Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Animation Special !!
Blender learning made easy
Tutorials
Spider rigging
Game character rigging
Animating falling feathers
Making of ‘Age of Steam’
Making of ‘Plumiferos’
Making of ‘New Pengueon’
Creating a texture in Gimp
Articles
Project Orange special !!
Foss.in Report
‘Stop Staring’ - Reviewed
www.blenderart.org
CONTENTS
WRITERS
Sandra Gilbert
Gaurav Nawani
Enrico Valenza
Juan J. Pena
David Lettier
Zsolt Stefan
Claudio Malefico Andaur
Welcome to the 2nd issue of Blenderart. This issue we are Rigid Body
focusing on Animation. Animation is a actually a very large Fluid Simulation
field, covering a wide variety of techniques and methods Shape keys
for adding motion, emotion and effects to an endless array
of objects and characters. This is an impressive feature list and now you can use any
of these alone or in various combinations to create your
The last few months has seen a major overhaul of the next animated masterpiece.
animation system, making animation much easier and less
painful for even the least skilled of us. The ease of setting In this issue we are going to cover a few of these methods
Sandra Gilbert up a skeletal rig makes animating your characters less and techniques to get you up and animating. We are also
daunting, tempting even the most cautious of us to try our bringing you up to speed on “Project Orange” and as a
Managing editor
hand at animating. special treat, we even have a short interview with some of
the Orange team.
We are very lucky in that Blender has so many tools for
animating. There is a method and tool for just about any- On a personal note, the Blenderart staff would like to
thing you would want to do. For those of you who have not express our thanks to the entire Blender community for
yet explored the animation capabilities of Blender, here the overwhelming positive response and support of our
are a few of the tools you may want to consider as you first issue.
venture into the world of animation.
Happy blending!
KeyFraming/IPO manipulation
Lattice deformation
Curves and paths
DupliFrames
Pose Mode/IK & FK Chains
Particles/Dupliverts (Especially with deflection and force
options)
Soft Bodies
www.blenderart.org
Ask Blentuu
Q Hi there Blentuu, grabbed. Note that in this case there are 4 possible rips, so posi-
tioning the mouse has to be done a bit careful.
I have a question for your section of the Blender art mag. I’ve
used other 3d programs before like Maya, Max and XSI and they When edges are selected, the rip seam is defined, so the mouse
all have a tool that allows you to split a polygon in half. I can’t cursor position only defines which part is being grabbed.
figure out how to do this in Blender. I’ve tried using the knife tool
to split a polygon but when it cuts, polygons on both sides of the With only 1 vertex selected, you can step by step rip a mesh seam;
Blentuu answers one I tried to cut would have cuts in them too. this also works on the edges of a mesh grid for example.
It only works for quads, this because it internally uses the face
loop-select to detect the proper faces that need to be ripped.
If only 1 vertex is selected, the edge closest to the mouse cur-
sor defines the direction of the rip seam and what part is being
www.blenderart.org
Ask Blentuu
A Python not being one of my greatest strengths, I did some searching A - Matt
around and discovered that there is a python script in progress right
now that should cover what you need. It is named ‘AreaVolume’ and Any work flow you use will be of course tailored to your individual work
further information about its progress and usage can be found in the style. That being said, a commonly used work flow.
python forums at: http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5051
0&highlight=areavolume. A) Planning Stage.
B) Story line.
C) Concept sketches, perhaps even do up clay models.
Q Hello Blentuu, D) Story boards ( even if only using stick figures).
I have a question I would like to see answered in the next issue of E) The next part is done in progressive stages of detail. Set up your
Blender art magazine. shot/scenes with basic primitives, to get an idea of spacing and size Do
a quick render with basic colouring and lighting to judge timing.
I am new to Blender (using it about six months part time and have F) Model low poly versions of everything, refining colouring, lighting
worked through the tutorials in the Blender 2.3 Guide twice now). I timing issues. Add in rough dialogue and sound effects. Add progressive
am just getting to the point where the application is familiar to me and amounts of detail, materials and texturing and lighting, fine tune the
can easily follow most well written tutorials. I come from a scientific timing and sound issues
background and I approach things the way I would, if I was executing a G) Final render
laboratory protocol (read procedure, gather materials and tools, follow
instructions, collect data, analyse data, write a report). Now not having This type of setup works best in a team environment, with everyone
any formal art education I have been thinking about how to approach assigned specific tasks, but can be modified to an individual effort.
the work flow in Blender to produce a small animation project. Do the
professionals have a general methodology that they follow: model char- -- Blentuu
acters, add texture and lighting, rig for animation, create animation,
render animation files?
Some tips for a noob regarding typical work flow that professionals use
when approaching a small project would be of interest to me. I like the
first issue and am happily working on the included tutorials. Thanks for
the magazine hope to see something on work flow in one of your up-
coming issues.
www.blenderart.org
News Flash
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Foss.in report
switched the animated demos to the rendered art- Shortly after noon a group of youngsters presented
Foss.in report work. Their queries immediately changed to: how was themselves at the stall. They were the enthusiastic
this stuff done in Blender? How much time it would type and one of them wanted to actually see how is
take to do so? Exactly the questions I was waiting to was done. There began my first live Blender session
The Linux Bangalore has always been a big event in
answer :) and boy I was not aware of the usefulness it had.
India. Bangalore being the IT capital of India, has tre-
mendous interest in FOSS. This year the LB was aptly
Things were going fine for us, though we did not have Day 3
renamed and transformed to FOSS.in as it has grown
net access until Atul came in and suggested that This was the busiest day for me. I gave about 5-6 Live
greatly over the years and due to the amount of at-
we move to the ‘Business Expo booth’, as there was Blender sessions, it was as if my stall had a high PR
tendance it commands it is no longer correct to call it
plenty of empty space and ready net access there. rating through ‘word of mouth’. Sartaj Kang, one of
a local LUG event any more.
By the time lunch ended we had shifted there. At the the KDE developers (and few others who have been
end of the day the crowd waned. watching the small groupings with amusement) were
Day 1
of the view that I should have been giving a full
I was there as a Blender user presenting the ever
Day 2
increasing quality and features of Blender at a booth.
I was prompt to present myself at the event the next
The event was launched by Atul Chitnis, one of the
morning, however it seems
biggest supporters of FOSS in India.
morning does not wake
people faster. Since I had
After attending the inspirational talk by Alan Cox,
nothing to do, I went and
we went to fetch the machines which we were going
attended my first FOSS
to use for our demos or projects. We got brand new
event of the day Ahem...
machines from the warehouse. Then I realised that I
‘LinuxChix’. After attend-
had a problem on my hands, this being the first of any
ing the event I returned
such event for me, I didn’t bring a copy of Blender
back to my stall and was
with me! Although I had duly burned all necessary
told that a few guys were
stuff for demonstration a day before. No worries, just
interested in Blender and
next to me was the strong contingent from Delhi LUG
they were waiting for me
and they had everything I needed ;).
for some time. After a
while a small group of four
After a short while I started demos of Blender anima-
guys came over, and asked
tions, using the recent Suzanne award winners. Slowly
what Blender could do. I
many people gathered and started to discuss among
showed them some stuff,
themselves as to how Blender stands amongst other
Enrico’s ‘Penguin Dance’
commercial counterparts.
was a favourite and so was
the ‘Cycles’ animation.
I did not answer any of those queries, but promptly
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Foss.in report
talk instead, at other times they even wanted a BOF Finally I met an very interesting person: Shree Kumar.
entirely for themselves. I nodded in agreement but Then there was Vaseem a engineering student, who He had worked on Blender scripting and was the one
luckily they were just too busy to attend one ;) was interested in learning whether Blender can be those guys who made those Blender demos running
used for his academic project on ‘photo geometry’. on the HP Cluster (or was it some thing else ?) And if
Just next to us was an HP stall. There they were We discussed a lot on the issue and finally he agreed I recall right, was one of the people who customised
demoing a Blender version running on a modified that using python with Blender might help him. the Xserver to use multiple monitors asynchronously
xserver which made use of three monitors and gave on that machine. More importantly, we developed an
a ‘large desktop real-estate ‘ for Blender. There was mutual understanding that I can misuse his talents
Mr. Manjunath from HP, with whom I discussed various to correct errors on python scripts which fail on my
issues under which HP could be helping OSS. But as machine ;)
they always say a commercial company has commer-
cial interests in mind, well rightly so, but at-least he At the end of it, I was filled with vigour, that I will
agreed in theory that there can be a chance that HP return next year with a much larger role than this.
can make use of Blenders growing capabilities. The
talk went on to comparing the powerful features of If Blender could generate such a good amount of in-
other commercial apps with Blender, which came terest despite being announcing as an entry very late
back to the development of features needed and in the event schedule, then it surely will have a much
when I told him about the speed of actual develop- better presence with a full fledged talk on the sub-
ment, I could see him getting excited. ject, and more importantly a developer friendly BOF
on which I am sure Tom (Letterrip) will be nodding his
Day 4 head in agreement ;)
Again a slow start in the morning, but this was one
of the most productive days of all. A professor from -- Gaurav Nawani
one of the Goa Universities wanted to learn the basics
of using Blender himself so that he can introduce
this useful tool to his students. There was only one
problem though, he was looking for CAD features
which Blender does not readily offer. I discussed a
work around with him, like importing the mechanical
drawings through images and building models with
reference. They might not be accurate, but 3d models
will keep student’s interest. I also suggested to him
other OSS CAD tools. Despite that, I spent a good 1-2
hrs. detailing for him how to use Blender, and I must
say he was really interested in learning. I hope he can
make use of the small learning session.
