Introducing Character Animation With Blender Second Edition Pdf

About this volume

Blender is an open source 3D graphics application that can exist used for modeling, rigging, animating, rendering and thousands of other things. While modeling characters isn't the biggest of your worries, animative them to make them experience as-good-every bit alive is what differentiates a professional from an amateur.

This volume offers articulate, illustrative, and like shooting fish in a barrel-to-follow recipes to create grapheme rigs and animations for common situations. Bring your characters to life by understanding the principles, techniques and approaches involved in creating rigs and animations, you lot'll exist able to adapt them to your own characters and films.

The book offers clear pace-past-step tutorials, with detailed explanations, screenshots and back up files to help y'all empathize the principles behind each topic. Each recipe covers a logical pace of the consummate creation of a character rig and animation, so you're non overwhelmed with too much information at once.

You'll meet numerous examples and screenshots that guide to attain various rigging and blitheness tasks, logically separated so you can understand each in particular. The rigging topics are divided by each region of the body (torso, limbs, face, eyes), and further separated by the specific topic (neck, fingers, oral cavity, eyelids, etc) for clarity. All rigging tasks are achieved with the congenital-in tools in Blender, without the complexity of coding custom Python behaviors or user interface elements.

The animation topics deal with common situations found in existent world productions, showing skillful practices to understand and overcome the challenges.

Publication date:: June 2011
Publisher: Packt
Pages: 308
ISBN: 9781849513203

Affiliate 1. Get Rigging

In this affiliate, we will encompass the following topics:

Defining skillful orientations for your bones
Using split up os chains for different tasks
Customizing shapes and colors for your basic
Using corrective shape keys
Making an IK-FK switcher
Tips on weight painting you characters

Introduction

And so, you've successfully modeled an awesome character in Blender. After hours of careful and detailed work you have built a very appealing protagonist with a good topology for your side by side animation, but there'due south an issue: how exercise nosotros make it look more than life similar, and also, how do we make it move?

Since a graphic symbol model tin be made of thousands of vertices, moving them individually across the 3D space is most impossible. We need an easier way of moving our models, and this fashion is called rigging.

Rigging is the process of creating a series of controls (the "Rig") to deform some other object, which is often a character mesh. Information technology involves creating special objects that motion selected groups of vertices at once. This is the principle behind Skeletal Animation, where objects chosen "bones" are used to control parts of our models.

In Blender, at that place is a special object called Armature , which can be described roughly as a ready of related bones that are used to command a mesh. To utilize an analogy, bones are for armatures as vertices are for meshes. Armatures can be added within the 3D View by pressing Shift + A and choosing Armature | Unmarried Bone on the menu. Similar to meshes, armatures likewise accept an Edit Mode attainable through the Tab primal, where y'all can add, change, and remove bones every bit you lot wish. Basic tin can besides exist linked, creating a concatenation of hierarchically related bones.

Rigging is often referred to equally one of the most hard subjects in 3D blitheness. When creating a graphic symbol rig, at that place are many aspects that you have to keep in mind, and two of them should exist observed equally major guidelines:

The rig must be simple enough to be used by the animator
The rig must be circuitous enough to allow convincing movements for your characters

Finding an platonic residual betwixt complexity of features and ease of use is the Holy Grail of grapheme rigging. On one hand, if a rig is also simple it tin can be harder for the animator to give the graphic symbol an "illusion of life". On the other hand, an extremely complex rig tin can be a nightmare: the animator should non require a tutorial to be able to showtime posing a grapheme. It has to be straightforward plenty to exist used instinctively. Of course, a skilled animator should be able to attain an amazing piece of animation even with a very simple rig, but the job of a grapheme rigger is to make the animator's life easier.

Because every animation projection has its ain sorts of challenges and demands, there is no absolute right or wrong way to build a graphic symbol rig. What nosotros will see here are best practices that should utilise to most situations. These recipes should be dealt with just as in a traditional cookbook: feel free to add spice to arrange your personal gustatory modality.

