Blender - A simple animation from scratch by alessandro baffa

Politecnico di Milano Sede di Como

Blender - A simple animation from scratch A complete tutorial from the construction of 3D models to their animation

Laboratory of Computer Graphics Master in Computer Engineering

- Alessandro Baffa, Annapaola Santarsiero (alessandro.baffa@mail.polimi.it, annapaola.santarsiero@mail.polimi.it)

Summary Objectives ....................................................................................................................................... 3 CHARACTERS MODELING........................................................................................................... 4 Pinocchio ............................................................................................................................ 4 Michelin Men .................................................................................................................... 21 Soccer ball ........................................................................................................................ 28 Goal .................................................................................................................................. 41 Fans .................................................................................................................................. 47 Lights and camera ............................................................................................................. 52 ANIMATION................................................................................................................................. 55 Armature ........................................................................................................................... 55 How to manage frames ...................................................................................................... 61 Add sounds in the animation.............................................................................................. 69 Rendering.......................................................................................................................... 71 Link the sound with the final video..................................................................................... 72

Objectives The goal of this tutorial is to give to the reader the fundamental knowledges about the functionalities offered by Blender, the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation. Through these pages the reader will learn how to model not so complex 3D objects and how to manage their features, he will learn how to create a simple realistic scene and how to manage lights and colors. In the end he will learn the basic tools and features provided by Blender to create a simple animation with the characters created in the first sections, how to render all the entire scene and how to link it with an audio file. This tutorial is thinked up for those people who have never used Blender before and want a complete tutorial with all the basic functionalities to start learning Blender. We trust that this tutorial will be useful as a starting point for more complex studies of Blender and its features. So, we wish you have fun with Blender!!

CHARACTERS MODELING In the following pages you'll be guided in the creation of the 3D models of Pinocchio and the Michelin Men.

Pinocchio Opening Blender the main window is shown.

Blender firstly shows a cube in the middle of the interface viewed from the top. Change the view to the side view. For our comfort we can split the interface in more parts, in such a way to have in the same time 3 types of viewing mode: top, side and camera. Background image as a track Modeling a character is easy if we have a track to follow during the modeling. As where we draw a picture having an image as a model to copy, in the same way we can use an image for modeling our 3D character.

In the Front View window click on View -> Background Image ... and the following small window opens:

Then click on Use Background Image and load the following image:

Now you should have your front side in the following way:

As you can see, now your cube has a background image. Now we can model the cube having an image in the background to follow during the modeling. So, let's start! We want to reproduce the torso first. Put the cube in the top part of it just before the white collar and resize your cube in such a way to have the same size of the first part of the torso, the shoulder zone.

The idea is to divide the torso in many parts and model every different part of the body with different cubes instead to use a single cube for the entire body and trying to change his shape. So, let's create the cubes to cover the entire body. We are going to create 3 cubes, one for the shoulder zone, one for the chest and another one for the belly. So, always in Edit Mode, click on A button to deselect the current cube and click on B button to activate the "box selection" and select the bottom side of the cube. 6

You can be sure that the correct face has been selected by holding ALT in the keyboard and rotate the cube using your mouse.

The background image disappears when you change the view mode, to have it back just click again on View -> Front. To create the other 2 cubes starting from the one you already created, having now the bottom face selected, click E button and Region, in the menu now opened.

As you can see, you're now creating a new cube starting from the bottom face of the other one. Create the other 2 cubes to have 3 cubes like this:

Now we have to resize these cubes trying to have a shape similar to the torso of Pinocchio. Starting from the shoulder, select the upper face of its cube and click S+X buttons to resize the face by the x-axis. Then deselect all clicking A button and select the entire chest-box, then click again on S+X buttons and increase the size of this cube. In the end, deselect all, select the bottom face of the belly-cube and click again on S+X buttons to decrease the size of the cube. The results should be similar to the following image:

As you can see we have modeled the upper part of the torso following the background image as a track. Let's create the rest of it. We can always use the extrusion, starting from the bottom face of the third box (the belly box) like the previous case. Now we have the entire torso modeled, but is still a union of cubes. To create the smooth version of it we have to use the modifiers. So, select all the torso clicking on A button and then go to the Modifiers menu, in the bottom part of the modeling interface, and click on Add modifier -> Subsurf and set Levels = 2.

