How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish To order this title, and for more information, click here
By Roland Hess, Roland Hess has been working with graphics and imaging software for over 20 years. As one of a handful of people involved with Blender
who is both an active user of the software as well as one of the developers, he brings a unique perspective to Blender instruction that
helps to bridge the difficult gap between technical knowledge and artistic endeavor. Hess wrote: Animating with Blender for Focal 2009,
and The Essential Blender, No Starch, 2007.
Description Blender has become one of the most popular 3D and animation tools on the market, with over 2 million users, and it is free! Animating
with Blender is the definitive resource for creating short animation projects from scratch, the ideal platform for experimenting with
animation.
Blender expert and author Roland Hess walks you through the entire process of creating a short animation, from writing to
storyboarding and blocking, through character creation, animation and rendering.
Audience
Primary market: Independent or Freelance Animators (small studios); Professional Animators (large studios also work Blender into their
pipelines); 3D Artists; Hobbyist Animator (Blender is free - easy entry for hobbyists).
Secondary market: Animation/3D students, Animation
Faculty.
Level: Intermediate
Contents 1: An Overview of the Short Animation Process
1.1: Overview
1.2: Importance of following the workflow
1.3: Common pitfalls and how to
avoid them
2: Story
2.1: Story scope, your resources and reality
2.2: What story to tell? Objective vs. Subjective story lines
2.3:
Incorporating Theme
2.4: Putting together a short screenplay, and how it can help
Organization
4: Storyboarding and the Story Reel
4.1: The benefits of storyboarding
4.2: Suggested tools
4.3: Recording a temporary soundtrack for timing
4.4: Assembling a Story Reel
in Blender's Sequence Editor
5: Character Design and Creation
5.1: Finalizing design in line with your theme
5.2: Modeling based on
storyboard requirements and theme
5.3: Creating level of detail proxies, and mesh animation issues
5.3: Believability and render times
with materials
6: Libraries
6.1: What are libraries and why should you bother?
6.2: Creating groups and libraries
6.3: Linking libraries
from your production files
6.4: Animating library assets
7: Rough Sets, Blocking and an Animatic
7.1: Creating rough sets
7.2: Setting
cameras to match storyboards
7.3: Adding static characters and doing general blocking
7.5: Adjusting timing of the Story Reel with real
blocked shots and the dialogue track
8: Recording Good Sound
9: Rigging and Animation Testing (7000 words)
9.1: An iterative method
for rigging, skinning and testing
9.2: Maintaining the scope of the project (i.e. not doing a full rig for a character that needs 3 seconds
of animation)
9.3: Creating shape keys for facial animation and deformation tweaking
10: Character Animation: Blocking and Finishing
10.1: Creation of per-shot working files, with links to character and set libraries
10.2: The Pose-to-pose method is shown
10.3: Using
Blender's various animation tools to enhance timing and show weight, anticipation and follow through.
10.4 Enhancing your ability to
get real-time previews for better feedback
11: Lip Sync
11.1: Adding portions of the dialogue track to the per-shot files
11.2: Audio
issues and scrubbing
11.3: A general workflow for lip syncing entirely within Blender
12: Special Effects: Physics, Fluids and Particles
12.1: When to make it and when to fake it
12.2: Common rigid body effects and how to record them
12.3: Common soft body effects
12.4:
The fluid simulator
12.5: Particles
12.6: Integrating effects with keyframed animation
13: Final Sets and Backgrounds
13.1: Minimizing
the use of live (fully 3D) sets
13.2: Assembling the final sets to match the roughs
13.3: Breaking the sets into different libraries
based on storyboard requirements
13.4: Taking and tweaking background shots for static backgrounds
13.5: In each per-shot animation file,
the final sets and backgrounds are linked in
14: Rendering and Post-Processing
14.1: Using the renderer and in-line compositor to put
everything together
14.2: Help with optimizing render times
14.3: Adding common post effects like color enhancement, motion blur, depth
of field and bloom/glow.
14.4: Setting up and using a render farm
15: Editing and Final Output
15.1: Compiling the rendered scene
into the full short in the Sequence Editor
15.2: Using the SE to experiment with timing and cuts
15.3: Mixing the sound
15.3: The different
finished animation formats
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