Defining good orientations for your bones

When creating rigs for 3D characters in Blender, in that location is one mistake that is probably the most common of all, and it is also responsible for lots of headaches in the future: the orientations of the os chains.

Every time nosotros have to create a bone chain to allow our character to do a specific movement, some people (peradventure in a hurry) frequently overlook this foundation of a good character rig. Since our characters and its bones live in a iii-dimensional infinite, everyone familiar with 3D concepts should know that they are discipline of the 3 world axes: 10, Y and Z.

Along these concepts, nosotros should be comfortable with the thought of "local" and "global" coordinates. Global coordinates are the ones relative to the scene: every scene has its Up or Down (Z axis), Left or Right (X centrality), and Forepart or Back (Y axis) coordinates. Every object in a scene as well has its own, or local, coordinates to let easier transformations. To make an analogy with our globe, "going East" would be the global coordinates while "turning correct" refers to your local coordinates.

For instance, we should exist allowed to bend a character frontward regardless of its rotation and position relative to the scene. This "bending frontwards" would be as well hard to achieve using only the global coordinates; that'southward why we can utilise the local ones.

Getting ready

Using the concept of local coordinates, nosotros have also to define some conventions such every bit which centrality we are talking about when bending "forrad". Nosotros have to pay attention to the sane system of the bones, where a chosen local axis (for case, local X) would be the aforementioned for all "forward" transformations, be it a finger or a knee. The character Otto , which is used throughout this volume, uses the X local centrality for the near mutual transformations, such as for bending the elbows and knees, closing the fingers, or bending the torso forward. This makes it easier to pose our character without having to worry about which axis yous should use: if in doubt, utilise 10!

Here we'll run into how to create and right bone bondage in order for them to be more than coherent and easier to manipulate.

How to exercise it...

Let's suppose y'all want a chain with three bones for a finger:

Open up the file 001-Orientation.blend from this book's support files. You'll see a hand model with 4 of its finger bones already set up. I've allow the band finger for you lot to rig, similar in the next screenshot:
Position your 3D cursor where the offset finger bone should be created: select your mesh, enter the Edit Mode ( Tab ), select a vertex or group of vertices at the base of operations of the finger and printing Shift + S . Choose Cursor to Selected .
Get back to Object Style ( Tab ), select the armature, enter its Edit Way ( Tab ) and printing Shift + A to add a new bone nether the cursor location.

Note

In gild to view meliorate what nosotros're doing, I've enabled the X-Ray and Axes display modes, in the Properties panel, under the Object Data tab.

At present you merely move the tip of this bone until the finger'south start joint and extrude the os two times, right? WRONG!

Extruding bones is just what one would normally practice in order to create a bone chain, but that brings to our new basic some unwanted rotations.
Select the tip of your bone and move (press the G key) it until the tip of the finger, equally seen in the next screenshot:
Select your unabridged bone, open up the Specials menu (press the W central), and cull Subdivide . Select one of the bones and echo this process.
Move (press the G fundamental) the joints to the appropriate places of the finger, and the orientations volition be consistent. Note that the X axis of each bone is always pointing toward united states, while the other basic on the hand have their Z axes pointing upwardly. We need them all consistent.
Select the bones you lot have just created, press Ctrl + R , and blazon 90. This will correct their rotations, making their Z axes point toward us (check the Centrality conventions department at the cease of this recipe to know more than about this).
Select the manus mesh, hold Shift , select a bone, and press Ctrl+ P . Choose With Automatic Weights to get a basic deformation on the hand.
At present you lot tin can rotate the bones under their local X axis ( R + Ten + X ) to see what happens.

Note

When you tell Blender to rotate ( R ), move ( G ), or scale ( S ) an object, you tin use some central modifiers to tell information technology in which axis that transformation must happen. If you press X , Y , or Z once, you lot're telling it that one of these global coordinates must be used. If you press the modifier key twice ( X + Ten , Y + Y , or Z + Z ) you're enervating that the transformation happen regarding that local coordinate.

How information technology works...