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg1
field. The sun shines, wind blows slowly, the music is Giving it a nice white material would be cool, and
Falling Feathers Tutorial melodramatic, and everything looks like a dream... if you feel like texturing it with an alpha enabled
suddenly the main character sees a white feather fall- feather photograph, that wouldn’t hurt either. But
-- Juan J. Peña/Apollux
ing from the sky. She catches it with her open palm, those are cosmetics and won’t affect the animation
looks up and sees thousands of white feathers coming results, just enhance it. (However, If you do go for
from the sky. She smiles, somehow now she knows the texture, remember to set it to affect the “Col”,
that the conflict is over and her beloved one is fine. “Nor”, “Ref”, “Spec” and “Alpha” channels in order to
The above scene should be familiar for many read- get a convincing look and not just a feather painted
ers... with some small variations it has been used in on a piece of glass.)
many movies, games, novels, etc. This tutorial will
teach you how to deal with the feathers... the char- We also need a CG environment where the whole
acter itself is outside of this tutorial’s scope. sequence takes place.
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg2 10
With all that set we are finally good to go! By now How-to? that collision detection for particles isn’t extremely
you should have something like this: Select the emitter grid (Right click on it) accurate and you get plenty of feathers going briefly
Object |Snap |Cursor |Selection through the ground and then resurfacing. That may
Select the feather (right click on it) be OK for feathers further away from camera, but it
Object |Snap |Selection |Cursor would totally ruin any close up take.
Now make the grid the parent of the Not everything is bad with this approach. The particle
feather, activate Dupliverts for the system allows us to introduce a certain amount of
grid and add a Particle system to the randomness to make the whole thing more believable.
grid. Remember to set some negative Specifically, by making the particle motion path B-
Z force so that all feathers eventually Spline interpolated and giving each feather a random
fall into the ground. starting speed the illusion of rain increases a lot. The
feathers still behave kind of fake, but we will work
First thing you will notice is that on that shortly. Special care should be taken with the
unless you set the “Key” value to a Vect” setting, as after certain point it tends to intro-
high number the feather’s fall will duce a 90 degrees turns in the particles/feathers.
be erratic to say the least. The best
Since this is an animation tutorial, I’ll grant you some results are with “key” set to the maximum value of Summing it up, these are the settings I am talking
leverage with the modelling. You can get a ready to 100, but you can get usable results setting it around about:
use scene at the blenderart website. If you don’t feel 80 or above.
like modelling all that stuff right now. Second thing you
should notice is that
The First Instinct even with the deflec-
Most likely your first instinct would be to create a tors damping set to
particle system, set the ground and our stand-in the maximum, feath-
character as particle deflectors, and let Blender do its ers still slide over the
magic. Let’s explore that road. ground, just like if the
ground was slippery
We need to create a particle emitter that would cast ice, eventually most
the feathers; a mesh grid should do nicely for that. of the feathers find their way to the edge and fall into We will seek a way to overcome the drawbacks of the
Place the emitter grid outside of the camera’s view the void... not good! Particles approach, while retaining all the good stuff.
and place the feather’s object center in contact with
the grid’s object center. The last, but certainly not the least important, is
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WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg3 11
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg4 12
Keep in mind that adding those extra collision checks Delta IPO’s strongly suggest you to go and re-read those chapters
increases by a great length the time needed for cal- Highly underrated, but extremely useful those IPO on the official documentation.
culations, so I decided not to do it now. If after you channels are. “Delta” is a letter from the Greek
have rendered your first animation test you realise alphabet and is commonly used in math and physics So now, with the feather selected, pick up the “dRot
that you have no other choice them go ahead with it, to represent how much a given magnitude varies over Z” channel and draw a curve for the spinning move-
but you are warned that it will take a long while to a given time. Translating it to common language, it ment. Don’t over do it. I have chosen to draw a simple
finish each frame. measures how much something changes from its initial 2 point curve, one point is at (0,0) and the other is
state. at (25,60). This will cause the feather to rotate 60
Likewise, to cut down the calculation time I tempor- degrees each 25 frames. With the curve set to Cyclic
arily neglected to turn the ground into a soft body Blender offers delta IPO channels for location, rota- Extrapolation the feather will keep spinning forever.
deflector, at least until all the extra magic is done. tion and size, in all three axis. Select any Object, (Screen shot with the dRot Z curve)
Just remember to turn soft body deflection back on; open an IPO window and look for the channels whose
otherwise the feathers will pass right through the floor. name starts with “d”.
<-screen shot with the delta channels.
Refining It Up
Now that we have solved the main issue of the colli- I’ll be
sion detection it is time to start working on the fine assuming
details. that the
reader
Have you ever watched a free falling feather, or a already
light weight leaf coming off from a tree branch? Then knows how
you know they don’t fall in a straight line, they have to edit
some sort of soft rocking movement while they spin and add
over their gravity center. key frames
to an IPO
Certainly we could animate those movements by hand curve
using motion paths and rotation key frames, and it straight
would be easy to do for just a couple of feathers. But from
we are talking about hundreds, maybe even thousands the IPO
of free falling feathers, thus we need a more flexible window. If
and less work intensive way to do it. you need
a reminder
then I
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WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg5 13
Before we get any further, probably you are asking why use “dRot” instead of to move next. The situation can be rectified with the techniques we’ll see on the
“Rot”? Quite simple, had we used “Rot” instead, it would cause every feather to next page, but better avoid the problem if you can.
rotate on exactly the same way... all feathers, at all times, would have the same
rotation! It might look good on a choreographed dance sequence, but that is pre-
cisely what we want to avoid on something as random as a rain.
Using “dRot” means that whatever rotation the IPO dictates is added to whatever
rotation the feather previously had. So, if we give to each feather a different
starting rotation, its rotation will keep being unique through the entire sequence,
which is a more desirable result.
Continuing on with the refinements, now that we have the feather spinning over
its own gravity center we also need to introduce the soft rocking movement that
is so signature to this kind of object. For that the “dLoc X” and “dLoc Y” will be
of much help. Draw some IPO curves like the ones on the screen shot, making sure
that you cross the zero line a couple of times. When you are done set the curve to Screen shot with the dLoc curves-->
Cyclic Extrapolation, so that the rocking movement will keep going on forever.
For both curves I tried to remain within +/- 1 Blender unit around the zero line.
Anything more than that and it will start looking unnatural. Of course, the actual
values also depend on the weather conditions you are trying to represent and the
global scale of the scene. You should also double check that when you zoom out
the curve it stays centred around the zero line.
It is quite easy to draw curves that look OK when you are working on them, but
that tend to progressively deviate from the zero line. After some testing and trial
you should be able to get the hang of it, it is not that difficult, trust me.
In the screen shot you can see that the dLoc X curve progressively drifts away from
the centre, so that over time it gets harder to predict where the feather is going
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg6 14
duplicated feathers keep falling on a straight line? to make the scene even more natural and emotive?
Don’t panic !! Don’t forget to place some of the air currents near
Further Refinements the ground in order to justify why the feathers are
If you playback the animation one frame at a time When you make the duplicates real Blender doesn’t still spinning and moving around even after they
you’ll see that now we have a much more natural mo- copy over the animation IPO’s, just the meshes and touched the ground.
tion for the feather... now it is time to start polishing materials. We will solve it by selecting all the feath-
the final details. ers and making sure that the last one we select is For this particular case, these are the wind and main
the original feather (so it is the active object of the actor’s force field settings that are giving me the best
First detail is that right now we only have one single group). Then use Object >> Make Links >> Object IPO results, but that is more of a personal preference
feather. Do you remember the emitting grid and its If you playback the animation or check each feather than anything else.
particle system? Yes, the one we put away on an un- on the IPO window you’ll see that everything is fine If you previously disabled the Soft bodies’
used layer some pages back. Now it is time to bring it now. deflection for the ground and/or actor, remember to
back. As before, parent the feather to the grid and let re-enable it before doing your final render. On my
the grid create as many duplicates as you need. Don’t It is time to do a test render. Since the IPO curves experience, rendering with deflection enabled for
be afraid to play with the settings. The goal now is to are just one set linked to all the feathers, fixing any the ground increases a lot the time needed to render
create as much randomness as possible. mistake on the IPO channels is as simple as selecting each frame. On my machine, the change of speed is
one of the feathers, doing the needed changes and all really dramatic, jumping from 17 seconds per frame
If you render the scene as it is right now you will the changes will pass over to all the others. to almost 4 minutes per frame!
see that all the feathers are missing on the render.
