Blender 2.7 Tutorial #64: Lego Character Animation #b3d Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Blender (English) - Professional Skills

Lockette about sixty four puppies here's
our knees blunder 2.7 in this video
we're gonna be finishing off this
mini-series on how to create from
scratch in Lego character by talking
about character in the words performance
or body animation if you've mouthing
rest this video series I'll put a link
to all the videos on the screen right
now and in the description area below
and I'll include a link to this playlist
of this video series so you can watch it
from start to fish all about much easier
if you would like to download this exact
file that you see in your screen right
now that I made complete with the entire
Lego character all of the characters
materials all of the textures for the
face including all the mouth and the
eyes applied the character and of course
the focus blur at setup on the camera so
you can have that depth of field blur
that makes it look like the character is
small all that will be in that exact
file the same file that I have on my
screen rain now you can download that in
the description area below if you would
like of course I would recommend
creating it yourself from start to
finish if your intent is to learn how to
use a blender
let's go ahead and jump in in order to
make a character animation easier I'm
gonna divide my screen up a little bit
more right now on my screen I have
several windows I have a large 3d
viewport window I have a timeline at the
bottom I have an outliner window a
properties window and an information bar
at the top I'm gonna make my timeline
just a little bit taller I'm gonna grab
the top of it and drag it straight up
I'm gonna split it in two vertically so
I'm gonna grab this little triangle
cross-hatched area right there and if I
left click and drag straight down on it
I can split this window into two copies
of itself and now I can change this
window type over here with this button
to a dope sheet window a dope sheet is
sort of an old-fashioned animation a
term it's actually a tool used in
traditional drawn or stop-motion
animation where on a large piece of
paper
an animator or animation production team
would plan out a scene by sort of saying
hey the character needs to maybe be over
at the right side of the screen or
camera frame at frame one and then by
frame let's say 72 the carrier needs to
be sort of at this pose maybe facing the
other way and then at frame 87 the kid
needs to have turned to face the camera
and then a frame 98 the character needs
to have his arm up and begin waving and
then way from frame 98 to a hundred and
eighty to whatever it is they actually
plan out their animation ahead of time
at the sort of a wide scope in terms of
a whole scene before they actually start
animating that's what this dope sheet
editor window is sort of based on you
got a wider scope and you can actually
zoom out by dragging on the right side
of this scroll bar if you get a wider
kind of scope of your scene and it shows
all the key frames of all the objects in
your scene and so this is for basically
making the planning a draft or but key
poses or the rough pass of your
animation that when you first get
started but before we start animating
I'm actually gonna divide this dopesheet
window into two so I'm gonna grab this
little cross slash triangle area again
and this time I'm gonna left click and
drag it to the left like that divide it
horizontally I'm gonna change this
window over here from a dopesheet window
into a graph editor window a graph
editor window and we'll get to why we're
using it in a moment is good to see kind
of the interpolation and again we'll get
to that of our animation I'm gonna make
a little bit narrower though and the
kind of sidebar of it a little bit
narrower as well DSR an animation I'm
gonna turn on my red record button down
here that will automatically insert
keyframes whatever I move or rotate or
scale an object but actually I'm not
gonna be scaling this character at all
I'm gonna save but there are some
resources by clicking in this area here
and selecting the kind of keyframe that
we want to automatically insert instead
of all of the kind of animations
location and rotation and scale or quote
scale
I'm gonna select just booked wrote for
just inserting a location and
keyframes on any object again we're not
scaling so now with the third record
button turned on and look rows selected
I'm gonna move my character to where I
want him to start so with the hips
parent bone selected actually it's on a
bone it's just a piece I'm gonna put my
character up to rid of both there and
I'm gonna rotate him 90 degrees or
negative 90 degrees on the z axis when
he's facing the direction he's going to
walk which is two over here so I got a
tap R and then Z and then negative nine
zero and I'll tap enter so now we have a
keyframe frame 1 that's where I play
head was of our character facing in this
direction at this location in fact I'm
gonna make this a little bit easier for
myself I'm gonna use this grid that you
can probably see if you're watching this
video in high-def on YouTube I'm gonna
move it so that as heel as touching the
line that's right there the grid line
that's right there on my screen
perfection this is where we're gonna
block out our animation that was the