When using a correct bone orientation upon its creation, you lot avoid the need to correct the armature later. The orientation of the bones is often overlooked, and problems at this stage volition exist painfully noticed on later on stages, when the animator tries to move the bones in a coherent way.

To demonstrate that, I've created the alphabetize finger bones with the usual "extrude" technique. Let'due south say the animator wants to close the fingers: this should exist accomplished past selecting each bone and pressing R to rotate and X twice to select the local Ten axis. The next image shows the results of the previous action with the basic hidden, to demonstrate how the extruding technique on the index finger leads to unwanted results. We wanted to close the finger, not twist it like that. An animator would have a hard time trying to figure out which axis should be used for every finger. Talk about being counterproductive!

There's more than...

What if yous have already created bone chains with this orientation disorder? Exercise you have to recreate everything from scratch? No, there'southward hope for usa all. This procedure is just to avoid the need for correcting the bones later, by creating them with the right orientations from the beginning. This means nosotros can adjust the orientation by hand at any moment.

Correcting the orientation

You can always right or define the orientation of a os through its Roll value. In the Armature'due south Edit Style, select the os(s) that you want to correct, press Ctrl + R , and motility your mouse. Equally with any transformation in Blender, you tin can use information technology along with Ctrl (to do it in steps of five degrees) or Shift (to become softer transformations).

Yous tin can manually view and set the Scroll angle of a bone through the Backdrop Panel (printing the N key), just below the Radius slider, as shown in the following screenshot:

Another shortcut for automatically correcting the Scroll value is Ctrl + N , which tells Blender to approximate what the best curl angles are based on their Z axes, which will all point to the same direction ("Upwardly" or the cursor location).

Centrality conventions

Another important thing to continue in mind when creating bones is axis conventions. Information technology means yous should always set the "forepart" of a bone to a given axis. This "front" is the default axis for a transformation, usually a rotation.

For example, a humanoid character has some default movements, such as bending an elbow, knee joint, or finger. The bones for all these parts betoken in different directions, only you can fix their roll values in a fashion that the animator'due south life becomes a trivial easier. A common approach is setting the X axis of a bone as the default transformation angle, so when the animator wants to curve and elbow, a knee, or a finger, it'south but a matter of using the 10 local axis for that. There's no need to wonder "what local axis should I use for this transformation?". In the example of our armature, we can select all the basic, press Ctrl + R , and type 90, so the bones' X axes bespeak at us in the Front end view.

This style you go consistence throughout your rig, which is a must in professional workflows. I've seen rigs where different fingers in a hand required a different default axes for bending. A nightmare!

Rigify

A very cool way to add new bones and bondage is by using the Rigify add-on which comes bundled with Blender 2.five. You can enable information technology in the User Preferences Window (press Ctrl + Alt + U ), in the Add together-ons tab.

With this add-on enabled you lot can add predefined bone chains for body parts or fifty-fifty a full human being trunk. The corking reward is that you don't need to worry nearly names or orientations, since they come configured. Y'all just have to worry about correctly adjusting the preset chains to the proportion of your graphic symbol mesh.

Using divide os bondage for different tasks

A useful approach when building rigs is to create more one bone chain to accomplish different tasks. The idea behind this is to not overwhelm you with and then many functions attached to ane single bone, making the rig easier to understand and modify.

It is useful to separate the os chains by their primary functions to make things easier to manage: one concatenation that will only deform your character's mesh, ane for creating Inverse Kinematics ( IK ) controllers, some other for Forward Kinematics ( FK ) controllers, interface, helpers, and and then on.

By creating them separately, you can make changes without breaking things in your rig. If you stack all the functions and constraints on 1 single chain, a piddling change can make a real mess. Past separating them you can besides make your rig more appealing and usable past defining custom shapes, colors, and hiding bones that shouldn't exist touched by the animator.

Getting gear up

You need a mesh to be deformed by the bones yous'll create. Open the file 001-Chains.alloy from this book'south support files. Information technology contains a tail-like mesh so you can follow this recipe to create divide chains, producing a scorpion-like movement.

How to do information technology...

