The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging & Animation (Udemy.com)

Course Description

Have you ever wanted to breathe life into the 3D assets you create, moving their limbs, letting them swing to the wind or morphing them into different shapes?

'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ is very different to any other Blender course out there! Most Blender courses show you 3D modelling, texturing, and rendering tips and tricks. 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ focuses on creating a variety of animations from basic, to intermediate, to advanced, all completely made in Blender - one of the top open-source and free 3D modeling software out there.

We will not be using any other software to animate all that you see in the thumbnail, except Blender. You will also learn about multiple armatures, walk cycles, and turntables, and as an added plus, you will learn about how to animate a full scene reminiscent of adventure films with different deadly traps.

This is great because it means you will get to see how we animate organic and inanimate objects from scratch for video games. I am sure 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ will be the one course that you will want to keep handy anytime you need animate an asset.

Our 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ top 6:

1. Following through a full introduction to animating in Blender with basic animations;

2. Learning how to animate tank tracks so that they stick to any type of terrain;

3. Creating create handles and drivers to have your tank tracks move realistically;

4. Mastering the art of character rigging and animating walk cycles;

5. Finding how to make moths move around a light source using Blender’s particle boid system;

6. Maximising the benefits of animated textures to create flames and fire streams.

Now, there are courses out there that can show you how to animate specific assets from start to finish, but there is nothing that covers the entire process from grass to wheels, to trees, to fish, to tank tracks, to fire, to light, and clouds, and even deadly adventure game traps. 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ is intended to be the complete guide to animating in Blender.

Stage 1: Basic Animation

This part of 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ will cover the basics of animation. No bones or rigs, just key frames. We will also be looking into interpolation modes and how we can use them to smooth out animations.

· Move - Rotate - Scale

· Interpolation modes

· Basic simulations

Stage 2: Swing Animation

Using the skills we learn from stage 1, we take this up a notch by creating our first rig and single bones. This is the basis of most animations. This part of 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’ will teach you why a root bone is important.

· Swing Animation

· Simple Rig

· Root Bone

Stage 3: Wheel Turning

When working with anything that can spin, it is important to understand how frames and keys work. In this stage, we will be explaining how to create a spinning wheel. Our goal is for its movement to look realistic. The best thing about wheel animations is that this can be achieved in the shortest amount of time.

· Key Frames

· Blank Frames

· Linear Interpolation

Stage 4: Basic Weighting

In this part of 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’, we will be looking at how weighting works and you will learn how to add weight to bones. This is important for creating a certain level of realism. We will also be looking at when and how to use bendy bones.

· Bendy Bones

· Tree Swaying

· Weight Chart

Stage 5: Shape Keys

Shape keys are a very powerful animation tool that we have at our disposal. We can not only change the shape of objects in ways that rigs simply cannot do but we are also able to combine multiple shape keys.

· Shape Keys

· Animated Texture

· Growth Animation

Stage 6: Multiple Bones

As a 3D artist, at some point or another, you will have models that will need a lot more than just one single bone. In this part of the course, we learn how we can create animations with multiple bones working independently.

· Multiple Bones

· Combining Keyframes

· Timelines

Stage 7: Animated Fish

Realistically animating wildlife can be difficult. Luckily, we have a fair amount of Blender that can speed up your workflow and enhance the realism of an animation. Within the graph editor, we will look at modifiers and how to combine them with displacement.

· Noise Modifier

· Animated Paths

· Displacement

Stage 8: Morphing

Morphing is the process of taking one object and turning it into another over a set number of keyframes. Now, this is not as simple as clicking a button. In this part of 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’, we will look at how to set up this process and how to change the textures along with the object.

· Shrink Wrapping

· Morphing

· Texture Setup

Stage 9: Tank Tracks

In my opinion, tank tracks are the number one asked-for animation, coming second after character rigs. This is why it is included in the course. We will be going through how to stick our tracks to any terrain. You will finish this part with the skills to create handles and drivers to have your tank tracks move realistically.

· Drivers

· Handles

· Curve Modifier

Stage 10: Fire & Light Flicker

There will always be an abundance of models that require flames in some shape or form. This means that knowing how to animate flames is a key component of 'The Ultimate Guide to Blender 3D Rigging and Animation’. You will not only learn how to create flames from scratch, but you will also learn how to animate them. Empties and displacement will be the key to creating realistic flames without the need for complex simulations.

· Texture Coordinates

· Animated Lighting

· Moving Flames

Stage 11: Moths & Light