word that I was looking for him a moment
ago that's what the dope sheet editor
window is for it's good for blocking out
your animation everything going through
the passes of your animation in other
words going through again and again and
making the animation better and better
by refining your animation looking at
where things are in correcting things so
I want this animation of my character
walking from here to here to take 72
frames that's what I need for the length
of my overall animation that I'm not
really making here so I'm gonna frame 72
and you'll notice that the playhead
lines up in all three windows were at 72
on the timeline as well and I'm gonna
move the characters hip section not bone
over to rate about mmm there so that his
toe is touching the zero mark on the X
global axis right now I just noticed
that the gizmo is set to local and
that's why the gizmos green y-axis is
pointing this way and while the global x
axis is that same direction so I can
change my keys mo to global like that
let's go ahead now and go back to our
first key pose we have blocked out so
the animation in the most primitive way
but a framed one I wanted to
be in mid-stride so I'm gonna grab each
leg I'll tap are I'll move my mouse and
I'll put him in sort of a walking stride
position like this and being correct
just a little bit now if your legs are
like mine you'll see that your legs or
the tippy toes of your character or the
heel might go through the ground right
now we don't have a ground and that's
okay but you can imagine if that will be
at this red line zero on the z axis so I
might need to move my character up and
down a little bit by grabbing his hips
piece so I'm gonna be right about there
so we have him in a good starting pose
let's move along a little bit maybe to
frame
eight or so and at frame eight I want
him to be in sort of a passing pose that
means that his planted leg the one that
his weight is on will be straight up and
down like that and that the other leg
will be just sort of passing and we'll
work on an aside here that it's gonna be
a little bit forward so we can tell the
difference and select the two legs more
easily so a frame eight you're gonna
notice here I'll make it so taller that
we do not have a keyframe on Cuba zero
zero one which must be the hip section
what I'll do here is I'll collapse down
these three object tracks that we're not
seeing more keyframes or little diamonds
and we need to so we have a few
keyframes here we have no keyframe on
frame eight for the hips and that's okay
because the up-and-down looks okay for
now I might fix that a later time out on
a later pass let's go to the next dried
pose so at frame eight we're at passing
at frame sixteen I've been sort of kind
of spreading it out at this rate and we
can change the whole scale the whole
speed our animation later on that's one
of the powerful things about this window
so a frame 16 I'm actually gonna select
that planted leg because that planted
leg is gonna stay in the back it's gonna
be the back leg when we're at our next
sort of stride pose so a frame 16 and
again we're gonna have to change the
position of the hip
so that our feet don't slide around so
that black lanes gonna be right about
like that and that one's gonna be right
about like that I'm trying to make us so
that the toe is gonna be not going
through the ground what I'll need to do
here now is reposition the hips piece so
that our feet don't slide let's go ahead
and look back at where that planted leg
was just a moment ago if I look at this
first keyframe at frame one this is the
planted heel that's where the weight is
going and that heel should stay in the
same spot until it's no longer at the
planted leg until this leg takes on the
weight of the character so if I scrub
through to frame eight well wait a sec
that heel was there that was sliding
back like he's walking on ice so at this
frame I'm gonna have to make a position
for this hips piece I'm gonna move
forward so that the heel of that
weight-bearing leg stays in the same
position so it needs to be right about
there so that that weight-bearing leg I
won't be sliding around now that's one
of the knee kind of things about this 3d
cursor is that you can position it and
just sort of use it as a reference for
where things need to be the heel should
not be sliding around I should stay in
that same kind of planted spot and now
that this leg is now kind of flat on the
ground the weights gonna transfer over
to the front or a ball or in this case
the toe of the foot so I'm gonna put
this 2d cursor at my left clicking right
about there and now when the character
rotates into its next kind of splayed or
stride pose it will stay in the same
pose but as you can see it slid forward
so I'm gonna grab my hips piece and
slide the character back so now
hopefully that toe stays in about the
same position and I might need to go
through because it's sort of
interpolating in a funny way I'm going
to go through later on and kind of fix
where my legs or the hips bone is to
make it so it doesn't slide around so
much by kind of making
he frame halfway in between there's one
thing here I can fix though and I should
have mentioned this a few moments ago
before sorry animating legs and that is
if I look at the speed of my character
at the beginning and end of this 72
frame animation the carrier is going to