Now you can see still the cubes, but inside them there is now a smooth shape. We have to modify it a bit to model the torso. Let's start from the bottom part, select the bottom face and click CTRL+E. If you now move the mouse you can model the bottom part of the smooth shape. Model this part like the image below.

Now we have to modify the hips. Select the User view mode by View -> User. Then rotate the torso holding ALT button. Once you have one of the hips in front of you select only that face of the cube, by click CTRL+TAB and choosing the Select Mode -> Faces.

Now if you click with RMB on the cubes you can select the single faces. So, select the face of the hip like the following image.

Once you have the hip face selected click SHIFT+E and increase the size of the smooth shape inside the cube to be similar to a real hip. The result should be similar to the following:

For modeling better the entire shape we have to modify a bit the size of the hip box and the chest. First select the bottom face of the belly box and click S+X and decrease the size of it. The result should be similar to the following:

Then select the entire chest box and increase a bit its size. Is better to decrease a bit also the size of the entire body, because Pinocchio is quite thin. So, click on A button and then S+X to make the figure thinner. Then switch to the Object Mode, click Z and the result should be similar to the following:

Now that we have the torso we can create the pants. To create them we have to use again cubes. Add a cube by click SPACE-> Add -> Cube. Then add some cubes to get a figure like the following:

Then modify the size of the entire figure and use the different views to put the pants in the right position. The result should be like the following:

Now the legs. To create the legs we can use the cilinder mesh. Click Space -> Add -> Mesh -> Cylinder. Now click on it with RMB and click S+x/y/z to adjust the size of the cilinder in such a way that its dimensions are suitable to the body. Create 3 cylinders, with the extrusion technique, in such a way that the second one is the knee. Then attach this leg to the pants. To create the other leg you can copy the leg already created with Shift+D. Attach also the second leg to the pants and the results should be like the image below:

Let's create the feet. To create a single foot, that later we can copy with the command Shift+D, we can use the cube mesh. So add a cube with Space -> Add -> Mesh -> Cube and resize it in such a way that it has the same weight of the leg.

Now, in Edit mode, rotate the view to have this vision:

Then select the Edge Selection Mode with CTRL+TAB and select the basis of the front face of the cube with RMB. Then click G+Y and extend this edge.

Now we have to use the modifiers to create a smooth shape inside this cube. So, in the modifiers panel click Add Modifier -> Subsurf. The new shape inside will be strage, but we can modify everything in Blender. So, rotate the view to see the back side of the foot, select the Face Mode Selection by CTRL+TAB and select this face. Then click SHIFT+E and enlarge this part of the foot. Do the same procedure for all the faces of the foot since to have a result similar to the following image:

Then click SHIFT+D to clone this shoe and since to have a result similar to this:

Let's create the arms. For this purpose we can use the same procedure used for the legs. Add a cylinder mesh in the scene clicking Space -> Add -> Mesh -> Cylinder, scaling and traslating it in such a way to put it near the body. Then extrude the bottom face of the cylinder in order to create a longer cylinder. The result should be similar to the following:

Now we want to give to the arm a more real position. So, rotate the single part of the arm and attach it to the body. Then select the entire arm, click SHIFT+D to clone it, and attach also the other leg to the body to obtain the following result:

Now we have to create the hands. For this purpose we can use the cube mesh. So, add a cube mesh in the scene and scale and rotate it in order to have the cube attached to the bottom face of the arm. Then add the subsurf modifier, in the same way used for the shoes, and you should have a result similar to the following:

To create the white collar we can use the UVSphere. Click S+X|Y|Z to scale the sphere and traslate it in order to have the sphere over the body and its dimensions are suitable for the shoulders.

Now attach the collar to the upper part of the body to get this result:

Now, let's create the neck and the head. The neck is simple to be created because only a cylinder is needed. So add a cylinder mesh over the collar a put it in the middle. Scale a bit the upper face of the neck with S+X.

Now the head. This is simple because is only a UVSphere.

We have to create the nose and the hat. To create the former object add the cone mesh in the scene. Then scale, rotate and traslate it in order to obtain a result like this:

The hat is composed by two object, a basis and the cone above. For the basis we can use the Torus mesh clicking Space -> Add -> Mesh -> Torus. Then scale, rotate and traslate it and put over the head.

The hat is a Cone mesh. So add a cone mesh into the scene, scale, rotate and traslate it in order to have a cone over the torus. Well, you created the 3D model of Pinocchio! You are able to modify the dimensions if any part of the entire 3D model! The result should be similar to the following image:

You can render the current frame to see your 3D model in a more pretty way. Click F12.