Remember what I told you about Blender having prob- Note: Depending on what you want to Photo Credits:
lems with dupliverted soft bodies? Well, this is one of achieve, on occasions it may be worthy The feather textured packed within the .blend is
those cases. overriding the soft body system just based on a royalty-free feather photograph that I
before making the duplicates real... For found at “Image*After” (http://www.imageafter.
that just go back one frame before using com/).
To work around the issue we need to make all the du- the “Make Real” command. I don’t advise Other places where you could find royalty free
pliverted feathers real duplicates. Select the grid and to actually click on “Disable Soft bodies” feathers pictures are “Stock.Xchng” (http://www.
before making them real because then sxc.hu/), “morgueFile” (http://morguefile.com/)
press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[A] or use Object >> Clear/Apply >>
you would need to manually select and and “gettyImages” (http://creative.gettyimages.
Make Duplicates Real re-enable it for each feather. When we are com/source/home/home.aspx).
talking of hundreds of feathers that isn’t a
You should expect a major slow down right after you trivial task.
make the duplicates real, because now the Soft body
system is calculating hundreds or thousands of feath- The Final Touches
ers at the same time. What about adding a few gusts of soft wind and
Playback the animation. Is everything fine? No? The maybe a force field vortex around the main character
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Falling feathers -pg7 15
Conclusion
So far we have only scratched the surface of what After adding some wind gusts and playing a little with
could be done with this technique, and that was the the sky, this is what I got as my final animation (movie
purpose of this tutorial. Now it is up to you to keep location to be announced). It took nothing less than
refining, customising and improving the idea. 14 hours to render its 300 frames, so I hope you like
These are just some pointers of what could be done it.
to further enhance the scene:
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Gameblender character rigging -pg1 16
from a discrete set of known data points.” As in the ing bicep if you moved the forearm bone for example.
Character Rigging and ball example, it defines the points/positions/frames On the other hand, per-vertex animation is very time
Animating the ball needs to be in based on the starting and consuming as you must define each vertex’s position,
ending KeyFrames or positions that are discretely or however, you do have complete control. For the fol-
-- David “IPKnightly” Lettier distinctly defined. By using interpolation, you do not lowing tutorial we will be using skeletal animation.
need to define/create every frame of animation as say
Introduction in 2D animation. Per-vertex (or morph-target) anima- Begin by opening Blender, press [A] then [X], and
Providing movement to your game art assets is an tion is used to provide movement to character meshes then click OK? >> Erase selected to delete the default
absolute must to providing a depth of immersion. and the like. cube, light, and camera. [NumPad-1] to switch to
Some items such as rocks, vegetation, buildings, etc the front view. [Shift-F1] to append to your current
can and should be static, however, for your main By moving the individual vertices of the mesh each Blender file (.blend). Find the directory you placed
character and surrounding NPCs (among other game KeyFrame, realistic movement can be achieved by the provided .blend file. Click on the .blend file and
art assets) need to be able to move in a realistic way interpolating each vertex between KeyFrames. Ske- look for the Object section. Click Object, then Joe,
to trick the player’s mind even further into believing letal animation uses a bone or armature system with and then Load Library. Your screen should look similar
the virtual world you’re building. each bone assigned to a vertex group. This process of to this. See Image below.
assigning bones to vertex groups is called “skinning”
To help in moving your characters, you should be as you “skin” the bones with the mesh. Moving these
familiar with the terminology or “jargon” that comes bones, moves their assigned vertices or vertex group.
with it. Animation, whether 2D or 3D, is creating a Defining bone positions each KeyFrame, the bones and
sequence of frames or pictures that are subtle changes thus vertex groups
as you progress in the frame number or count. By are interpolated be-
displaying these pictures in rapid succession you cre- tween KeyFrames.
ate the illusion of animation or movement. KeyFrames
are single frames of animation that discretely define a A major downside
position or point(s) in space to interpolate from (read to skeletal anima-
below). In other words, they signify a subtle to major tion is that you lose
change in movement in the desired animation. For the fine control
example, you’re creating a bouncing ball animation. over where each
Thus, you create three KeyFrames: one when it is in vertex is placed
the air, one when it hits the ground, and one in the each frame. Also,
air again but slightly lower than before. However, this the mesh does not
does not define the frames of animation in between; always skin cor-
to help with this interpolation is needed. Interpola- rectly as in a bulg-
tion, is “a method of constructing new data points
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 3D Gameblender character rigging -pg2 17
Next, make sure the cursor is centred on the pelvic To do this, extrude [E] OK? >> Extrude bone segments your bone names and parents to the image below.
area of “Joe” from the front and side views. [Space- the bones (beginning with the pelvic bone) to create Note, that a typical naming convention is to add “_R”
bar] Add >> Armature. This is going to create a new a chest bone, neck bone, and head bone. Now place or “_L” to either right or left bones respectively.
armature or bone system for our mesh “Joe.” You the cursor at the shoulder areas and [Spacebar] Add
should have something very similar to the image. >> Bone and begin extruding the bones to create an
upper-arm bone, lower-
arm bone, and hand bone.
Duplicate this for each arm
(two in total). Remember
to follow the picture for
reference. Once you have
finished with that, place
the cursor at the top of the
thigh area on the mesh and
create a thigh bone, shin
bone, foot bone just like
you did for the arms. Now
place the cursor (viewing
from the side view [Num-
Now we will begin to build a skeletal system very Pad-3]) and add a new bone for the toe bone. Make
similar to the image below. sure to add one for each foot.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Gameblender character rigging -pg3 18
To recap we have appended our mesh object, created select the mesh only and enter weight paint mode. mesh in the 3D View. As you paint over your mesh,
a basic layout for a humanoid armature system, and You should see something similar to this you will notice the vertices being coloured either red,
named/parented the bones together. Next we will green, blue, or a colour thereof based on the Weight
assign the vertex groups to the armature system via value under Paint in the Buttons Window view. These
“weight panting.” (see box) colours indicate the influence the bone has on the
vertex. For most applications, painting in red seems
to be sufficient enough—you may find otherwise.
Weight painting: Weight painting in Blender is the
Lastly, concerning weight painting (or vertex groups
process of painting of vertices which get assigned
to the different bones along with their “weight” in general), you may come across what is known as
value or rather the influence level that the bone “pinching” or where too many vertices are attached
has on the vertex; blue being no influence (weight to too many bones creating too much deformation.
0.0) while red being full influence (weight 1.0). See below.
See Image below.
To correct this, remove the vertices that should not
move along with the bone you are rotating. Again, this
In rare instances, you will not have to change the will be mostly trial and error.
selected vertices that were chosen
when you selected Create From
Closest Bones. In most cases you
will have to at least select or re-
move some vertices from the vertex
group. Other times, it is best to
erase all selected bones by paint-
ing over the selected vertices with
Trial and error is going to be the technique of choice a weight of zero and full opacity.
until you become familiar with the mesh and weight As said before, weight painting can
painting in general. Begin by selecting the mesh [RM] be a bit of an art. Choosing which
(right mouse button) then select the armature you vertices belong and which do not
created with [Shift] [RM]. The mesh should be a dark can be difficult at times. Select the
pink while the armature is a lighter pink colour. Now bone you would like to begin weight
with both selected, press [Ctrl-P ] Make Parent to >> painting under Links and Materi-
Armature then Create Vertex Groups? >> Create From als >> Vertex Groups in the Buttons Window view. To
Closest Bones. With the bones parented to the mesh, paint the influence or weight value, [LMB] over the
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WORKSHOP - 3D Gameblender character rigging -pg4 19
We finally arrive to the “fun” part—pose mode or the If you wish to ever return the armature and subse- engine buttons or Logic [F4] buttons. Create exactly
actual animating. Select the armature with the [RMB] quently the mesh to original position press [Alt-R] to what you see here (notice this action or AC is called
and enter what is known as Pose Mode under the dif- clear rotations applied while in pose mode. Note; that “look_up”). See below. With that setup and your
ferent modes such as Edit Mode or Object Mode. Your you can also select Rest Pos to return to the original
screen should look similar to this position, however, this will not allow you to apply any
transformations and is not permanent.
When animating, it is very helpful to
stand in front of a mirror and act out the
animation yourself if at all possible (you
can also ask someone else to act it out
for you and even recorded it for later ref-
erence). To ease the explanation we will
go through a ridiculously easy animation.
Begin by selecting the neck bone with
the [RMB] and press [I], then select the
Insert Key >> LocRot option. You will now mouse over the 3D View, press [P] and then [ENTER]
see a key inserted under the neck bone ignoring the no (correct) camera error message. If
in the Action Editor. Now advance the done correctly, you should now be able to press and
.Before you begin, select the root bone or pelvis bone frame count to 10 by pressing the [RAB] (right arrow hold [L] making the character look up. For further
[RMB] and rotate with [R]. This will rotate the entire button). practise create a hand waving animation, an idle
mesh/armature. If you see any vertices left behind animation, and a walking animation.
you must select the mesh and enter weight paint Rotate the neck bone about 30
mode assigning the unassigned vertexes to their ap- or so degrees (making him look
propriate vertex groups. See image below. up) and insert another key like
before. Bring the frame count
back to 1 by pressing the [LAB]
(left arrow button) and press
[Alt-A] in the 3D View. If done
correctly, you should see the
mesh look up towards the sky.
