Animating with Blender

Blender has become one of the most popular 3D and animation tools on the market, with over 2 million users, and it is free! Animating with Blender is the definitive resource for creating short animation projects from scratch, the ideal platform for experimenting with animation.

Blender expert and author Roland Hess walks you through the entire process of creating a short animation, from writing to storyboarding and blocking, through character creation, animation and rendering.

* Learn the ropes from Roland Hess, one of Blender's developers and a community guru for this FREE animation program, which was used in the previz for Spiderman 2

* Create a single short animation project from start to finish, take an in-depth look into how all of the Blender tools work together

* Study, pick apart and reuse all of the files from the animation referenced throughout the book, with the Blender software and sample animation files included on the companion DVD

Creating Short Animations with Blender

At A Glance

Chapter 1: An Overview of the Short Animation Process

This chapter gives a brief overview of the entire process of creating a short animation. It also provides advice and rationales about why it is important to actually follow the steps, as well as common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Chapter 2: Story

Deciding on a story that fits the scope of your resources. Objective vs. subjective story lines, and why you need to know the difference. Deciding on a theme, and adding theme-supporting details and elements to the story. Also, screenplay format is introduced and advice is given on where it's appropriate (or unnecessary) to use.

Chapter 3: Storyboarding and the Story Reel

Emphasizes the absolute necessity of storyboarding, even if you can barely draw, and suggests some tools and techniques to make the job easier. Examples of how good storyboarding can lead to shorter production and render times later. Analyzing your storyboards for later optimization of shots, angles, and necessary sets and props. Also, it is shown how Blender can be used to assemble an initial Story Reel with a temporary sound track.

Chapter 4: Character Design and Creation

Although rough character designs have already been done in the storyboards, at some point you must decide how your characters will actually look. The chapter emphasizes matching character design with the theme of the story and ways to think about encoding the character's place in the theme into their appearance. Modeling to the needs of the character's storyboarded appearances and actions is shown, as well as optimizing meshes and materials for animation rendering.

Chapter 5: Libraries

Blender's library and linking system explained. Creating libraries for proper reuse and unification of digital assets. How libraries will benefit your production.

Chapter 6: Rough Sets, Blocking, Good Sound and an Animatic

Building the basic shapes for your sets, then blocking the shots from the story board with the low resolution set and static characters. Updating the story reel with a hard dialogue track and OpenGL stills and camera move animations.

Chapter 7: Rigging and Animation Testing

Rigging and skinning modeled characters with respect to their animation needs within the project. Testing the rig with sample animations. Creating facial morph targets for expression and lip sync.

Chapter 8: Character Animation: Blocking and Finishing

Per-shot files are created, and characters and rough sets are linked in from their libraries. Pose to Pose animation is shown. The story reel is updated with a pose-to-pose breakdown and gross timing is tested and adjusted. Blender's tools for refining animation, creating offsets, follow-through, anticipation, etc. are demonstrated.

Chapter 9: Lip Sync

Using the previously created shape keys to add facial expression and lip sync. Adding and scrubbing sound files.

Chapter 10: Special Effects: Physics, Fluids and Particles

Physics and particle tools are shown, with suggestions on when and where it is best to use them or to just fake their effects. Also, it is shown how to integrate this sort of procedurally generated animation into the main keyframed animation. Attention is given to render times and careful planning from the animatic.

Chapter 11: Final Sets and Backgrounds

Using the story reel as a guide, decisions are made as to static backgrounds vs. backgrounds created from live geometry. Sets are built to match the roughs with full resolution objects, sectioned per shot requirements, and saved as libraries for efficient linking and re-use. Static backgrounds are rendered and tweaked, with Normal and Z data for better compositing.

Chapter 12: Rendering and Post-Processing

The render layers system and compositor is shown, bringing together the final animation elements, final sets, backgrounds and special effects created previously. Common post-processing techniques like Blender's vector-based motion blur, depth of field and bloom/glow are shown.

Chapter 13: Editing and Final Output

Using Blender's Sequence Editor to edit the rendered, composited animation into the final product. Generating a variety of output formats (.avi, MPEG, Quicktime) and which are best for what.