Michelin Men Now we want to create the Michelin Men as much similar as possibile to the following image.

For all the body we can use the UVsphere mesh. So click SPACE -> Add -> Mesh -> UVsphere. Create this character near Pinocchio in order to have a reference for the dimensions (we don't want to create a character too much higher than the other one). Let's start from the legs. As you can see from the image above there are 5 spheres composing the leg. So, create the first one, scale it by clicking on it with LMB and then S+X to scale by x-axis, S+Y to scale by y-axis and S+Z to scale by z-axis. It's important to have always the interface splitted in 3 windows: one for the front view, one for the side view and the third variable among top, camera and user view. To create the other sphere you can clone your first one you already created by clicking SHIFT+D, and traslate the new one under the other by G+Z. The result should be similar to this one:

Now select all the leg, by click B button and select all the spheres, and click SHIFT+D to clone the first leg and create the second one. Then click G+X and traslate the new leg (you are always free to change the weight and height of all the figures we are drawing). The body of the Michelin Men is composed by 3 spheres. Add a new sphere by clicking on SPACE -> Add -> Mesh -> UVsphere. Then scale it by z-axis (S+Z) and the other axis and put it under both the legs, in a middle position. Then clone this sphere 3 times and the result should be similar to the following image:

Now let's create the arms. Add a new sphere, scale and traslate it and put it near the upper part of the body where hypotetically there are the shoulders. Try to insert half the sphere inside the body.

Then clone the sphere and create the rest of the arms.

We can make thinner the entire figure, so select all the Michelin Men with B button and click S+X. To create the neck we can use again a UVsphere as in the figure below:

Now create the head with another sphere. Maybe the entire character now is too "fat", so select all the Michelin Men with B button and click S+X. Then select every single sphere of the arms and repeat this operation in order to have thinner arms.

Now we have to create the shoes and the hands. For the shoes we can use a cube mesh. So add a cube and scale and rotate it in order to have a result like this:

Now add the subsurf modifier because we want to model the shoes. Once you added the subsurf deselect all (A button) and rotate the view holding ALT and move your mouse. When you can see the back of this cube select only the vertical face by clicking CTRL+TAB to select the Face Selection Mode and then select the face with RMB.

Now click SHIFT+E to extrude only this face of the internal subsurf. Do the same thing with the bottom of the cube.

Now switch to the Front View. Select the frontal face of the cube and click W -> subdivide. Now the face is divided in 4 parts. Now click CTRL+TAB to select the Edge selection mode and select the lower edges of the front face. In the Side View, click G+Y and stretch the edges.

Using the face selection mode select the upper face of the shoe and click S+X and S+Y to resize it.

Now clone the shoe to create the second one.

Now is the moment of the hands. To create them we can use the cube mesh to create the palm and then other smaller and thinner subsurfed cubes for the fingers. The result should be similar to this:

Your Michelin Men is now ready!

Soccer ball We will see now how to shape the soccer ball.....the cardinal instrument! All of you will think that it would be sufficient to create a sphere and colour it, but to get a realistic soccer ball you need more steps. The result should be a combination of pentagons and hexagons. That's the steps that they will let you reach the goal! First of all, you need to create a new file( CTRL+X ) and add the to the scene the basic figure (Space->Add->Mesh->IcoSphere), specifying subdivision=2.

The icosphere is formed by triangles. It's necessary to transforme it into a combination of pentagons and hexagons: panel Editing (F9)->add Subsurf (level=1) from Modifiers and click on Apply to make definitive the change.

Soccer's pentagons and hexagons will have different colors. It's therefore necessary to define two different materials. For creating the two materials: panel Editing -> Link and Materials -> New (twice because of two materials).

Going to the panel Shading (F5) click on the left buttons over "Material" and rename the second material (ex. Pentagon) as to diversify the different parts of the ball, and associate to it a new color.

Return to the Editing panel and seek the pentagon in frontal view.

Go to Edit Mode (TAB). For simplicity it's convenient to operate on the faces of the shape, and not on the vertices. To move on "Faces" mode, press CTRL+TAB and choose "Faces".

Now select, clicking the RMB, a face of the localized pentagon and than the other four faces of that pentagon (SHIFT+RMB). Deselect (SHIFT+RMB) any other selected faces that don't belong to the pentagon.