See image on the right.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Gameblender character rigging -pg5 20
Final thoughts.
For video games, most animations will be simple and
in place or in one location, for instance, the walk ani-
mation will be the character walking in place. It is not
until you bring the animation into the game engine
will you advance the mesh position while playing the
animation to create the illusion of walking.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg1 21
Building A Rig Just For Him the root which is the lower ball, the body is the octa-
Rigging a Spider in Now have a look at the blend file (included w/ this issue hedron, the tip is the upper ball.
Blender of Blenderart). There is a spider I modelled for the move and rotate this bone around so it’s in the head
purpose of this tutorial. We will use it as an example. of the Spider, the centre of the character:
-by Gabriel “gabio” Beloin
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg2 22
We will continue to add bones then. move this bone. This master bone is generally named [Shift-D]. This will give you an other bone with the
In side-view[3NumPad] select the root of the “Head” “Root”. Add a new bone while in editmode (Add >> same parent as “Abdomen”, “Head”. Move it to one
and extrude a new bone with [E]. Now you have two Bone), name it “Root” and put it somewhere away of the left legs so it’s placed where a leg is plugged to
bones and each of the roots are at the same spot. from the character (at the bottom is a good place). the body and the tip is in the middle of the first joint.
Name it “Abdomen”. Make it a child of the Head by Rename it to Leg.L:
going in the “Armature Bones” panel with the “Abdo- You can parent the “Head” to the “Root”, but there
men” bone selected, clicking on the drop down on the is a faster way. Select the “Head” bone, then the
right of “child of” and selecting “Head”. “Root” bone so “Root” is active, then do [CTRL-P] and
select “Keep Offset”. Connected is another type of
It’s already time to start to think about the hierarchy relationship. It’s basically a parent-child relation, but
of your rig (example on right side). the root of the child will follow the tip of the Parent.
This will let you create chains of bones like the bones
You can parent a bone in your arm. If you raise your arm, the rest also fol-
to another one. This lows, doesn’t it?
means the child bone
will do what ever
the parent does. This So we now have something looking like this:
gives you the ability
to build solid rigs. If
for example you move
the body, all the legs
will follow. It’s impor-
tant to know what will
depend on what. A
general way of build-
ing a rig is to start
with a master bone.
This bone will be the We will now rig the 8 legs. Don’t worry, there is a way
parent of all the oth- to do just half the job. Since the Spider is symmetri-
ers. This is important cal, it’s possible to tell Blender to rig the other half
in case you want to while we do our part. Go into the Editbutton panel
move everything, and toggle “X-Axis Mirror Edit”. Go into side view
you will only need to [3NUMPAD] Select “Abdomen” and Duplicate it using
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg3 23
Make sure the bone is in the middle of the leg in side Names”. This will change the names from Leg.L to armature with you.
view too. Now Using [Shift-D], duplicate this bone for Leg.R. Re-select the 4 original bones (.L) and move
the other 3 legs. Do not touch the right side. them a little. The 4 new bones will get the mirrored When done, recalc the rotation of all bones to be
position. Nice isn’t it? (Image below). sure they are facing up. To do so, select all the bones
Now, for and do [CTRL-N]. The result should start to look quite
Blender to mir- complex, see the image below.
ror our moves
on the X-Axis,
there must be 2
bones follow-
ing the name
convention. The
name conven-
tion will let
Blender know
what is the
left part and
what is the
right part of a Now you can start extrud-
rig. The names ing all the bones on the
must end with left to fill the legs. There
.L .l .left .Left are 4 more bones needed
or .R .r .Right. by each leg, make sure the
right. If there is bones are in the middle of
number after (like “name.L.001”), it’s not a problem. the geometry by looking in
So if you have a bone on the Left named leg.L and a side-view and top view. Each
bone on the right named leg.R, Blender will mirror joint should be where the
our move for the matching bones. geometry is more narrow.
The names are automatically
For this to work we will copy the 4 bones we did and generated and are OK. As
give them proper names. Select the 4 Legs’ bones and you go, you’ll notice Blender
duplicate them. Move the duplication away, it doesn’t will copy your moves and
matter where. Press [W] and select “Flip Left-Right build the other side of the
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg4 24
The Armature Modifier follow the bone. Changing the area to better match
When your are done with that, we can start looking to what we want is done by selecting a bone and scal- When you are done with the legs. We will make sure
deform the mesh using the Armature. To do so, exit ing the zone with [ALT-S]. It’s also possible to tweak the “Head” and “Abdomen” work. For this select the
EditMode with [Tab] and select the Spider. Go into envelopes in EditMode of the armature (by pressing Spider and go into EditMode. Go into the EditButton
the EditButton [F9] and look for the Modifier panel. [Tab]) and there is generally more options, like scaling and look for the “Link and Materials” panel.
the tip or root ball. At first the envelopes look like
In the Blend file there is already a modifier, the this:
SubSurf. Press the Add Modifier button and select
Armature in the list. Look for the “OB:” field and type
in “Armature”, which is the name of the armature
object.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg5 25
There you can add a group by pressing the New but- one, sadly it doesn’t work when there is more than
ton. Name it “Head”, the same name as the bone. two bones selected.
Blender will naturally match those two and will use
this vertex group when you move the “Head” bone Just before adding IK solvers all over the place, it’s
around. Select all the geometry in the head like this: wise to put all other identical constraints and copy
Press the ‘Assign’ button. That’s it. The Weight them all around. It’s a time saver. We will add a floor
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg6 26
To do so. Add a new bone by going in side view and panel and toggle all “Deform” buttons off (one for Setting it to 5 should point to the root of the first
duplicating the “Root” bone, place it flat on the each bone). Do the same for the “Root” bone and bone of the leg. Repeat for each leg.
ground as if it was the ground. This new bone will the “Abdomen” bone, since they will not move any
not be parented to anything, and it’s better like that. vertices at all. The result should let you pose this little Spider in an
Name it Floor and go in pose-mode. Go into the Edit- easier way. You only need to move one of the IK tar-
buttons and press the “Add Constraint” button --> Now the IK solver. Go into pose-mode [CTRL-Tab]. gets to move a leg. You can also move the head and
Floor. It should look like this: Select one of the new bones you just extruded then all the legs will move accordingly. It’s possible to raise
the last bone from the leg you extruded the new bone the “Floor” or move the “Root”. According to this, we
from and press [CTRL-I] --> to selected bone. This can hide all the useless bones. Select all bones you
will add an IK solver constraint to the leg’s last bone don’t need when animating and press [H] The result
targeting the new bone you just extruded. should be like this:
If you try to move the target now, you will notice
the entire body is moving and the orange dotted line
go to the “Root” bone. This is because the IK Solver
goes up in the hierarchy until it finds the top. To limit
this, you can use the “chainLen:” number button. It’s
located in EditButton --> Constraints panel in the IK
Solver Block.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Rigging a spider -pg7 27
NOTE:
Check out the blend files at blen-
derart website for this tutorial. One
of them contains pre-made poses
like the ones at left.
Gabriel Beloin
(gabio) is from
Sherbrooke,
Canada. He is
now working as an
network administra-
tor. Gabriel used
Blender for 3 years,
since version 2.26.
Attacking... Ho he is dead!
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The age of steam -pg1 28
world units, so to make a realistic scene, you must of the model, with the wires visible. Note the nuts
Making of: decide what 1 Blender Unit (BU) means. In this case and bolts, the connections are all modelled. Some
The Age of Steam I went with 1BU=10cm, the whole engine is 4 meters modelling, like the parts at the back of the engine
long and 2.4 high. can’t be seen in the final render any ways...