speed up and then slow down if I plant
you'll see what I mean the character
starts slow it speeds up and it slows
down let's go and see that again it
speeds up it's fast in the middle and it
slows down at the end and that's because
of the interpolation mode that blender
sets by default and that's why we have
this graph editor window here you can
see now that these lines which represent
the character's movement to this red
line is the x-axis over time if you have
a curved line in terms of your location
again over time that represents when
it's curved your characters not moving
at a constant or linear rate we can fix
that by using the interpolation mode of
our keyframes by pressing a a few times
with your mouse in any of these two
windows so we have all the keyframe
selected and then I can go down to key
and go to interpolation mode and that's
the T keyboard shortcut so you can bring
that up just by pressing T with your
mouse in this window or this window it's
the same thing over here key
interpolation mode T same thing so I'll
press T I'm gonna select instead of
bezzie a that's the default I'm gonna
select linear when I do that you can see
all of the curves now become straight
lines and that means that all of our
rates of motion are constant they're
linear they don't speed up and slow down
or ease in or ease out so now if I press
a play from frame 1 you can see that my
character kind of moves at a constant
rate but of course we've slowed the
Kettner down here so that it doesn't
slide around but now we can keep going
and now we'll know that he's moving at a
constant rate okay so we have the
character in a stride pose with his
right leg forward we have the passing
pose we have
the next dry pose in the opposite
position that we have it in Fame one we
just need to make one more kind of
keyframe here and that is the opposite
passing pose just like that but the
opposite one so here the load-bearing
leg or part of the foot has become this
heel so I'll put that 3d cursor right
there in fact I'll zoom in so you're
gonna see what's going on there and it's
not quite on the ground that's okay I'm
not gonna be that picky again I can go
through later and kind of fix those
things up I'm gonna go to the next
iteration which will be frame 24 and I
know that heel needs to be in the same
spot I believe so I'm gonna select that
hips piece and I'm gonna slide it back
that heels and the seams but but
actually I need to rotate oops not go to
the hips rotate the leg so it's pointing
up and down because this is the next
passing pose and now I can position the
hip so that not only is the foot exactly
on the ground all the way down just a
little bit here but also that the heel
is in the right position so read about
there so now hopefully the character
will not slide very much and again I can
put it in between frame I want to do my
next pass okay that leg is not correct
at all I can put it maybe just a little
bit forward compared to the other one
we're looking pretty good I now have all
the leg positions that I need so what
I'm gonna do not only going to select
the key frames of the two legs in this
case cylinder one on cylinder two so
I'll press a a few times to make sure
everything is deflected down here I'll
press B B is the keyboard shortcut for
box select and when you press B for box
select your mouse gets these little dog
lines going through it or lonely and
vertically so now I can click and drag
and select in a box the key frames of
cylinder 1 and cylinder 2 in fact why
did that happen I selected everything
there we go I don't wanna set these
bottom ones and of course if you have
any things like it down here it selects
the summary keyframe to don't worry
about that so now what I can do is this
first keyframe is the next pose from
this passing pose so I'm going to press
shift D
and shift-d will make a duplicate of all
the selected keyframes I'm gonna move it
down to frame 32 is that frame 32 that's
not 33 above it got one more just with
it the G key key is grab or move great
so now we have a kind of even spacing of
these key frames and if I continue
playing it you can see that I have my
leg motion and the character's position
is continuing to change because of this
keyframe down here so that doesn't mean
that it's right though because my hair's
probably doing a lot of sliding there
are no proper keyframe set but at least
I have my walking animation what I might
do now is I might just duplicate all of
these keyframes again I'll press a to
deselect all I'll press B to bring up my
box let I'm gonna block select all of
these keyframes here not the cube which
is the hips piece of a character I'll
press shift D on my keyboard with a
mouse in this window shift D and now
opposition it read about there so now I
have this constant walking happening and
I can just sort of later on and I'm
gonna actually fast for this once I get
started I can correct the sliding of the
character's feet so that's what they do
now I'm going to go to the next keyframe
I know that let's take a look this
actually at frame 16 this becomes the
pivot or the load-bearing foot so I have
my 3d cursor rate at his heel at the
next frame we know what sort of transfer
or it's gonna transfer over to his toe
where you both there at the next frame
oh boy look at that
he slides quite a bit so now I can
correct that location of the hips at