Assign the material number 2 (called "Pentagon") to the selected pentagon : panel Editing -> Links and Materials -> Assign.

Moving through the different views (frontal, lateral, back, etc) it's easy to identify all the pentagons and repeat for each of them the assignment of the material. Now you need to extrude the pentagons. To select all of them, click on Select in the section "Links and Materials" taking care that the material is that one assigned to pentagons.

To do the extrusion click on E -> Region and then, not moving the cursor, click on RMB as not extruding just in one direction. Extrude in the direction of the normal clicking ALT+S and expand the figure dragging whit the mouse and pressing the LMB for confirming the movement. Then press again ALT+S to reduce the extruded faces on the top.

For the hexagons you need to work in a different way, by selecting just one and then using "Spin Dup". Like you did with the pentagon before, you have to select a face of the hexagon and expand the selection ( SHIFT+RMB ) to the other five faces of the hexagon, deselecting the faces that don't belong to the hexagon, if there are you have to select just one hexagon, not all of them in the icosphere!

Assign to the hexagon the material 1 (panel Editing -> Links and Materials -> Assign ). Even now you have to do the extrusion of the hexagon. Do it like you did with the pentagons. After the extrusion you have to select the small faces around the extruded hexagon that complete the shape!

With the selected hexagon, invert the selection ( Space -> Select -> Inverse ):

Then deselect the pentagons ( Links and Materials -> Deselect , deselect that one associated to the material of the pentagon!). Delete all elements that are now selected, that is all the hexagons except one, clicking on X -> Vertices.

That's what remain: the union of all the pentagons and just one hexagon.

Back to "Vertices" mode ( CTRL+TAB ) :

Now you have to fill all these holes! First of all you have to check a pentagon linked only to the hexagon, select the central vertex of the pentagon and press NUM* for visualize it frontally. Click SHIFT+S -> Cursor to selection.

Without changing the view, elect with the RMB the centre of the hexagon and expand the selection to the whole hexagon ( CTRL+(Num+) ).

What we are trying to do is to create some copies of the hexagon around the pentagon, as fill the empty spaces. as you need 5 copies of the hexagon around the pentagon, you need to modify the angle's value in 288 (360/5=72 , 72*4=288). As only 4 pieces are omissing, you need to put Steps' value on 4. These values are in the panel editing -> Mesh Tools.

After you insert the values, press Spin Dup.

Repeat the operation checking other pentagons in the same situation.

To fill the holes that remain, put in the middle of the pentagon near an hole and repeat the "spin Dup" operation after having modify the values : Degree= 72, Step=1.

As the Spin Dup produce the duplication of many vertices, you have to delete them. In Edit Mode select all the vertices(AKEY) and then from Mesh tools ->Rem Double. The Limit value indicates the maximum distance of the two close vertices. Check the highest value that don't modify the geometry of the shape.

If you want a more smooth ball, clickin the panel Links and Materials -> Set Smooth. If you are not yet satisfied, press Subsurf in Modifiers. Perfect! The soccer ball is finished! Now you can start to play!

The football pitch

Now we have to create the pitch on which our characters are going to move. Is very easy. The idea is to create a plane to be texturized with the image of a football pitch taken from the Web. So, before adding the plane change your view point in Top View in order to have a wide point of view. Now add a plane mesh in your scene by clicking SPACE -> Add -> Mesh -> Plane and then scale it to have a result similar to the following:

As you can see the plane is large enough to look like a real Now we have to texturize the plane mesh. Click F5 to go to the Material Panel.

soccer

pitch.

Click Add New to open the Material Panel:

Now click F6 to select the Texture Panel and click on Add New. As texture type select "Image" and click on "Load" in the new panel opened. Select the image (we choose THIS IMAGE). Now click F5 again, going back to the Material Panel, and click on Map Input, near Texture panel, and you can see 4 buttons that set how your texture has to be put on the plane mesh: Flat, Cube, Tube and Sphere. Click on Flat because you are using a Plane mesh.

Now click on F12 to render the scene and you should see your plane with the texture!

Maybe ... now is the case to decrease the size of the characters ;-) 40

Goal

Creating a goal is an operation divided in 2 parts: the goalposts and the net. To create the goalposts is sufficient to use a set of cylinders. Add a cylinder in your scene with SPACE -> Add -> Mesh -> Cylinder and rotate and traslate it in order to make it thin, long and near the Michelin men, as you can see in the image above or below. You have to create 8 cylinder. Our suggestion is to create the first one and clone it in order to create the others by selecting it in Object mode and click SHIFT+D, than traslate it with G+X/Y/Z. The result you should obtain should be similar to the following image. Be careful that the cylinders behind are shorter than that in the front.