Position the 3D cursor on the base of operations of the tail, with a left mouse click in the 3D View, as seen in the next screenshot:
Press Shift + A and select Armature | Single Bone to create 1 bone which extends from the base to the tip of the tail. Enter in Edit Mode (press Tab ), select its tip, and motion (printing Yard ) information technology to the tip of the tail.

Note

In club to better run into the bones and their axes, go to the Properties window, under the Object Data panel, and enable the X-Ray and Axes backdrop.
Select the bone, press W , and select Subdivide . Repeat this two more times in order to get eight bones. Select each joint and motion (printing 1000 ) it then it fits the tail nicely.
Select all the bones (the A primal), press Ctrl + R , and type 90 so their orientation is set with their X axes pointing towards united states. The X local axis volition be the default to the front or dorsum rotation.
Refer to the recipe called Defining good orientations for your bones if in dubiousness. You lot should stop up with something similar to the next screenshot, showing the front and side views:
However in Edit Style, gear up the bones' names using the Properties panel (press the Due north key). For their names, use a prefix such as D_, which stands for "Deformation". That'due south the role of these basic: they're responsible for deforming our mesh. Skilful names can be D_tail.1 to D_tail.viii.

Notation

In Blender versions prior to 2.5, finding the name of a bone in the list displayed past the program could be a tough job, as seen in the next screenshot. Using prefixes are crucial to help you discover the desired bone in a list and know its office without having to select it. With the inflow of Blender 2.5, finding a bone (or any object) by its name is much easier: just start typing in the appropriate field to narrow the selection options.

Now we're going to create the controller bone. This os belongs to another "chain" of bones responsible for decision-making the deformation ones. The controllers don't perform any mesh deformation by themselves. Although in this example this concatenation has only one bone for the sake of simplicity, more complex rigs can hands take dozens of them.
Still in the armature'due south Edit Style, identify your cursor but above the tip of the tail and press Shift + A to add another bone. Printing Ctrl + R and type 90 and then that its orientation is the aforementioned as the deformation chain ones. Define this bone's proper noun as Tail. The controller basic are usually named without prefixes in gild to exist friendlier to the animator, who will look out for Tail instead of C_Tail.
Disable the Deform option on the Bones tab in the Properties window, as seen in the side by side screenshot, so this os volition not perform any deformations on the mesh:
At present we're going to add constraints to control our deformation chain. Go to the armature's Pose Fashion (printing Ctrl + Tab ). Then, select the bone Tail (which is the controller one), printing Shift and then select the os on the tip of the deformation chain, D_tail.8. Printing Ctrl + Shift + C to bring up the Constraints menu and choose Copy Rotation .
This will make the bone on the deformation chain copy the rotations of the controller one, but you will notice that it volition copy the accented rotation (which is non what we want). To make this os copy the transformation based on its ain rotation, select information technology and go to the Bone Constraints console, under the Properties window. Check the Offset pick and select Local Space on the two drop-down lists, equally seen in the side by side screenshot:
Apply the aforementioned constraint to all other bones of the deformation chain: select them and, lastly, the bone which has the constraint we desire to re-create. Go to the Pose menu on the window header and select Constraints | Re-create Constraints to Selected . That will utilise the same constraint to all bones of the deformation chain.
Still in Pose Way, select the Tail os and rotate information technology. You'll meet that all the bones on the deformation chain follow its rotation like a real tail, every bit seen in the next screenshot:
Since the animators wouldn't demand to see or motion the bones on the Deformation concatenation, you should select and motion (the 1000 primal) them to another (and invisible) bone layer. I usually move my deformation bones to the terminal layer, so you can do the same for yours. You should now also turn off the X-Ray choice for this armature, since it's no longer needed.
Lastly, select the Tail mesh, hold Shift , click on one os of the chain, printing Ctrl + P , and choose With Automatic Weight to make our armature object actually deform the mesh, as seen in the adjacent screenshot:

How it works...

