it is not just about the object/character...
  • Animating of the camera can drastically change the staging
  • Bringing our models into life
  • If the number of images/frames per second is too long the illusion is broken

Recommended Reading

  • The illusion Of Life
  • Whist many concepts are applied to drawing, they equally apply to 3D animation

3 Frame Rate

  • Decided at the beginning of a project.
  • Suggest sticking to one frame rate throughout a project
  • Save the startup file with your chosen
  • Changing it mid-way can cause many headaches

4 Why Not Use Physics?

  • Physics is appropriate sometimes, falling and collapsing
  • You lose control as you give it to the physics engine
  • It can work well with many simple objects
  • Can help the process with previewing an idea to tweak later

5 Squash And Stretch

  • Can Give a sense of weight
  • Gives the view an idea of the material
  • Can be used mildly
  • Taken to extremes it can be comical
  • Volume should be maintain to remain convincing

6 Bone Based Squash and Stretch

  • Using an armature to deform our mesh

7 Re-targeting Animations

  • Super quick workflow when done
  • Naming has to be consistent
  • Naming is critical to this work flow working
  • (Updated 6/6/2018)

8 Refining Squash and Stretch

  • Control bones may be necessary to fine tune movement
  • Caution adding unnecessary complexity

9 Expanding An Animation

  • Clean up current keyframes
  • Moving keyframes in bulk
  • Expand on existing animation data

10 Animating Can Be Hard

  • Make many little animations
  • Keep your old work to reflect on
  • Keep your old work to improve on
  • As your skills develop it will get easier

11 Using The Grease Pencil

  • Quick Overview of the grease pencil
  • Grease pencil colours and layers
  • You can use the grease pencil in most editors
  • How to use the grease pencil for making notes
  • Editing your strokes

12 Animating The Grease Pencil

  • Drawing on an object
  • Mapping out animation ideas

12a Anticipation

  • Gives the viewer a clue of what is about to happen
  • Often makes an animation look more realistic
  • Prepares viewers for the next action
  • Avoid competing actions in complex models and scenes

13 Pose To Pose - Keys

  • These are the start and end of the a particular action
  • Solidify what we have already been doing
  • Can be more that two, if the animation has multiple actions / parts
  • As the name suggests these are the KEY points in the animation

14 Pose To Pose - Extremes

  • The furthest an object or character will travel

15 Pose to Pose - Breakdown Poses

  • Ensures the correct transition between Extremes
  • In-betweens would be next, however since Blender is good at interpolation these are only required in edge cases

16 Straight Ahead

  • Useful for more organic or random movement
  • Great for movement that lacks a known end position
  • Creates a move dynamic movement
  • Both pose to pose and straight a head are often combined
  • (Updated 6/6/2018)

17 Timing

  • Frame rate dependant
  • Can change the entire feeling of an animation

18 Staging

  • Direct the viewer attentions to important points
  • Complement actions and feel but avoid competition for viewer attention
  • Can depict an action, personality or emotion
  • Can be achieved with where they are in the scene, camera position/lens setting/DOF, lighting/shadows
  • Focus on what is relevant and adds to the scene, remove clutter

19 Ease In and Ease Out

  • All natural movements will pick up speed, and slow down at the end
  • This applies to all character movements
  • The only time you tend to have abrupt transitions is where there is some external influence
  • Linear transitions will look robotic
  • Updated (6/6/2018)

20 Follow Through

  • A natural extension to easing in and out
  • Objects naturally overshoot their desired location
  • Movement is proportional to the speed an object is travelling and it's "weight"
  • Often applied to models with more that one part
  • Means that loosely tied parts of a body should continue moving after the character has stopped

21 Overlapping Action

  • Deeply linked to follow through
  • Describes the Offset of timing between a main body
  • Helps break up an animation
  • Adds interest to an animation
  • When different parts of a character move at different rates

22 Secondary Action

  • Don't be confused by names!
  • Secondary action is what is happening, follow through and Overlapping action is how.
  • Example: Main action walking, secondary action might be hands swinging, body swaying.
  • Or even action before or after a key animation.
  • Should always emphasize, rather than take attention away from the main action.
  • Otherwise leave them out
  • Updated (06/06/2018)

23 Exaggeration

  • Animated motions that strive for an imitation of reality can look dull and lack character
  • Can but subtle and take reality to an extreme
  • Can be over the top for a more comical effect
  • Show restraint, push it and then dial it back a little
  • Otherwise the viewer can become overwhelmed

24 "Solid Drawing"

  • Don't need to worry about the 3 dimensionality
  • Give you animations real presence by giving them weight and volume

25 Appeal

  • Appeal can help the viewer relate to the character
  • Makes a character feel real and interesting
  • Symmetry can make a character more appealing
  • Baby feature as can add appeal
  • Character should be easy to read otherwise the viewer will not be able to relate.

99 Section 4 Wrap Up

  • Well done
  • We've successfully applied the 12 principals of animation to basic cubes and spheres
  • Practice these skills it will allow you to solidify your understanding and Blender skills
  • Are you ready for the challenge of animation something a little more complex?

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Before we animate a complex rig, let's understand the core principles on animation (Reference: AP_BCC)

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