Now that the goalposts are created we have to create the net. To create it the best functionality we can use is the surface. So, change your view point to Side view to see the dimensions of one of the faces of the goal, click with LMB in the middle of it and add a surface with SPACE -> Add -> Surface -> NURBS Surface.

As you can see the surface is oriented towards the z-axis, but we want to rotate it in order that it face covers all the face of the goal. Rotate it with R+Y.

Now scale the surface with S+Y in order to increase the weight and S+Z in order to make it longer. Now the net covers quite all the face of the goal (we have to manage it a bit again), but the position of the net itself is not correct. Look in the Front view and you can see that the net is not in the middle of the goalposts, but more right along x-axis.

Click G+X and put the net in the middle of the goalposts.

Now we have to manage the net. Switch to the Edit mode and you can see a strange thing around the surface now. They are the control points of the NURBS surface, the points that let you change the position of each face of the surface itself. A surface is controlled by this points and you have to manage them in order to change the surface.

Keeping the surface selected, click on W button in your keyboard and then Subdivide. In this way we can have more control points to manage the net in more precise way..

As you can see the net is enlarged, so scale it in order to get the previous size again. Now you are ready to start managing the net trough the control points! For this purpose you have to use a lot all the view mode, and in particular the combination ALT+mouse because is important to see all the details from all the possible views. We suggest to use the Draw Type Solid for this operations because is possible to see better the surface (you can use the menu you can see below or you can click Z button).

Starting from the side view select the upper control points with RMB and traslate them with G+Z in order to cover the small top-left angle in the current face of the goal.

Do the same thing for all the sides of the surface in order to have a net attached to the goalposts.

Now we have to change the material of the surface. We'd like to have a surface like a real net. So, go to the material panel clicking in the little icon with a small red sphere, in the instruments bar in the bottom part of the user interface, and click Add New. Now you are in the Material panel and click on Wire button.

Now click on F12 and see the net.

Now do the same operations for all the other faces of the goal. The result should be similar to the following image:

Fans

Once the characters are ready to move we have to create the rest of the stadium. We are going to create the tiers. Is very simple. The idea is to create 4 cubes and modify them in order to have the typical shape. So, add a cube in the scene. Go to Object mode and click SPACE -> add -> mesh -> cube. Then put the cube near to a side of the pitch, at your choice, and scale it in order that its weight is as large as it.

In Edit mode, click A button to deselect all and then click CTRL+TAB and Edges as Selection mode. Then select the front upper edge of the cube.

Now create the other 2 tiers with the same operations.

Now we have to apply the texture. So go to Edit mode (TAB), click CTRL+TAB a select Faces as Selection mode. Then select one of the inclined faces and click on the icon of Material button and click Add New.

In the Texture panel, the last one on the right, click add new and then click F6. Now select Image as Texture Type and then Load . Select one image of supporters you have in your file system (ours is this one) and change to 5 the value of Yrepeat and Xrepeat in the Map Image panel. You can change the orientation of the texture. To do this operation click F5 to go back to the Material panel and go the the Map Input panel, near the Texture one.

In the bottom part of this panel you can see a matrix with X Y and Z inside. Choosing the correct combination of the values inside the matrix you can change the orientation of the textures. The renderization can help you, so try to manage this matrix to find the correct orientation. The result should be like this.

Now do the same operations for the others tiers of the stadium. If you want now you can create also the entire building around the pitch. We have created a stadium in a very simple way. We added 4 big cylinders and put them in the 4 angles and then we put a big torus under these 4 new towers. The result is this one:

Lights and camera The ligths and camera are very important in your scene. Without the former everything will be invisible and with the wrong settings of the latter you can't obtain a realistic animation. The lights we have choosen for our scene are some simple area lights. Click SPACE -> Add -> Lamp -> Area and change the value of energy to something in the range [1.2 - 2.0] (try to find to you the best value for your scene) and clone it in order to have a set of lights to put in your scene. Put the lights in this positions:

If you want to have more realistic effects you can add the ray tracing clicking on the Ray shadow button in the Shadow and Spot panel. In this way to can obtain a more realistic effect for the shadows.