this point the heel becomes the low
bearing section of his body so I'm gonna
slide down to there
going right about there this back leg is
the one that it should stay in the same
spot it's at this point that the toe
becomes load-bearing so I'll put three
there and now I can slide that back like
that so I'm just going to fast forward
to this next part you'll notice that my
animation is way too long and what I
might do then is judge how far I've
gotten and I can scale with animation
and we'll get to that in just a second
playing a fast forward this next section
of the video
all right so I finished going through
the animation of my character walking
and I've repositioned the hips piece of
the character so that the characters I'm
feet don't slide around so much and it
goes at a constant rate at all the
keyframe so we're doing pretty well I
made too many keyframes because I just
duplicated a whole bunch of new leg
keyframes so I have as you can see the
Kyrie keeps walking but we're already at
that point where the character is just
past that zero mark on the x-axis so
that we don't actually need these
keyframes anymore so I'm gonna press a
to deselect everything in here I'll
press B to box select I'm gonna select
all those keyframes and press X and
click on delete keyframes so now I have
an animation of my character walking
from point A which is all the way over
there to point B which is right at this
location I've got this a little bit past
because now I'm gonna animate the
character I'm kind of jumping up and
landing because that's how I guess a
Lego character wouldn't move it's sort
of a very animated fashion by the way
don't worry about the fact that we have
this up here I've already turned off in
my outliner window the plain and plain
dog 0:01
so we actually can't select it at all if
I try I collect that light but I can't
select these planes and they will not
render out because the camera is grayed
out there so we're doing okay if you
want to not see them at all you can
press the eyes and that way they'll go
away
okay so I want my character to jump up
and again we're gonna be blocking out
the animation here so rate at about here
I actually don't want here to go up
straight away I want him to go down a
little bit so I'm going to go a little
bit later and I'm going to have him go
down little bit which means I'm gonna
have to have his legs sort of rotate
backwards but right now I'm just
blocking out the location and maybe the
rotation of his hips parent piece so
it's at that point he's gonna be a
little bit down to emulate a little bit
of squash that's one of the principles
of animation I'm gonna go a few frames
later and I'm going to move the
character up like he's jumping maybe
right about there I'm gonna rotate him
on the
z-axis well type r and then Z on my
keyboard and rotate them a little bit
like that and now I frame say O 124 I'm
gonna rotate him I'll press R and then
actually I'm gonna press escape I gonna
press Alt our alt R will clear this
characters or this pieces rotation
because we know that we modeled it from
the front view of facing us so that way
I don't they're actually rotate it kind
of manually and figure it out old R will
clear the rotation and now I'll put the
character just at his landing post
exactly where I wanted him to be right
there now I know at this frame at frame
124 I want his legs to be flat on the
ground and then we'll actually do a
little bit of squash there too so I'll
press 3 to go to my side view I'm gonna
reset the rotation of these legs so I'll
press alt R it also left the other one
alt
R to clear out the rotation and a set
when I do that a keyframe and so now we
have let's go ahead and play it actually
an animation of the character jumping up
and down if I don't like the speed of
any of that I can move these keyframes
around just by selecting them and
pressing grab but what I'll do right
here because we don't want any crashing
between the legs and the ground is this
leg that I have selected right now will
actually keep going forward a little bit
so I'm going to slide that so let's just
sort of like that and then this one will
slide back like he's doing a funny kind
of splits before he goes up in the air
and in fact what he's in the air because
this is a cartoon I'm gonna rotate it
and I can just press R because of these
constraints what I have over here that I
set up when I was just finishing off the
character I can just tap are and that
will go take a leg in the way that it's
supposed to go
so right there and right there in fact
I'm gonna go really sort of exaggerated
like that and of course once I go
through and add the arm animation it
will look more like it's supposed to
I might even go here and rotate that in
sort of a funny way uppers are and then
X twice to rotate the character on as X
access and that's just the the hips
piece that he's kind of doing kind of a
funny splits in midair and he's going to
land now right about here I think I went
over to the character's legs a little
bit less press are again this is
supposed to be a funny kind of cartoony
animation also let the hips I'll press R
and then X twice to rotate him a little
bit forward and then when he lands I'm
gonna have it be straight up and down
but I'll press R xx to rotate a little
bit and you probably just do a little
bit jiggling after that to kind of like