- by Zsolt Stefan
Modelling is mostly starting with a plane or cube, and
Concept then go-
All good pictures have some story behind them. I got ing from
the idea for this machine from a real one that I saw there,
in a local ‘historic park’, essentially an huge open air with
museum. There it was, a huge beast of iron, all rusted extrude,
and old. But you could tell that when it was made, it subdi-
was worth a lot more. It is a steam mobile, basically a vide,
steam engine, placed on wheels, so you could trans- and the
port it wherever it was needed, and then run other loop
machines off it. Already when I saw the thing, I knew model-
that I wanted to make a 3D render out of it, so I made ling
the best of the situation, and made two photos, one tools. All of this with the help of the UV mapped
of them exactly from the side. Plus two more close- plane in the middle. As most of the engine is me-
ups of the metal covering. These later came in handy chanical models, I barely used any SubSurf, so all of
as references, and textures. the detail is modelled by hand. A useful little script Another view of the engine, from the back:
that I often used is the Bevel Centre. This allows me
Modelling to add little bevels to all the objects, as there is no
It was fortunate, that I took a side photograph of such thing as a totally sharp edge in real life. Bevels
the engine, making the modelling easier. Here is an catch the light, and give it more realism, and also
earlier version of the blend file, during the initial add to the wear and tear. But be careful! Only add
modelling phase: See the pic on right. bevels when the model is finished. There is no way to
There is a plane in the middle, with the picture I took undo them, and you can’t really change or add to the
placed on it with UV mapping, so that it shows up in model once the edges have been bevelled.
the 3D viewport. This plane is scaled to the correct
height and width for the engine. A very important Details... Very important to add that ‘final touch’ of
step before starting modelling is determining the realism to any scene: adding the small details, these
scale. Blender uses its internal units, not any real are what make it real. Here is a close-up of one part
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The age of steam -pg2 29
Materials, textures until the place where the rust shows up on the model though increasing the render time several times. The
During modelling, I already start adding materi- is satisfactory. A similar technique was used for the camera was placed low, pointing upwards a bit to con-
als and texturing. Most of the metal parts use one walls in the background, as well as the floor. vey a sense of a large machine. The strong contrast
material, a rusty metal. This was made with a little between light and dark also added a definitive mood
technique that I use to hide repeating textures. The to the scene.
way it works is: there are two metal textures, both
made seamless, one is a simple metal, the other one Final render, post-pro
is a rusty metal, similar in colour. These two textures I did the final render as an A4 @ 300 DPI, 3636*2657
came from the close-up photos I took. They are sepa- pixels, this took about 15 hours. As a finishing touch,
rated by another texture channel, a clouds texture, I loaded it back into Blender, and used the glow filter
with colour-band turned on. The colour-band is half in the sequence editor to add a bit of glow to the
white and opaque, the other half is white and trans- lightest parts of the image, eg. around the windows.
parent. This is then put between the other two tex- Then some post-pro colour touch-ups and sharpening
tures, and the ‘Stencil’ button is turned on in the Ma- resulted in this final image
terial settings, Map To panel. This makes some parts
of the rusty texture to show through, and some not,
The scene
From the beginning, I envisioned the large ma-
chine left to itself in a warehouse of some sort,
with just a little light shining in. The following is
a preliminary render of the room. I added just
a few objects to the scene, to give a sense of
scale and realism, but not too much to draw the
attention away from the large steam mobile in
the middle. The room itself is simple, with a few
randomly. columns at the back wall, and some windows: on the
The resulting left wall, the ceiling, and the wall behind the camera.
material. (Im- These are the ones casting the shadows. As a small I live in Hungary, and am currently
age left) detail, the windows are broken studying industrial design engineer-
ing at the Budapest University of
Technology and Economics.
Then the Map The lights: there are three lights on the outside of the
Input settings room, behind the camera, shining through windows, Some of my hobbies are: 3D graph-
of the three casting shadow mapped shadows. Plus Yafray’s global ics of course :) , concept design/product design,
textures is illumination was used, this added the realistic spills of plus watching good movies, going out with friends,
hanging out on elysiun and other forums, draw-
adjusted light, for example around the windows at the top left, ing.”
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The Plumiferos Project -pg1 30
Figure: Visual FX made by Manos Digitale Animation and weekends. Organisation was one of the first and
The Plumiferos Project Studio for Pol-Ka Producciones (all Blender 2.36!) hardest problems to solve.
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The Plumiferos Project -pg2 31
Some technical stuff Motion blur of wings was trickier to do. ent characters and cars. We focused our
Since we didn’t have many fast ma- Blender’s motion blur was too slow to Juan’s acting in “audition” scene was work at this stage in animating objects
chines available for rendering, all be practical in many situations, plus we done using Blender’s NLA features and and cameras through paths. The com-
known tricks were used to speed up wanted to blur only on Juan’s wings, not RVK. All open/shut movements of wings plete sequence was split into several
render times. For instance, arrays of on Juan itself, so we had to make a spe- were animated previously and combined shots from storyboard, and using these
negative lights were used to simulate cial version of our little bird with only with remaining corporal animation using proxy scenes, we made a 3D animatic,
diffuse shadows or ambient occlusion, its wings as renderable parts. Then sev- NLA. Our feathered wing set-up worked which we rendered in OpenGL.
some objects were rendered separately eral layers were rendered by manipulat- perfectly with this scheme. The usual
in layers, others were replaced by tex- ing the NLA strips of the wing beating work flow for animating this scene was Once object and camera animation
tures, etc. to get a more natural look of the blur. first making the corporal animation, were done and corrected, proxy pup-
Finally, all wing layers were blurred and then the facial animation and as last pets were replaced by final characters.
For trees we used both L-System script composed together with the layer of step the lip-syncing. This process made dealing with large
available at Blender.org, and Arbaro the bird without wings. Additional mo- scenes a lot less painful. Actually, main
(http://arbaro.sourceforge.net) the tion and zoom blur were added over the Argentine professional actors Guido characters were added on a separate
excellent Java app. We made several final frames in composition software. Kaczka and Manuel Vicente gave their scene while all heavy-loaded back-
renders of a tree with different light Blur of cars wheels were made in a voices for both bird character (Juan) grounds remained as a separate set.
orientation and then used these renders similar fashion. Wheels spin was done and “off” voice of director in audition By doing it like this we could focus on
as textures for planes in order to keep using a frame driven python script. clip. Guido’s particular performance flight choreography and gesture without
poly count low. Other common effects was key to inspiring the facial and cor- having to care about real-time transfor-
like depth of field and atmospherically Feathers were generated by a python poral acting of Juan. In our pipeline, we mation of heavy background geometry.
haze were cheated by using B/W masks tool written by us which let us vary found it extremely useful to film actors Besides, at the same time we were
of objects and composing in the post the size of the feathers following a during their performance to imitate animating, the characters were being
production stage, a trick well known designed contour. Every feather had a some of their involuntary gestures. modelled and textured separately.
by average Blenderheads. About this, two-bone armature which let us make
we used the Gradient Method (you can feathers bend if needed. Each feather Blender’s sound scrubbing feature was Render strategies needed to be care-
read about this technique at: http:// had several copy rotation constraints extensively used to get the proper fully designed from day one. It is very
www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic. which were controlled by key bones in lip-syncing animation of Juan. Sound important to have a clear picture of
php?t=30959) for creating the B/W main character’s armature, so we didn’t editing and music were done by the what can or cannot be rendered
masks instead of typical Z-Buffer plug- have to care about every feather at Sonomondo sound studio once all se- separately and what can be done in
ins, this was done this way for several animation time; we only animate the quences were properly edited. post-processing instead of trying to
reasons, we had several objects with key feathers of every wing. As a final render everything from the start.
alpha textures so if we’d have used any step, feather’s armatures were “Vertex A few notes on work flow
Z-Buffer plug-in, those objects would Parented” to specific faces of wing’s For the “highway” scene, we worked
have been rendered as invisible objects. mesh, in order for feathers to follow first on a “proxy” version, using very
character deformation correctly. simple objects representing the differ-
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The Plumiferos Project -pg2 32
Future work and plans Martin Poirier for their help and advice, and of course Claudio Dobniewski
The making of these videos was not only a fun and Ton Roosendaal for just being Ton ! Claudio Andaur
exciting experience, it was important to realise C/C++ programming:
Blender’s own capabilities and limitations. Most of A special acknowledgement should be made from my Felipe Sánchez
the problems we found during this production were part to all the Plumiferos Team and all the people
reported to the Blender coders team and were being who gave their time, effort and even the lending of
worked on together with Orange Project’s own find- their machines to render expecting nothing but the
ings. Project’s success, in no particular order:
We strongly believe in Blender’s potential and power, Manuel Pérez, Diego De Gennaro, Iván Hoffmann,
and the recently added animation features only Raúl Medina, Alejandro Am, David Teres, Alvaro Vidal,
demonstrates that we weren’t wrong when we chose Claudio Dobniewski, Felipe Sánchez, Lorena Maza,
Blender as our main animation platform. Moreover, Pedro Knigge and Ale Barbesi
during the making of these trailers, we also used
Blender for making of visual FX in local TV shows in The Plumíferos Team
prime time, TV commercials and other professional Director: Daniel DeFelippo
applications with great success. Executive Producer: Gustavo Giannini
3D Supervisor: Claudio “malefico” Andaur
There are still many issues to overcome to reach our Animators:
goal of making a full feature 3d animation film, for Manuel Pérez
instance we are in the process of setting up a real Daniel DeFelippo
Studio to gather all artists so we can work together in Iván Hoffmann
a creative environment. Claudio Andaur
Models, textures, lighting:
Acknowledgements and thanks Iván Hoffmann
Of course none of our dreams could become true if Diego De Gennaro
it weren’t for the continuous and excellent work of Raúl Medina
the Blender’s coders team hunting bugs and develop- Claudio Dobniewski
ing new features. We can’t thank every one of them Alvaro Vidal
More pictures on next page...
enough for making such a pro tool as Blender. Alejandro Barbesi
Claudio Andaur
I would like to thank Chris Want, Roland Hess, and Python scripting:
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : The Plumiferos Project -pg4 33
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg1 34
landscape. But first, I had to set the environment. camera (select the camera, G) to match the perspective.