Now the camera. You can move the camera clicking on it and using the G button as for all the others object in the scene, but is more comfortable to choose the Camera view (from the menu View -> Camera, or NUM 0 from your keyboard. We used Windows system for this tutorial and we noticed that is necessary to activate the numeric buttons in the keyboard. For this purpose you have to use the "hidden menu" that you can find in the upper part of the user interface. Drag the File menu down and you can see a new menu in which there is a button named System & Open GL. 52

Then click on Emulate Numpad. From now on you can use the numerical buttons of your keyboard).

The camera is very important. For your animation we would like to move the camera in order to see both the characters and the stadium around them. A parameter that maybe important to you to change is the focal distance. The focal distance is the parameter that lets the system to render the different points in your scene when the camera is moving far away from them, in the Computer Graphics is the dimension of the clipping plane and out of this dimension the scene is not rendered. The default value of this parameter is too short for our purposes so we have to change it. Select the camera with the RMB (i suggest you to change to the Camera View because is more simple to select the camera) and click F9 to open the Camera panel. Now increase the value of the End parameter of the Clipping Start/End panel. Click also the Limits button in order to see the distance graphically in the scene.

Now go to the Front view and see the yellow line from the camera: this is the focal distance.

ANIMATION In this part of tutorial you are going to learn how to animate objects. In order to animate we choose the technique of Armatures, a sort of skeleton inside the object that is able to control it.

Armature

Now that you've created the characters we want to animate them. To animate an object we have chosen the Armature strategy. In the image above you can see what we are going to do: to join the body of the characters with an armature. The idea is that an armature inside a body can force the object to follow its movements and so we can move a body only moving the bones of the armature inside it. In Object mode, in Front view, add the armature. Click LMB near the Michelin Men in order to put there the cursor. Click SPACE -> Add -> Armature and you should see a new figure:

You have just created a bone. We have now to create the others. Keeping selected this bone go to Edit mode (TAB in the keyboard).

To create the other bones we can use the extrusion, as for the cubes when we created Pinocchio's model. So, click E button 2 times and, moving the mouse, let's see the result.

You created 3 bones just extruding the first one, but, as you can see, they are created starting from the top of each bone. So, after this proof delete these bones clicking A button to deselect all, then go to Object mode and with the B button select only the 3 bones. Click DEL in your keyboard and confirm the action.

Now create a new bone near the Michelin Men and rotate it by Y-axis clicking R+Y in order to have a inverted bone.

This bone will be the starting point for the legs of the armature. Go to Edit mode and, before extrude this bone to create the others, click F9 to open the Armature panel (or click in the small icon you can see in the bottom panel as you can see in the following image).

Now, in the Armature panel, select the X-Axis-Mirror. Now click SHIFT+E, to extrude. As you can see you are creating 2 specular bones in the same time because you are using the x-axis as a mirror (for this reason is better to use the Front view). Let's create 2 small bones and, clicking only E, other 2 longer ones. As you can see now you can extrude always with the x-axis as a mirror.

Now we have to create the trunk and the arms. Select the upper bone with RMB, the one from which you created the legs, and click E to extrude it 1 time to create 1 bone only. From this one click again F9 and, in the Armature panel, click X-Axis-Mirror and then SHIFT+E. Create 2 small bones and then extrude each of them in other 2. The result should be similar to the following:

As you can see i created also 2 other bones for the neck and the head. Now go to Object mode, select the armature with the RMB (it highlights with a pink color) and go to Pose mode.

If you now select a single bone with RMB ti becomes blue instead of pink. If you try now to move the single bone you also force the other bone created extruding it to move. A more realistic movement should involve all the bones when you move a single one. This is the functionality of the "Auto IK" button in the Armature panel (that you can see in the figure above, near X-AxisMirror). So click Auto IK and then select a single bone. Now all the bones are moving! This is the basis of the movement of our characters.

Now we have to merge the armature and the body of the character. Select the Object mode and click on the armature with RMB. We have to put the armature inside the body, so use the Front and the Side view to reach this goal. The result should be like the following:

Now select all the sphere that compose the body and when all the body is pink colored click CTRL+A and Scale and Rotation to ObData in the menu.

Now hold SHIFT and click with RMB on the Armature inside the body. If you zoom the body you can see that the color of the armature is lighter than the color of the body. It means that the body is considered as the parent figure of the armature. Now we have to make it really the parent figure. So, click CTRL+P and Armature in the Make Parent menu and Create From Bone Heat every time it appears. It means that for every sphere composing the body you are set the closest bone as its parent node.