steady himself so I'm gonna go a little
bit later and I'll press R and then an X
twice and let's make him go a little bit
down and then I go a few frames later R
xx and then back a little bit and then I
go a little bit later and I'll press alt
R to clear out the rotation so now I'm
kind of like jiggle a little bit when he
lands those little details really really
help so I got my character walking from
point A to point B and then he jumps and
laughs and of course that's pretty bad
animation but now I can go through and
kind of refine it refine it in front
animation does take a lot of time the
last thing I'll talk about here is
stealing animation right now my walk
animation takes too long
I said 72 and that's what was dictated
on my dope see that's how long it needs
to be for the length of my overall scene
that I need and fit in the length of my
TV show or a movie or what have you it's
going to slow right now so I'm gonna go
all the way up to frame 101 that's where
my animation needs to end but instead of
ending at 101 in East at 72 I'm gonna
press aged deselect all my keyframes in
a Tokyo door window that's one of the
strengths that looks at every window you
can select all the keyframes or deselect
I'm gonna press B to box select I'm
gonna grab and select all of these
frames by clicking and dragging
including 101 I'm now I'm gonna put my
playhead at frame 1 and I can tap ss4
scale and yes I can scale the animation
and it scales towards your playhead
where you currently are so if you have
your playhead over here and you tap s
it'll scale towards the playhead so I
want to make sure it's out
one because when a scale down towards
the beginning of the animation so yes
and now I can make sure that this frame
the last frame that wasn't when a one
ends up at 72 is that frame 72 no it's
71 it's all temp s and go one frame
later it'll try to do its best to line
up each of these key frames with an
actual numbered keyframe not same 72
that's the length that I wanted so I can
press a to deselect all B debauch select
a box like these ones and move them over
and so hopefully at this point I can
play my animation he'll walk faster it
looked like just as good of a walking in
fact probably even a little better
because it's fast and he'll jump and
he'll land and kind of wobble a little
bit that's a pretty terrible animation
but as you can see this is the process
that you go through or at least I went
through to make my Lego animation which
I'll bring up on the screen right now
this is the actual file that I rendered
out of my Lego animation that you might
have seen on my channel last week or at
some point since I posted it if you have
not seen this animation it's a very
short one of my Lego character actually
singing I'm a little teapot I'll put a
link to that on the screen right now and
let's get an area down below so if I
scrub through this animation you'll see
a few things you'll see that the camera
is zooming you a little bit there yes it
is but more importantly just focusing on
the character the character pauses at
certain points so I'm not gonna
reorganize these window just a little
bit I have a sequencer up here just for
the audio I don't need that so I'm going
to dissolve it by grabbing a little
triangle area and holding and then
dragging back into itself and so now I
have a dope feet window
if I select each part of the character
you'll see that there are some points
shown by these darker lines where the
character actually stays still or the
that part of the character stays still
you'll see that right there there is a
pause and if I select the hips you'll
see more of these there are pauses where
I want to show off what pose the
character is in that happens many times
when the character bends down when
character is a sort of kind of shaking
back and forth there it's important to
Adam pauses and of course to do that you
can select any key frame and press Shift
key to duplicate it and move it to later
so that you get an area or time of still
motion of an object
otherwise if you're here there's always
moving that just will look a little bit
too fast and moving and you won't ever
really get to see and kind of absorb
what the character is really doing
believe it or not animation has a lot of
pauses in it especially a stylized
character animation so you're gonna find
that the more pauses you sort of add at
key points the character freezes at one
point when he notices the cameras there
and you know cici see him stopping and
staring for several moments that's plus
it's important to add in it's also
important to mention that this animation
did not happen that quickly this
animation is only about 18 seconds long
yet it took about five or six or maybe
even seven hours to do I'm not a very
experienced at major events on the
animation just as a hobbyist before but
again it took about five or six or seven
hours all in all to get all the
animation done including the mouth and
the body and that happened over several
passes that are finding it or cutting
your fighting and deciding what my
character was actually gonna do I didn't
really plan out all that well but that
will be it for this video please don't
forget to like this video if you learned
something please don't forget to
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thanks for watching again and I'll see
the next one thanks to the black
you