Blender 2.5 Character Animation Cookbook

✍ Scribed by Virgilio Vasconcelos

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 308
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

• Give soul to your characters by building high-quality rigs - Learn how to create efficient and easy to use character rigs - Understand and make your characters , so that your audience believes theyre alive - See common approaches when animating your characters in real world situations - Learn the techniques needed to achieve various setups, from IK-FK blending to corrective shape keys and eyes controllers - The only book to cover advanced aspects of working with character animation in Blender. In Detail Blender is an open source 3D graphics application that can be used for modeling, rigging, animating, rendering and thousands of other things. While modeling characters isnt the biggest of your worries, animating them to make them feel as-good-as alive is what differentiates a professional from an amateur. This book offers clear, illustrative, and easy-to-follow recipes to create character rigs and animations for common situations. Bring your characters to life by understanding the principles, techniques and approaches involved in creating rigs and animations, youll be able to adapt them to your own characters and films. The book offers clear step-by-step tutorials, with detailed explanations, screenshots and support files to help you understand the principles behind each topic. Each recipe covers a logical step of the complete creation of a character rig and animation, so youre not overwhelmed with too much information at once. Youll see numerous examples and screenshots that guide to achieve various rigging and animation tasks, logically separated so you can understand each in detail. The rigging topics are divided by each region of the body (torso, limbs, face, eyes), and further separated by the specific topic (neck, fingers, mouth, eyelids, etc) for clarity. All rigging tasks are accomplished with the built-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 real world productions, showing good practices to understand and overcome the challenges. What you will learn from this book - Refine your animation with Blender tools - Understand principles behind movements like walking, running, jumping and weight lifting - Stay productive with an organized animation workflow - Create flexible face rigs with a mixed approach - Learn how to stretch the arms, legs and spine of your characters - Create corrective shape keys - Fine control your characters eyes - Switching between IK and FK for arms and legs in a shot - Create an IK foot setup with 3 pivots - How to track your animation arcs and timing

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Copyright......Page 3
Credits......Page 4
About the Author......Page 5
About the Reviewers......Page 7
www.PacktPub.com......Page 8
Table of Contents......Page 12
Preface......Page 16
Introduction......Page 20
Defining good orientations for your bones......Page 21
Using separate bone chains for different tasks......Page 26
Customizing shapes and colors for
your bones......Page 33
Using corrective shape keys......Page 42
Making an IK-FK switcher......Page 48
Tips on weight painting your character......Page 55
Introduction......Page 62
How to create a stretchy spine......Page 63
Rigging the pelvis......Page 71
Making your character breathe......Page 76
Controlling the neck and head......Page 78
How to control where your characters look at......Page 84
The eyelids controllers......Page 89
Controlling the pupils......Page 97
Introduction......Page 106
Adding expressions using Shape Keys......Page 107
Face controls with lattices......Page 114
Creating the jaw controller......Page 120
Control your tongue......Page 124
Introduction......Page 128
Controlling fingers......Page 129
Creating IK legs with a three-pivot foot......Page 134
Stretch those limbs!......Page 142
Setting up the shoulders......Page 147
Cartoon bending for arms and legs......Page 150
Different spaces for IK hands......Page 154
Introduction......Page 160
Animating in layers......Page 161
Changing between FK and IK in a shot......Page 168
Grasping and throwing objects......Page 172
Silhouette and mirrored rendering......Page 175
Tracking animation arcs......Page 179
Using video for background reference......Page 182
Working with linked assets and characters......Page 186
Non-linear animation......Page 192
Introduction......Page 196
Adjusting and tracking the timing......Page 197
Spacing: favoring and easing poses......Page 201
Anticipating an action......Page 207
Using squash and stretch......Page 210
Breaking the symmetry......Page 215
Introduction......Page 220
Animating a tennis serve......Page 221
Heavy metal......Page 228
Glory for your team: kicking the ball......Page 235
Run, Forrest! (in cycles)......Page 240
Introduction......Page 248
It's time for secondary actions......Page 249
Hold, but not still: using moving holds......Page 253
Animating characters with appendages......Page 257
Like clay: refining with the AniSculpt
technique......Page 262
Introduction......Page 268
In the blink of an eye......Page 269
Walking with style......Page 274
Talking heads (and bodies)......Page 280
Creating thumbnails with Grease Pencil......Page 288
Naming conventions......Page 291
Extremes, Breakdowns, Inbetweens, ones and twos......Page 292
Index......Page 296