Past creating split up bone chains to accomplish different tasks, yous end upwardly with a very usable and organized rig, which is piece of cake to animate and to configure, since each os does only what is meant to do. This approach allows us to accept a larger number of deformation bones to reach softer results while nonetheless being simple to animate, having fewer bones to be controlled past the animator. This example showed how a scorpion-like tail can be controlled with only one bone, although 8 bones build its structure.

There's more

The concept of split up bone chains will be discussed further throughout this book, notably when creating unlike bondage to control arms, legs, body, face, and eyes.

Don't get tied upward on those bondage

Every bit your rig grows in complication, you should utilise the bone layers that Blender offers you to manage the chains.

In some cases it is interesting to brand a bone nowadays on more one layer. For instance, you may desire to proceed your principal controller bones (limbs, head, torso) but on layer 1 and get out the detail controllers (facial expressions, fingers, eyes) on layer two. Only there are other basic which act only to enable and disable features of your rig, such as the power to stretch limbs or switch between Inverse and Forward Kinematics (more than almost this in the recipe Making an IK-FK switcher ).

These "general rig properties" should be present on both layers 1 and 2. To accomplish that, select the desired bone, press 1000 to bring up the layer choice menu, hold Shift , and click on all the layers that you desire those bones to belong to.

And always recall to utilise prefixes for your chains in order to notice what yous want quicker. You can use D_ for deformation bones, IK_ for Changed Kinematics basic, FK_ for Forward Kinematics bondage, T_ for target bones, M_ for mechanism, and so on. In that location's more on these uses in after recipes.

Customizing shapes and colors for your bones

Not merely do we need to create rigs that piece of work, but they also need to exist usable for the animator. Blender offers united states of america a property for the bones chosen X-Ray, that allows united states to view the bones from any bending, regardless of the mesh information technology deforms. It can exist useful sometimes, notably when editing the bone chains, but using Ten-Ray in more than complex rigs can misfile the animator. Take a look at the ataxia in the next screenshot, where all bones of our character Otto are visible and with X-Ray enabled:

As we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, a rig must be visually simple and intuitive, and then anyone without prior guidance tin start moving the grapheme without trouble. It is possible to change the default shape and colour of your bones in Blender, making your rig much more than usable and intuitive.

Getting set

Creating custom shapes and colors for your bones in Blender is piece of cake, and nosotros'll see some good practices for your rigs. You can use whatsoever chain of bones in Blender.

How to practise it...

Open the file 001-Legs.blend . It has two bondage of 3 basic indicative of two legs of a man, equally y'all tin can see in the next screenshot. We're going to make shapes for all the bones, and we'll brand the bones of each leg a different color:
In Object Mode, create a single plane through Shift + A | Mesh | Circumvolve . On the Operator tab, in the Tool Shelf (printing the T key to open up it), change the values of Vertices to 8 and Radius to 100.
In the Properties panel (press N ), set the name of this object equally SHAPE_Leg. Arrive Edit Style (printing Tab ), select the two vertices positioned over the 10 axis, and brand an edge ( F ) between them. This would make a line to divide the octagon in half, similar to the one in the next screenshot:
Go back to Object Mode ( Tab ) , select the armature, and enter into Pose Style ( Ctrl + Tab ).
Select Thigh.Fifty and become to the Os tab in the Properties window. Under the department Display , click on the field called Custom Shape and select SHAPE_Leg . Check the box called Wireframe , which will brand your custom shape e'er be fatigued in a more than pleasing way, regardless of your current viewport shading. The next screenshot shows these fields:

You'll see that your bone volition change from the default octahedron to the shape you lot but created. Only you'll also find that the rotation and position of the shape don't help much, since we need information technology at the middle of the bone and perpendicular to its direction. The next screenshot shows the problem:

