Doc:Books/ActionBook/Animation
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Dancing in Progress...
Blender's animation part was fully rewritten in versions 2.4+, so we were all able to see the incredible changes incorporated in Blender, which all started with the Orange project!
Well, while I've been reading Elephants Dream blog & digging for new animation stuff, I've made this simple dancing loop with a previously made character Victor for my first character animation lesson with the new and reworked Blender animation tools.
This animation includs a modern IK (inverse kinematics) armature rig, also presented by Bassam Kurdali on Blender Conference 2005 & Siggraph 2006. The animation also includs some basic NLA sequencing.
What do you need for such a simple animation? BaM! (Blender, a bit of imagination & a Manual :) Well, you can do it many different ways actually. You can build it with even more simple FK (forward kinematics) rig for example, but with this lesson I wanted to show more about the new advanced Blender's rigging system, which is more complex but also easier to animate than basic FK...
I also suggest you to check this old but still useful rig tutorial written by Gimble; this part of BSoD written by Ryan Dale; & this advanced rig systems written by Robert Christian.
You are also welcome to check out the Oil, Sweat & Rigs part of this ActionBook where you can read more about Blender's armature system; Also, if you want to read more about modeling Victor or some other Blender tips & tricks, you can check my oldie MemoBook :)
Victor can be found in Blender's Animated Characters Society along with: Mancandy, Proog, Emo, Ludwig, Otto, CuteBEAR and Suzanne (please add if you know some more).
- Note: .blend Victor file is still in progress & is more simple than Mancandy, heh, but hopefully also easier to understand! Victor file is saved with Blender 2.43. My current screen resolution is 1280x1024px, so my window setup may not fit you screen so well.
Victor's .blend file
Well, if one picture worth more than 1000 words, than this file is worth more than zillions of them! :)
Anyway, you will find in this file an armature system with an important example of legs rig and an IK structure for the body. Armature assigning on Victor's body is a bit 'old fashioned' and without weight painting involved, so don't dig in that directions! :) But I found many times better examples in simple basic setups than super complex, which are usually just a more complex setup consisting of multiple basic, but important commands (which are sometimes hard to find, huh? :). For a 'pure' version of Victor's armature you can check Oil, Sweat & Rigs part of this book.
In this file you will also find basic NLA setup, but without latest use of new stride bone and facial expressions which are in my plan for the next explorations, so stay tuned...
I would like to say thanks to all of you who helped me with unselfish sharing of your knowledge, but you are most likely mentioned somewhere in this book (psst, or files) anyway! I hope you will have at least half of my fun with Victor exploring! :)
If you have any questions or suggestions about Victor, I'm ready to answer or discuss on discussion page.
- --Igor 13:28, 12 January 2007 (CET)
Download
- Download .blend File:VictorDancing.blend with some additional information.
- Download .blend File:StretchingFinger.blend rig, and for your lesson, while you're at it, you can try to apply what you've learned to make Victor's fingers dance too!
