Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character Animation

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[edit] Welcome!

This tutorial is the result of about a month of intense work as part of the Blender Summer of Documentation. I created it with the hope of introducing many new users to Blender, as well as providing a resource for experienced Blender users.

Even if you've never heard of Blender before, you will be able to do this tutorial.

Enjoy!

-Ryan

Marenzelleria 05:46, 26 July 2006 (CEST)

[edit] Feedback

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Visit the support thread at blenderartists.

[edit] Introductory material

• Introduction: What to expect from this tutorial.

[edit] Modeling

• Setting up the mesh - Start up Blender, add a plane, and set up symmetrical editing.
• Creating the mouth - start shaping and extruding the mouth.
• Face and eyes - Keep extruding the face, and add eyes.
• Finishing the head - Finish off the head.
• Neck, shoulders, and arms - Create the upper body by extruding neck, shoulders, and arms.
• Torso, legs, and feet - Create the torso and lower body.

[edit] Materials and lighting

• Lighting - Add lights to the scene, and do a test render.
• Materials and textures - Add materials to the skin and eyes, and add textures to the skin.

[edit] Rigging

• Upper body: building the armature - Build a skeleton for the upper body.
• Upper body: Weight painting - Configure the skeleton for the upper body.
• Lower body: building the armature and weight painting - Build and configure the skeleton for the lower body.
• Final rig adjustment. - Make some final improvements to the rig.

[edit] Animation

• Animating a simple action - Animate a "Wave" action using the Action editor.
• Animating a walkcycle - Animate a walkcycle using the Action editor.
• Mixing actions with the NLA - Combine the wave action and the walkcycle action together in the NLA Editor.
• Facial expressions - Create a set of facial expressions.
• Adding sound and lip syncing - Use the facial expressions to lip sync to sound.
• Final animation - Mix everything together into a final animation and render the output.
• Summary - A recap of the tutorial, and a final note from the author.

[edit] Finished product

Here are some static poses of the character you'll create in this tutorial. The end product of the tutorial is 5-second animation of the character, including a walkcycle and lip sync.

Ready? Start with the Introduction . . .