Once you finish to click select the armature with RMB and go to Pose mode. Try to move the single bones and all the body moves. Now do the same operations for Pinocchio.

How to manage frames It's the time to use the armatures we have made in the previous part of this tutorial. First of all, we want that our character start moving from a side of the football pitch to the goal. So, change the point of view to the Top view, in order to have a wide view, and put the characters in a position like this one:

This is the starting point of the animation. So, let's prepare the environment needed for the animation. Change the Datablock from SR:2 - Model to SR:1 - Animation.

The user interface is changed. The window you can see in the right side is the Ipo Curve Editor that shows the different moviments of all the objects of the scene just drawing a line with different color for all the axis.

So, for example if you rotate an object by x-axis will be drawed a colored line in the RotX line of the Ipo Curve Editor. In the window in the bottom (you have to drag it up) there's the Timeline window in which is visible the timeline of the frames of the animation

The animation is very complex because you have to see the see and the object from all the possible point of view to make a correct and real movement. So we suggest you to split the user interface (just putting mouse in the line breaker between 2 different windows and click on Split) into 4 windows: in the bottom side the Timeline and in the upper side 3 sub-windows (Front, Top and Camera) . In this way you can have a look on all the useful points of view.

In the Timeline editor you can see the controls for the animation (Play, Rewind, Stop, Record..) and also 2 buttons Start and End: these buttons set the size of the animations as number of frames. The other numerical button indicates the current frame number. Let's start with the animation of Pinocchio. Zoom on Pinocchio in the Front View in order and rotate it in order to have a look like the following.

Now click on the armature inside it with RMB and it highlights with a pink color (as the image in the right above). Now go to the Pose mode and the armature becomes blue.

Let's do a proof in order to learn how to manage the frames and do a simple animation. With this sample you'll be able to create an animation by yourself. In the Timeline editor set the value of End to 10 and se the current frame to 1 (it means that you are creating a small animation composed by 10 frames and now you are at the first one).

Now click on a bone at your choice of the armature of Pinocchio. It highlights with a blue color.Click on A button twice and all the armature is now selected.

Now click on I button and LocRotScale in the Insert Key menu. In this way to have fixed the position of all the bones for the current frame.

Now set the current frame in 10, then select the first bone of the right leg with RMB and click R+Y in order to rotate this bone. Then select the last bone of this leg and click again on R+Y. The sequence is shown below.

Now click twice the A button and when all the armature is highlighted click on I button and again on LocRotScale. Now set again the current frame as 1, click on Z button in order to see the solid and see what happens ;-) . The leg is version of your characters and click on the small play icon moving!! With this technique we want to do the entire animation! So try to make the animation of Pinocchio and the Michelin Men walk from this position to the goal. Switch to the Object mode and select both the characters with B button. Then use the Top view, set the current frame to 1 and click on I button, then on LocRotScale. Then set the current frame to 20 and change the position of the characters traslating them by the x-axis. Put them in the middle of the pitch. Click again on I button and LocRotScale.

Then in the frame #70 put the characters in our position in front of the goal. For our animation the Michelin Men will be the goalkeeper while Pinocchio is the player who is going to kick the penalty ;-) .

In the same way you can move the camera. The camera is an object like the others and so you can move, scale or traslate it in the scene. As starting position (in the frame #1) of the camera for the final animation we have choosen to put the camera above the stadium, as you can see in the following image.

In the frame #70 the camera will be in a lateral position relative to the stadium. In the meantime we moved the character in front of the goal. In this way the characters are moving from a side of the stadium to another one while the camera is moving from the top of the stadium to a position near the characters.

In this way Blender is able to create the interpolation of the movements of the objects in the scene. The result will be the objects moving from the starting frame to the final one. You can apply the interpolation on every object you want in the scene.

