Hey all, I’m TianWei and have been using blender for one or two years now. I haven’t touched much animating because it feels so big and hard to me. Can I get some tips or suggestions from pros how to begin learning? When I say animation I’m also talking about rigging.
First stop - do the Gus tutorial in Blender help:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation
Then go to www.CGCookie.com and pick up some of the basic tutorials.
The start a SIMPLE project.
Then ask here when you get stuck…
Enjoy yourself.
Cheers, Clock.
Clock gives sound advice!
While rigging and animation are closely related (you can’t really do any character animation without a rig), they are really 2 separate things. Rigging a character (and when I say character, I mean anything you animate: lamp post, a flower, a pencil, a minecraft character), is an art of it’s own. It takes a bit of time to learn it, to learn all the various methods to control a character with a rig. It’s a bit of a deep subject.
Animation is also an art. Key poses, timing, anticipation & follow thru, and the 12 principles of animation are all important to learn as well, but not really related to rigging. Also a bit of a deep subject, giving life to a banana or a cell phone can take time to learn.
Knowing at least a little of both is necessary. For animation practice, look for bouncing ball tutorials, get a bouncing ball rig, and animate. To learn rigging, there is a user favourite set of rigging videos on youtube called Humane rigging. I’ve not watched them, but I think the first video shows how to create a bouncing ball rig.
Have fun!
Randy
I’ve watched them and it is a bouncing ball first up.
Good advice as ever Randy.
Cheers, Clock.