Note

If you lot don't see the shapes after this step, become to the Object Information tab under the Properties window and make sure that the boxes Shapes and Colors are enabled.
Select your shape object again, enter in Edit Style ( Tab ), select all the vertices ( A ), and rotate ( R ) them 90 degrees in the local X axis. Yous'll see that the os shapes update automatically. To prepare the position, making the shape stand about half of the bone, move ( Chiliad ) the selected vertices in their local Y axes until you are happy with the result. However in Edit Mode, resize ( S ) the shape to achieve a reasonable size in your rig. The adjacent screenshot shows the result:
Now you tin can use the same shape for the Ankle.L os, using the Brandish department in the Bone tab nether the Backdrop window.
Echo the same process and create some other shape for the Foot.L bone: be artistic and make a bi-dimensional shape of a foot. Name information technology SHAPE_Foot.50 Repeat everything for the other leg and you should stop up with something similar to what's in the next screenshot (I've created a simple grapheme mesh to brand it easier to come across):

Now, the colors! We tin can use them to distinguish the bones in various ways: a color for the left limbs and other for the right ones, a color for IK and other for FK and so on. The important hither is to make it easier for the animator to visually understand the difference between bones. Permit's make the left ones red and the correct ones greenish.
Select the left leg basic and printing Ctrl + G . Cull Add Selected to Bone Grouping . This will create a new group of basic called simply Group .
Get to the Backdrop window and select the Object Data tab. Under Bone Groups , you'll meet a group called Group . Select it and change its name to Leg_Left on the Name field.
Under the Colour Set list, select 01 – Theme Colour Set and click on the Assign push to make these bones blood-red. Repeat the task for the bones on the right-hand side leg, choosing an appropriate name and selecting the entry 04 – Theme Color Fix to make them blue.

Note

The next screenshot shows our rig with shapes and dissimilar colors practical forth with the settings on the Properties window (the color images can be downloaded from the publisher's website or viewed in the digital version of this volume). The file 001-Legs-complete.blend has our finished recipe for your reference.

How it works...

By setting custom shapes and colors for your bones, you tin offer a much more intuitive interface for your controls, making the task of animation easier. You should create shapes that are larger than the mesh plain-featured by the armature, so that you can see the bones without using the clutter caused by the 10-Ray property.

You should look for shapes that are simple and that show information nigh the control. In our case, we created an octagon with an edge through its middle. This edge shows visually the local 10 axis of the bone, making information technology easier for the animator to sympathize the default transformation of it. Feet, hands, and optics controllers are ofttimes made using figurative shapes similar to the one in this example.

At that place'south more

Forth with getting an organized 3D View, you should also exist able to hands manage your entire scene. Blender has a special type of window, the Outliner , which allows united states of america to run across every object in our scenes organized hierarchically. Simply the Outliner alone doesn't do all the tricks: you take to create and proper noun your objects properly in social club to stay organized.

Pay attending to the Outliner

The Outliner is a not bad tool in Blender to see the hierarchy of objects in your file. But when you create a rig with lots of custom shapes, the Outliner list can easily become full of objects yous won't utilize. To remove the clutter of it, it's recommended to create an object (normally an "Empty" named "Shapes") to exist parent of all Shape objects. This mode, yous can easily browse on the Outliner without dozens of shape objects. It'due south also useful to brand this Empty object child of the Armature object, so all shapes are hierarchically related to the rig.

To forbid these objects from showing upwardly in your render, a proficient exercise is to select them all ( A ), motion ( M ) them to the last layer and hide ( H ) them from your scene. The next screenshot shows the Outliner of this recipe's scene. Notice that the shapes are hidden (the disabled "eye" icon) and volition not be rendered (the disabled "camera" icon):

Using corrective shape keys

The ability to create bones that deform a mesh is swell, simply that alone doesn't solve all our rigging issues. Some may argue that it's possible to create perfect deformations in every movement of your character just with lots of actress basic and even more detailed weight painting, simply that's too time consuming. We want our rigs ready to be animated in a short amount of time. Nosotros care well-nigh our character looking skillful on screen, not the purity of the technique.

That's why we can solve some trickier rigging bug with corrective Shape Keys. Shape Keys are saved states of our character's mesh, with the position of each vertex stored in the figurer's memory. We're going to create some custom deformations in our character to right specific issues caused past our rig. The case volition take intendance of one of the most mutual source of deformation issues: the bending of arms.