Making of :“ With a few tests I found that the focal length was
New Penguoen 2.38 The environment near to 31.0 (Lens value, F9; I>>Insert Key>>Lens with
There are a few python scripts that can be used to mouse on the camera panel to animate).
have camera-tracking in Blender; I preferred to do all This way, by adding IPO’s keys to the camera position
--by Enrico Valenza the work by hand. I didn’t want a too perfect match- and rotation (I>>Insert Key>>LocRot) and always look-
ing. I loaded a low resolution AVI of the original spot ing for the best correspondence between the original
Introduction (found on the web) as background in a camera win- spot elements and my cg primitives, I made all the
The goal of “New Penguoen 2.38” was to try to dow, to use it as reference (a template, if you prefer). shots and at the same time I restored an almost simi-
reconstruct with Blender the wonderful 2005 Citroen lar environment.
C4 spot (the dancing transformer’s one, made by OK: first, add a plane to your scene
Embassy VFX). (Add>>Mesh>>Plane), then assign a material (F5); go By putting a sphere in the centre of the scene and
I loved that spot as I saw it, so I had the idea: in the texture window (F6) and load the animation making little renders, I matched also the direction
wouldn’t have been funny to replace the giant robot- as Image, selecting the Movie option. Then put the and the intensity of the sunlight. A lamp under the
car with a giant silly penguin? In the meantime, the mouse cursor on a 3d window and press NumPad0 floor provided a fake radiosity effect.
Suzanne Awards deadline came out, so I thought to to have the camera window; in the window header
submit it, if only it could be finished in time. go to View>>Background Image>>Use Background
The gag of the roasted penguin at the end of the Image>>Load texture and load the texture of the
animation came out in progress; so, as the headline material.
of the original spot was “New Citroen C4 - Alive with
Technology”, the headline for my parody became At this point you can delete the plane, its only
“New Penguoen 2.38 - Cooked with Blender 3d”. 2.38 purpose was just to have a texture to be selected.
was the version number of Blender I used, with all
those new marvellous animation features! In this case, the background AVI worked as a
storyboard too; I had all the shots and discovered
From a few researches I did, it came out that the C4 that the total length of the spot was 751 frames.
spot was located in Vancouver, Canada, on the roof of
a post office. Actually, Embassy crew shot high resolu- I started to add a simple plane for the floor (actu-
tion photos of the environment and then re-mapped ally the roof of the post office) and some cube
the images on 3d geometry. That’s exactly what I did primitives for the main elements.
inside Blender: the only difference was I hadn’t the
hires photos of Vancouver, so I had to paint in The Looking in the camera window, I moved the
Gimp detailed textures of the buildings and of the far
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg2 35
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg3 36
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg4 37
several procedurals have been used to reach the final appearance. Procedurals are
really useful but the more of them you use and, again, the longer are the render-
ing times. Image textures render faster.
In this case, I baked the procedurals textures with the Other texture Baker script
by Blenderhead z3r0_d; the script works great but sometimes mirrors in some area
the baked procedurals. No problem, a bit of painting in The Gimp and everything
got fixed. A damned useful script! Then, more painting to add better details.
Materials are very important too; all the penguin’s had Oren-Nayar and Blinn shad-
ers with ramps; the ramps colours matched the colour of the sunlight and of the
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg5 38
Next steps were the rigging and the skinning of the mesh (I must be honest: I usu- tion to balance the position.
ally do texturing, rigging and skinning almost at the same time. It works better to Or else, I added bones for the fat, with Locked Track constraints targeted to emp-
me). ties parented to root bones in the armature; the empties had a Slow Parent (in
the objects window, F7) of a few frames, to create automated effects of follow
With the new animation features, the rigging work flow has been tremendously through and overlapping for the fatty areas.
improved; now it is enough to click on the screen to add bones, and by assigning
the IK constraint to one of them you can quickly build the IK chain. In just a few I added also bones with Stretch constraints in the legs areas, to simulate a
minutes, I remade the basic armature for the penguin and then started to add minimum of muscles stretching.
constraints to automate some functions.
The skinning of the model by creating Vertex Groups (editing window, F9) took
For example, I assigned two Action constraints to the “back” bone, targeted to the more time; by the way, this is a too long of an issue to be covered here.
“pelvis” one: as the pelvis rotates on the left or on the right,
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WORKSHOP - 3D Making of : New Penguoen -pg6 39
quite different from the dancing robo-car. I made parenting effect was barely visible! So I rendered it
several tests of the animation by rendering the again without mb, and except for the first and the last
whole in OpenGL (hold Ctrl key and press the last shots (where slowparenting weren’t needed) that’s
icon on the header of the 3d window, pointed by the footage I used.
the red arrow in the image). A lot of things can’t be covered here: the detailed
building of the armature and the skinning of the mesh,
Usually I render the different elements as sepa- the atmospheric perspective effect for the 3d elements,
rated steps and then make a composite in the the egg disappearing at the beginning of the animation,
Blender sequencer (Ctrl+Left Arrow to change many materials tips to increase the reality illusion,
screens, or else in the SCR: menu on the top the painting of the textures and of the background
header); this time I made all the rendering in one mattes and so on.
shot. Also the quick transition from the jump- Hopefully, in the future all this (and other) will be
ing penguin to the roasted chicken version has matter for a step by step book
been made by switching in middle animation the
I didn’t use the Non Linear Animation in this case; the penguin mesh with a Shift+D copy with different Have a good time blending!
whole animation has been made in a single Action. textures, by layer’s keys assigned to both the meshes
Using the original spot template as reference for (I>>Insert Key>>Layer).
the key positions, I animated with the Pose to pose
Enrico Valenza (aka EnV) is
technique. But the sequencer has been used anyway to add the a freelance illustrator and he
In short: assign KeyFrame positions for the horizontal bars on the top and on the bottom of the lives in Italy. Besides all the
character, setting all the animation IPO’s to constant framing, for the headline at the end and for the light traditional painting techniques
(in the Action Editor select with A all the keys; go to darkening on the sides (just to mimic the C4 spot ap- he used for 20 years, he started
the Key menu in the header and then Interpolation pearance). to use cg with The Gimp and
Mode>>Constant). This is to establish the animation In Blender’s sequencer I loaded also the music Blender almost 3 or 4 years ago.
times. Then switch the keys to linear and start to (made with the open source software Audacity). Thanks to Blender, he’s hope-
fully moving towards animation.
add in between, creating also arcs in the movements. By selecting the “Sync” button in the sound panel I
Third, switch the keys to bezier and shift them where could watch my animation with sound in real time,
needed to avoid actions happening all at the same and pressing the “MIXDOWN” button Blender exported
time. a perfectly synchronised wave file. I then combined Resources
sound and animation in VirtualDub. The Embassy Visual Effects Inc., makers of
In the IPO window (IPO the Citroen C4 Ad Campaign
Luxology article about the Embassy Citroen
Curve Editor) select Conclusion
C4 Ad Campaign, C4 spot location in Vancou-
curves, go in edit mode “New Penguoen 2.38” took almost three weeks of
ver. Audacity, VirtualDub, Blender Documen-
and modify the curves work in my spare time, plus 40 hours for the render- tation Blender Resources, scripts and plug-ins
handles, to slow or speed up starting and ending of ing. I rendered it (at the resolution of 800x600) with Modelling Bongo, polygonal modelling tutorial
single movements. Of course I had to rearrange the motion blur enabled at 16 (middle of render window, for Blender.
acting to conform it to the penguin shape, F10), to discover at the end that with mb the slow-
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 2D Galvanized texture -pg1 40
a) Before Noise
www.blenderart.org
WORKSHOP - 2D Galvanized texture -pg2 41
Step 6 The texture is almost done, now we need to
introduce some weathering into the texture, to make
it look more authentic. First I am assuming you have
kept the selection alive, if not then in the layers tab
right-click on the ‘base layer’ and do ‘Alpha to selec-
tion. Now add a layer at the top of the stack. Then go
to ‘Filters |Render | Noise’ and generate a colorful
plasma noise.
b) After Noise
The layerstack
after step We need only the variety of the rendered plasma
Gaurav Nawani is a graphics
five. noise so we will desaturate the layer. Go to ‘Layers artist at IronCode Software .
|Colors |Desaturate’. Change the ‘layer mode’ to
‘Multiply’ and adjust the ‘Layer opacity’. He is an open source enthus-
iast and loves writing articles
as a freelancer.
Your galvanized texture is now ready to be used.
