Animating With Blender

1. Animating With Blender Topics: Making a skeleton. Attaching the skeleton to your model. Posing your model with the skeleton. Using key frames. Rendering your animation.

2. Step 1: Making A Skeleton • Open the object you want to animate in Blender. • In Object Mode, select your model with the RMB. • Press the Spacebar and select Add > Armature. • Press Spacebar again and Add > Bone. • Your first bone will appear at the location of the 3d cursor.

3. Making A Skeleton: Boning Up • Use NUM1, NUM3, and NUM7 to switch between Front, Side, and Top views to make sure your bone is centered inside your model. If needed, grab it with GKEY to move it. • After the first bone is placed at a location of your liking, select the node closest to your next bone position with RMB. • Add the next bone by extruding with the EKEY. • While doing this, think about every point at which your model needs to bend and place nodes accordingly. • Tip: Use extra bones if a model’s skin seems far from your skeleton. This will help with attaching the skeleton to the model later.

4. Making A Skeleton: What Bone? • Once the skeleton seems right, enter Pose Mode using CTRL + TAB. • Give each bone a proper name that you and anyone using your model can understand (like “UpperArmLeft”). • To do this, right click each bone and enter the desired name in the box labeled “BO:” in the “Armature Bones” Tab. • This will be helpful later in attaching your skeleton to your model.

7. Step 2: Attaching Your Skeleton • To apply your skeleton to your model, press CTRL + TAB to return to Object Mode. • Use RMB to select your model. Under Modifiers, click Add > Armature. Then, in the added box, enter the name of your armature (“Armature” by default). • Do not click “Apply.” For some reason this seems to do nothing. Just let the box sit there. • Your model should be “rigged” to your skeleton.

8. Attaching Your Skeleton • At this point, Blender should have made its best guess at your rig by attaching vertices to the nearest bone. • To check this, enter Pose Mode (CTRL + TAB with the skeleton selected in Object Mode) and select a bone. Grab it with GKEY and move it. • If the bone moves without the model, CTRL + TAB back to Object Mode, use a selection box (BKEY) to select both the model and the skeleton and use CTRL + P to parent the skeleton to the model. • Once the two are attached, enter Pose Mode and move each bone to gauge the job Blender did with your rig. If parts are moving properly, you can go on to animation. But this is almost never the case.

9. Attaching Your Skeleton Correctly • I have explored two ways to edit how your skeleton moves your model: • Vertex Weight Painting • Vertex Groups

10. Vertex Weight Painting • In Pose Mode, select the bone you want to edit. Press CTRL + TAB to get back to Object Mode, select your model with RMB and press CTRL + TAB again to enter Weight Painting mode. • With the circular brush, paint the areas you want the bone to move. • Tip: Paint is only applied at vertices. • Pros: • Easiest to use when starting out. • Easy to see how weighting is applied. • Fun at first. • Cons: • Clumsy – Easy to include unwanted areas. • Tedious – Constantly having to switch between Pose and Paint modes. • Frustrating – Being unable to paint vertices inside or covered by the model.

13. Vertex Groups • Vertex Groups can be assigned in Edit Mode (the same mode used to make your model). Select the area you want a bone to move. In the “Links and Materials” tab, under “Vertex Groups” click “New.” Give your new Vertex Group the same name as the bone you want to affect it. Then click “Assign.” • Tip: It is a good idea to hit “A” to deselect all and then “Select” under Vertex Groups to reselect your area and make sure it was assigned and saved properly. • Pros: • Accurate – Get all the vertices you want and none you don’t. • Fast – Easy to select what you want if you know how to use Edit Mode. No switching back to Pose Mode to switch bones. • Cons: • Cannot assign weights to specific vertices. • A lot of opportunity for human error.

15. Step 3: Posing Your Model • Once all your bones are moving your model properly, you are ready to animate. • From the screen-select box at the top of the screen (which most likely says “SR-2: Model) choose “Animation” to switch to Animation mode. • Use your skeleton to pose your model in the first position you want for your animation. • Tip: If you are animating a cycle such as a walk or a sword swing, keep in mind that the last pose in your cycle will be identical to the first. It is a good idea here to click “Pose > Copy” to save your starting pose to the buffer. This way you can paste it in at the end to finish your cycle.

16. Step 4: Using Key Frames • Once you are satisfied with your starting pose, use a selection box to select all bones and hit the IKEY to insert a key frame at the first point on the timeline. • A pop-up full of confusing options will come up. It is asking what kind of transform you want to perform between this and the next key frame. “LocRotScale” was sufficient for my walk cycles. • You will see a blue line appear on the timeline at your first key frame. • Hit UPKEY to move forward 10 frames (or as many as you like). • Pose your model as you want it, select all bones, and press IKEY as before to insert the next frame and continue. • Tip: On walk cycles, you can paste the starting pose as the middle pose and the ending pose, though it might look stale. If you are confused as to how something should move, try getting up and acting out the motion. Also, stay organized while posing! I work from the top to bottom so I don’t forget what I’ve moved.

17. Step 5: Rendering • Once your last pose is saved, click “Frame > Set as End.” If you are animating a cycle, set the frame before your last as the end so it is not rendered twice. • Open the “Scene” panel by clicking the “Panel” icon farthest to the right. • In the “Format” tab, select “AVI Raw.” • In the “Anim” tab, hit “ANIM.” • Wait while Blender renders each frame of your animation. Scenes between key frames are automatically interpolated. • When Blender finishes rendering, hit “PLAY” in the “Anim” tab. Blender will automatically cycle the AVI video it has just compiled. • Tip: It is a good idea to save before rendering animations. Animation rendering has crashed Blender a few times for me. Sometimes ESCKEY can break Blender out of an endless render loop.