Another very important tool to know to better understand the foundamental instruments for the animations with Blender is the NLA Editor. This tool let you control every keyframe you added in the objects of the scene in order to scale them, make the animation faster or delete some of them. As Window Type select NLA Editor:

Then a new window appears in the UI:

This new window has in the left part the index of all the objects inside your scene and in the rest the keyframes as small white squares. You can manage every single keyframe just clicking on them with RMB (the small squares become yellow). Once the keyframe is selected you can move it through all the timeline (click G button on and drag it). This tool is very useful because if you want to make your animation faster, slower or more simply you want that an object starts to move later you can select all the keyframes and move them where and when you want inside through the timeline (with A button, as you select all the object in the scene. If you want to select all the keyframes of a single object you have to hold SHIFT and select every small squares with RMB). To scroll down the list of objects you have to use the same combo of buttons for the scrolling in the scene, so hold SHIFT and use the mouse wheel. When you click with LMB inside the NLA Editor the green line that appears inside indicates the current frame of the timeline.

Add sounds in the animation An animation without sounds is like a sky without stars. It's very simple to attach a sound file in Blender. Open the Video Sequence Editor:

and the following window opens:

The 2 files you can see are the sounds we choose for our animation. They are in .wav format, but you can also choose an mp3 file. In the bottom axis of the editor there are the number of frames and the green line indicates the current frame in the timeline. To add an audio file click on Add -> Audio (HD) and then select the audio file in your filesystem.

The file you just selected appears in the editor as a green object (as the image above) and you can put it where you want in the timeline. If your file is too long and you want to cut it you can click on the file with RMB and then Cut (soft) at Current Frame (if you want that the volume of the file decreases gently before being cut):

You can move the file through the timeline just clicking on it with RMB and using G button as an usual object of the scene. In our animation we concatenated 2 audio files. So, adding an audio file into the scene is very simple!

Rendering

The renderization of the scene is the most important thing to set! If the rendering is not well done all the efforts you did since now will not be considered from the final observer. If you click on F10 button in your keyboard you can see the animation and rendering panel. There are some important option to set and to know in order to have the maximum quality in the final video. The image above is the window that is opened. As you can see is divided into 4 panels (Output, Render, Anim and Format) and each of them has some important thing to set. We want to explain to you the options we activated in each of panels: • •

•

Output: in this panel you can set the output folder in which the video will be created. The default one is /tmp (if it does not exist in your filesystem, Blender will create it); Render: the biggest button "RENDER" is the one that renderizes all the frames of your animation, but we're not going to use it (it's just for your information). The important options to set are o Radi and Ray (in the right side respect to the render button). These buttons activate the Ray Tracing and Radiosity effect in your scene. They are very important because they make the final animation more realistic. We activate only them in this set of buttons. o X: this button is in the bottom part of this panel. It is very important because it disables the time difference between fields calculations. It is important to activate this button in order to have a more fluid and high quality video. Anim: this is the panel that starts the renderization. The biggest button "ANIM" starts the renderization of all the frames. The button "PLAY" starts the animation after the renderization. In this panel you can choose the set of frames that you want to render and animate, o with Sta:1 and End: 225 options (our animations has 830 frames). Format: with this panel you can set the output format of your animation. o In Codec: Animazione we have choosen the AVI Raw video format (it is very important to choose the AVI video format because is important for the last step: the connection with the sound file) o You can also set the size of the video and the number of frames per second (FPS. The default value is 25 and we leave this value).

Link the sound with the final video This step needs a further section. In the previous section you have learned how to add an audio file into the scene, but if you render the animation the sound will be not included in the final video. In order to do this connection Blender offers 2 different ways: you can choose FFMpeg as output format in the Anim panel or you can use an external software. We have chosen the second option because is faster to render only the animation and then add the sound instead to render all togheter. The external software we have used is VirtualDub(we have downloaded the 1.8.5 version), an open source software that lets you connect a AVI video with an audio file. You can free download it. It is very easy to use and is not necessary to install anything because it is just an executable file. So let's add the audio and the video. In order to use an external software Blender has an interesting option. Click on the Sound Block Button (the last button you can see in this set and the following window opens (Sound panel):

)

There is the Sequencer panel with the MIXDOWN button. This button is able to take all the audio files you added in your scene and it creates a unique audio file as long as all the video. Is important to click the buttons "Sync" and "Scrub" in order to have the best result. The file will be created in the same folder of the .blend file. Now you have the audio file and the AVI video let's use VirtualDub to link them togheter. Open VirtualDub and click File -> Open Video File. Select your AVI video from your filesystem. Now click on Audio -> Audio from other file and select the WAV file in your filesystem (the file created with the MIXDOWN button). Now click File -> Save as AVI ... and VirtualDub starts to work. It needs few seconds (it depends from the size of your video) to create the final file. So, now you have your wonderful animation with also the sound!!