The Final texture on the right was created with this Apart from his usual habbits of photography and
method and few other details added traveling he also dabbles with cooking often ;)
www.blenderart.org
Animation tips - pg1 42
www.blenderart.org
Animation tips - pg2 43
Slow-Out and Slow-In Grab a friend and play out your scenes that involve basic principles. It gives you the ideas and concepts
Slow-out and slow-in will soften an action and render more than one character to improve your animations, but like all things in life,
it more life like. The basic concept for setting them this is a subject that requires further study and a lot
up is as follows. You bunch up the KeyFrames toward Exaggeration of practise
the beginning and end of each action with only one In computer animation it is very easy for your move-
or two in the middle of the action. More KeyFrames ments to look stiff and staged, minor exaggeration of
creating slower actions, fewer KeyFrames creating features and movements can soften your movements
faster actions. and make them more fluid. But be careful with how Hi, my name is Sandra
much you exaggerate, unless you are going for a very Gilbert, (aka dreamsgate).
Arcs comic look. I have been using blender
for a little over five years.
Remember your math teacher saying you’ll use this
I currently live in Nampa,
someday, here it is. Most all movements are on an Solid Drawing Idaho, USA and work as a
Arc. A soft semi circular motion that gives a more Solid drawing covers the basic principles of giving graphic designer for a small
natural feel to the movements. Test it yourself, raise form, weight, and volume solidity to your objects. print shop.
your arm and move it around, there is your arc. Look This actually applies more to traditional hand drawn
I am married and have 2
for arcs in movements all around you. cell animation, but should be kept in mind even for
children, which leaves not near enough time for
CG animators. Make sure that your characters and ob- feeding my growing blender obsession. Yet some-
Secondary Action jects have the look and feel of a solid object. Check how I always manage to find the time to explore
Secondary action provides the extra little details that from all angles to ensure that you haven’t forgotten new features, keep up on the latest news and start
make a performance more believable. Adding arm something. new blender projects. Some of them I actually
even manage to finish.
movements to a walk cycle, head bobs, and dialog all
are examples of secondary action. Appeal
Often we get so caught up in all the mechanics of
Timing animation that we forget all about appeal. The whole
Timing can make or break an animation. It is one of reason for making the animation was to tell a story,
those things that is best learnt through trial, error is your character believable, will it connect with the
and experience. A stopwatch can greatly increase audience? These are questions you need to keep in
your grasp of timing. Go into a room, shut the door mind when creating your characters. Make sure they
and act out your scenes, using a stopwatch to record have personalities, even if they are evil ones.
when the actions start and stop. Don’t forget to
overlap actions from different characters and objects. Okay now we have covered the very basic of the
www.blenderart.org
Special - Project Orange ‘Team Interview’ 44
over into Open Source news sites and agreed to sponsor the movie by provid- be condensed into a short article.
Project Orange even been featured in issue #68 of ing all music and the full sound effect Having followed the Project from the
Interview
by
b
3D World where the Project Orange
website had been chosen as Website of
editing for the project. Next Prof. Mark
Alan Matties, Department of Computer
beginning, I hadn’t realised how much
they had shared on their website until I
the Month. Science at Bowie State University and went to download it all and try and put
Blender, having been an in Director of the BSU Xseed xseed.bowi- it into perspective. Months of work has
house production tool, once estate.edu, offered the BSU Xseed as been documented and posted for our
had the immediate feed- a rendering farm for the entire period education. Their work and dedication
back and interaction of both of the Orange Open Movie project. to such a huge undertaking is nothing
developing and using the The offer of a full render farm allowed short of amazing.
software on a daily basis. for more creative scenes using longer
With a desire to recapture render times, while still maintaining They have pushed the envelope
that unique synergy of the set production schedule. of blender capabilities, finding its
development and a very real And yet as all the organisational stuff strengths and weaknesses. In fact their
desire to create a profes- is going on, the real story revolves work and close communication with the
sional quality Open Source around a team of brilliant artists, who coders has pushed the development of
animation, Project Orange voluntarily locked themselves into a blender features into hyper-overdrive,
by - Sandra Gilbert was born. The Blender Foundation studio in Amsterdam to work 16 hour bringing the community a new wealth
teamed up with Montevideo (Nether- days. Bouncing ideas off each other and of tools for our own enjoyment and
www.blenderart.org
Special - Project Orange ‘Team Interview’ 45
Throughout the last six months their for the characters has been completed to accomplish or take away from this all!
work has fired the imaginations of an with well known Dutch actors Tygo Ger- experience?
entire community. Blender users the nandt as Proog and Cas Jansen as Emo. Bastian Salmela (basse): Hmm...,
world over are firing up blender and They videoed the recording session Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): Ah this is a personal goals.. I would say.. to learn
attempting for the first time their own which now gives them great reference question with a thousand answers how to actually make a movie, like the
animations, inspired by Project Orange material for animating the expressions hehe. I think mainly working with a big boys do, and also what this weird
and the new ease of use for animation and movements of Proog and Emo. team on a project has been something blender program is about.
features. From this point on the team will be very new to all in the team, and being
We have watched the first concept continuing the fine tuning of every lit- halfway through the project we have Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): Spending 6
sketches turning step by step into a tle detail and polishing it all up. been really working out our special- months making a short animated movie
movie. Feature tests and progress ities, and how to work together well. I is my biggest personal motivation; it’s
reports tease and delight us with the Knowing all too well how busy the hope and believe we will have learnt a what I would most want to do with my
endless possibilities such projects team members are at this point, I lot about forming an idea of many, and time. Beyond that goal, I’d say learn-
bring. Keeping with the Open Source/ bravely or foolishly (depending on your executing it. We may be like brothers ing plays a big part in my motivation:
Creative Commons ideal they have view) decided to try and get an inter- by the end. becoming a better animator, learning
freely shared each step of the proc- view with the Project Orange team from my teammates’ substantial abili-
ess, educating the community on new members, hoping at best that at least Toni Alatalo (Antont): Learn about ties, learning more about film making.
techniques as they discover them one would have the time to answer a all aspects of movie making. And also I also wouldn’t be displeased if project
themselves. few questions. To my great delight, five get professional in Blender and related orange enabled me to more easily do
As the weeks have passed, they have of them found the time to answer. So software development. It has proved to similar projects in the future.
tested and refined each stage of the be fun too and a great group of peo-
process. Now having passed the half ple to get to know to, which is very
way point in the project, characters rewarding considering many aspects
are built, scenes set up and basic tim- of life.
ing in place. With each further week
that passes, the scenes will be further Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): I would re-
refined and moulded into shape. All the ally love to make a *good* movie that
while Jan Morgenstern has been work- not only I enjoy watching, but also a
ing closely with the team to create the movie that’s appealing to many other
music and mood for the movie. people. And I really hope that this
As they are approaching the final stages without further delay, here they are. is really not the average boring CG
of their production they are pushing short, we hope to treat it as art, as a
even harder to get everything organ- 1-Aside from the official goals of the real movie. Besides, I just want to have
ised and finished up. Voice recording project, what do you personally hope fun in the process and learn... that’s
www.blenderart.org
Special - Project Orange ‘Team Interview’ 46
2- As busy as you are and as fast as wasn’t that hard. It’s great to see the also some models or character rigs are cinematography, lighting, modelling and
new features are being coded, do you software evolving as you’re using it always being worked on and replaced also the technical aspects of rendering
find it hard to keep up and master the (sometimes due to a new feature). The than in any other project before.
new tools? Bastian Salmela (basse): YES!!! heh, flexibility to work with Bassam on keep-
I think I am the only one at the studio ing everything consistent and keeping Bastian Salmela (basse): The beer in
Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): Wow, hasn’t it complaining that there is too much up with the ever changing film along Amsterdam is much cheaper than in
been amazing the speed of everything new things popping up in CVS every- with an ever changing program has been Finland, and water in Amstel doesn’t kill
lately. Many times we will form a great day. I just don’t have time to learn all by far the biggest. you, just remember to shower after-
idea among the team that could be of them. but of course, these are the wards.
great for the community and in our features we asked, features we need, so Toni Alatalo (Antont): Dunno if it the
work flow for the film, after we have I try my best to keep up. greatest, but a nice basic lesson is that Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): This is my
told Ton that night he has hacked away in animation programming it is not disobedience to authority workshop I
and the feature is there. Since we are Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): Naaah! OK, needed to control frame-by-frame like can’t say I’ve made huge strides so far,
needing to use it sometimes in that well, sometimes At first I would play in game logic, but things can be done but hopefully I’m getting a little better.
week for the film, and also wanting to with every new feature as it came out, nicely by creating IPO curves etc. I’m also learning a lot about making a
get the feature optimised as soon as but now the schedule is a little rough short movie of this type, especially with
possible, many late nights have come for that. It’s easy for me to stay on top Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): The main driv- the early problems we had getting the
from trying to learn all the great new of the animation features, since I’m ing force behind the learning process is script /story stabilised. I don’t think I’d
things in Blender. I can admit I try to the one who asked for half of them I that we all have different fields of exper- start production again on a project
master a new feature added, but most let Andy worry about the materials and ience. From my fellow team members
times you just have to learn as much rendering stuff- I haven’t even done a I learnt so much more about animation,
as possible of how it works before your test render with the new materials lay-
using it, and of course the next night a ering system, but I promise myself I’ll
new one is there! spend some time playing with it after
the project is over.
