Animating With Blender

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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.

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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 gt Armature.
• Press Spacebar again and Add gt Bone.
• Your first bone will appear at the location of
  the 3d cursor.

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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 models skin seems far
  from your skeleton. This will help with
  attaching the skeleton to the model later.

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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.

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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 gt 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.

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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.

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Attaching Your Skeleton Correctly

• I have explored two ways to edit how your
  skeleton moves your model
• Vertex Weight Painting
• Vertex Groups

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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.

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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 dont.
• 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.

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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 gt Copy to
  save your starting pose to the buffer. This way
  you can paste it in at the end to finish your
  cycle.

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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
  dont forget what Ive moved.

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Step 5 Rendering

• Once your last pose is saved, click Frame gt 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.

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