Toni Alatalo (Antont): Every day is
learning.. for me, as a kind of a deve- 3- So far what has been your biggest
loper of the tools, the perspective is of learning experience on this project?
course different .. have a lot of time for
learning. Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): I can say there
Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): We’re basi- are more things then all the fingers
cally working with blender 15 hours a in the world could count that I have
day, every day, every week... so we’re learnt so far from this wonderful and
learning new things as they come up. hectic experience. Probably the biggest
Our luxury is that most of the new tools learning experience was the produc-
that drop in are specifically coded for tion work flow. The idea (as happens in
our needs. It takes of course some time feature films too) can change slightly,
to get used to everything, but so far it and improve every day more and more,
www.blenderart.org
Special - Project Orange ‘Team Interview’ 47
without first having a script completely art institute are constantly helping and milk now) while Toni and I indulge shot with wonderful results have been
finished. The planning for the project and supporting us, too. On the other in the pleasures of Amsterdam. amazingly fun, like having a very long
is also quite interesting. It’s amazing hand there’s also a lot of noise (mainly In all seriousness, we’re mostly very game of Tennis, It’s exhaustingly fun.
how much structure and speed it gives from the Internet) being thrown at us. focused on the work we do, but the You learn to blend longer without as
us, compared to my usual “planning At some point you just have to push online comments provide us with a nice many rushes of excitement, but when
without planning” approach. everything away and concentrate on break from time to time. Most people they come around they are a lot more
your job. in the community seem enthusiastic satisfying.
4- Project Orange has become the fo- about the project, and have contrib-
cus of considerable attention; how do I’d also like to add, that contrary to uted freely their insights and ideas. Toni Alatalo (Antont): hm .. perhaps
you feel about so many pairs of eyes many overly unrealistic expectations of more, or well I don’t remember any
watching everything you do? a certain group of people, we really are 5- As hard as you are working to more what I expected
not Pixar or DreamWorks or SPI! We’re meet project deadlines; has this
Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): Haha well it in no way even attempting that. To be experience turned out to be more or Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): It’s actually
is very weird when somebody like the realistic we neither have the talent, less “fun" than you originally more fun than I expected! We all knew
Ambassador of European Media comes the experience or magical substance. expected? from the beginning that it would be
to have a gander at what we are doing, But we are studio orange! hard work, but at the end it will
sometimes I must admit being in the Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): Oh, this is definitely be worth all the effort.
studio each day for 3 months now it Bastian Salmela (basse): It’s like be- another hard one. It’s probably safe to
is hard to believe we would have such ing in Big Brother. Except that you are say that if I thought one thing before Bastian Salmela (basse): It’s still fun.
attention, each day has its own little stuck with us, there is no way to vote the project started, when it did start Sometimes it gets to you, when
challenges and we usually have to anyone out of here.. hmm, but yea.. all my expectations were flipped upside
concentrate on these, but sometimes well I like sitting back and to watch down. It really has
you get a little shock here and there to peoples reactions. Sometimes they been a lot more
realise we are being followed . get very excited, sometimes angry.. fun then I could
depending if we are doing something have hoped for,
Toni Alatalo (Antont): They don’t see right, or wrong.. And they always have but in such an
me, I am well hidden and unknown. I lot of opinions. That’s always fun. opposite way then
guess we mostly just keep forgetting I could imagine
that. Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): It’s no prob- before I started
lem really. We all just behave like we the project. The
Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): On some ways normally do. Andy issues dire threats challenges, hard
it’s pretty helpful, we’re getting a lot from his desk, Lee contentedly munch- work, sharing ideas
of feedback on our project, and not es on brains, Basse paints inscrutable and ogling over
only on our website! A lot of people paintings with increasingly esoteric others screens
from our host, the Netherlands media foodstuffs (he’s using Swedish herring after they finish a
www.blenderart.org
Special - Project Orange ‘Team Interview’ 48
you are fighting with something that fix it! blender community, for instance in film
just doesn’t work and time is running Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): Well, I’m still festivals, etc
out. But in the end, they always turn Toni Alatalo (Antont): Perhaps being pushing Bassam for it, but I’m debat-
out nicely. Deadlines are very important allowed to concentrate on interesting ing to have the huge anime style sword Project Orange still has some time to
to have, they don’t only make you work things, like animation scripting .. but fight scene, I’ll inform everyone if there go before they wrap it all up and return
hard, but they also make you to actually also being a part in the whole process. is any progress home. For further information and
finish things and move on to the next updates on their progress, stop by the
thing.. just because you have to. Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): I think I’m Toni Alatalo (Antont): The shoes are Project website. http://orange.blender.
enjoying mainly the fact that I’m able to great! org/
Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): It’s pretty work with people who share the same
close to my expectations in terms of interests, working on a common task, Andy Goralczyk (@ndy): Dutch cheese --Sandra Gilbert
fun.. in the same place! and I also like the is gooooooooooooood!
opportunity of really going insane with
6- What aspect of this project have style, animation, lighting, everything! Bastian Salmela (basse): I have been
you enjoyed the most? working with these little things that
Bastian Salmela (basse): Maybe nobody knows what
the possibility to actually work they are all about,
full time on just designing, and I heard somebody
drawing, modelling, animating.. saying: “Oof, what
instead of what I’ve used to at are they?”
home, having couple of hours to
blend after midnight.. oh, and all Bassam Kurdali
the cheap beer of course. (slikdigit): Well we’ve
gotten some big name
Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit): Can’t (in the Netherlands)
single anything out really.. Ani- stars to do the voices
mating has been big fun the last for our characters I’m
Lee J. Cooks (LohnC): I’ll try keep this few days, making some wacky stuff, not sure I’m allowed
one short and sweet ... *think for a few some of the facial rigging has been to reveal who it is
hours*. OK, most enjoyable thing about pretty fun too. yet, and it’s likely
the project would have to be having a only to excite Dutch
technical director! If anybody can break 7- Any tantalising tidbits about the audiences, but it’s good news for us,
a computer It’s me, and now there is movie that you would like to share and might help the movie get taken
somebody around who knows how to with us? more seriously by non members of the
www.blenderart.org
Under review 49
Learning facial animation have always been mysterious for will think that we need to make the mouth movements
Stop Staring those unaware of the tools and techniques. It requires one reflect the actual human mouth movements but doing that
to understand the basics of facial features their movements is down right cumbersome whereas the author explains a
during speech, and also to understand the efficient model- logical and organised way of achieving that by providing the
ling techniques, only then can this arduous task be fun. knowledge behind the appearance of expressions in mouth
with the spoken word.
The book ‘Stop Staring’ provides the user with a very tidy
approach towards learning facial animations. The book itself All in all the book goes through every aspect of facial anima-
is divided into four parts comprising of 13 well thought out tion, from the basics of human facial movements to defining
chapters. and how to achieve the modeling or topology for each part
of the face that plays part in bringing out emotions. By the
In part1 you start by learning the basics of mouth move- end of this book you can expect yourself to be well versed in
ments during speech and their lip sync equivalent in the 3d modeling an animatable face model, will be able to rig it and
model, movement of eyes, brows, and facial land marking have the good knowledge of facial animation.
that supports the facial movements are also covered.
This book is a must read for every wannabe animator out
Part2 deals with introduction to Visimes. It also covers there
topology of a mouth 3d-mesh and finally ends with construc-
tion of mouth keys. - blenderart
Part 4 puts into practise the knowledge learnt in the prev- Name: Stop Staring, Facial modeling and ani-
ious three parts. It also details techniques like skeletal setup, mation done right.
weighting and rigging with practical explanation of the Author: Jason Osipa
animations in the accompanying CD. Paperback: 334 pages
Publisher: Sybex (Dist SPD India) & CD Rom
The place where this book shines is in thorough explanation Edition: September 2003
of all the basics regarding the speech cycle of the human Language: English
mouth and then providing a very practical way of achieving
ISBN 81-7366-815-9
the desired results in CG, for example, most of us newbies
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg1 50
Esign
Chris Larkee (knellotron)
Award: Best Animation Artwork
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg2 51
Jake Rocks
Thorsten Schlueter
Nomination: Best Animation Artwork
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg3 52
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg4 53
Laws of Motion
Robert Tiess (Robertt)
Nomination: Best Character Animation
link: http://www.blender.org/cms/Animation_Festival_200.718.0.html
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg5 54
Alchemy Trailer
by Jason Pierce
Nomination: Best Character Animation
“Copyright 2005 Jason Pierce. Used by permission”
Learning to Fly
by Grzegorz Rakoczy
Nomination: Best Character Animation
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg6 55
New Penguoen
Enrico Valenza (Env)
Award: Best Animation Original Idea or Story
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg7 56
Plumiferos
by Studio Manos Digitale
Nomination Best Animation, original idea or story
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg8 57
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg9 58
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg10 59
Goofup :P
Consumption
Cekuhnen
www.blenderart.org
Galleria - blender animation awards 2005 -pg10 60
ISSUE 3
Available in March 2006
Theme: Rendering
HIGHLIGHTS
Blenders rendering engine explained
Various lamp types and tricks
And more...
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