Welcome Citizens!
In this 10 part Blender Animation series, David Ward will introduce you to the character “BC Baker” and how his rig works, including shape keys and drivers. We look into the different tools for animation in Blender, namely the Action Editor, Pose Library, and Non-Linear Action (NLA) editor.
This will include the overview on how the rig is constructed, and how to control it.
Related Training
Beorn Leonards – Animation Fundamentals is another Blender Animation series if you are interested in further education on this topic.
Become a Citizen Subscriber today to unlock the full series
Introduction to the Rig
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(18:23)
Shapekeys and Drivers
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(13:02)
Action Editor
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(16:03)
Pose Library
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(9:32)
Pose Library Supplemental
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(1:27)
NLA Editor
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(9:34)
Animating the Eyes
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(8:17)
Phonemes Library
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(12:08)
Lip Syncing
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(11:39)
Head Movements
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(21:33)
Walking, Talking Moving Hands
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(27:05)
This is a wonderful series. One of the best for me. Thank you so much.
that is nice, but i can’t use it because i’m familiar with skutchup pro . can you help me?
This site has a nice tutorial to get started with Blender. You will learn a lot, especially if you are already familiar with another 3D Software. Check it out.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/
Nice series!!! In order to undersand it a TAD better, would you mind putting baker (Rigged, of course) on blendswap.com? Thanks!!!!!!
This has been great. I’m learning a ton. Thanks!
Enjoyed the whole videos and tips, currently doing an animation scene as a change from the norm,
Thanks Team
Posted like FB
Thanks! I can’t wait to watch these! I watch most of your Johnny Blender tutorials on youtube. Good stuff!
Great set of video’s. After reviewing them all and begining to tinker with the source files I found I had a problem. None of the mouth controls work. I thought I might have clicked the wrong button so I downloaded the source fies again, still the same result. I have been digging to try and resolve the issue. Even in pose mode they do not work.
Any suggestions on how I get them to do what they are supposed to do would be great. Even a in depth tutorial on just how the controls are set up / created.
I’ve been having a similar problem
Well, I just watched the intro to rigging and i’ve searched and i not found a continuation for this intro to a full character rigging, there is any course i should watch, or course fragments to learn how to create a fully rigged caracter like the baker?
If you a are a citizen member check out the “intro to character modelling” series, one of the parts covered in that video is character rigging. That might be what you’re looking for.
Thanks, I’ll watch it soon!
The course was great. I resolved the issues with the mouth. I also took the audio file and extended it to 7.5 seconds. I created a chair for baker to sit on. During the animation he gets up out of the chair. I rendered out the video and it came out great. Total time to render was about 15 minutes. I have some ideas for extending the story line by adding a few more charaters and some background.
With that being said, I ran into an issue. I wanted to scale baker down, I selected every thing on all the layers and, wow, what a mess. Complete and total disstortion. So I went back to the original source file of the rig because I figured the pose library and lip sync data was causing a conflict. every thing scaled down except the lattice. Baker ended up with a mushroom head. Still not sure why everything but the lattice scaled down
I used your source files and the bones in the mouth aren’t having any effect on the model when I grab them.
The face rig in source files don’t work,
Fix it please.
Hi Jau, to fix the face rig, in Blender, simply go to Help > FCurve/Driver Fix.
OK, thank’s, it works!
Awesome. Thanks so much!
Great Tutorial, but is there a tutorial of modelling “dear baker’?
Nope, but there is lots of modeling tutorials that would help you achieve this result.
-Alex
Hi I’ve got small problem that I hope is a quicky to fix I downloaded the source files and opend the one called BC_Baker_Rig to have a dable but when I hit zero on the number pad and for some reason its set to zoom in and out on the empty space in the top right insted of the centre
I have never encouterd this before and didn’t even know it could do that can some one please tell me how to reset it so that when I’m in camra view scroling bak and forth on the mouse wheel zooms in and out on the centre of the cam’s view?
This is in the user preferences -> input -> zoom style
-Alex
Excellent tutorial, thanks! I’ve got one problem, with the face rigging. When I move Baker (for example making him walk), the ‘Mouth oh’ control does not follow the rig. It stays in it’s original location in the 3D space. So after one step, Baker has a permanent “oooh” mouth shape. If I move the ‘Mouth oh’ back manually, the mouth will change when the control finds it’s original location behind him.
Any ideas?
This is a bug with 2.6, to fix select the mouth control, enter edit mode and shift select the head bone. now pres CTRL+P to parent with maintain offset and it will be fixed.
-Alex
That’s got it. Thanks!
Hello again. I’m now trying to use path animation with Baker. I set up some poses to perform a waving motion with the arm and made it cyclic. That works in the Graph Editor. I then set up a Path object, and tried to add Baker to the path (which I’ve done successfully with the Neil Hirsig tutorials). I set up a Bone constraint, and set up my evaluations, but I don’t seem to be able to get Baker to get on the path. The head bone is ‘following’ e.g. looking at the path, but that’s all.
Any advice much appreciated!
Jim B.
This is probably the series which will make me a Citizen. Just one question, does the character come ready with a riff and face rig and is there some explanations about how to set up the rig yourself?
…ready with a rig and face rig…
It sure does! The rig should be ready to use. Let us know if you need any help with it!
For setting up your own rigs you can check out this tutorial: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/12/12/blender-introduction-to-character-rigging/
can someone point me to a tutorial on how to import actions from one model/rig to another model/rig?
like if i want to use a downloaded action from blendswap on my rig.
thanks
russ
can you make a tutorial of modeling baker?
There are many tutorials here on modeling characters, following the 2010 series will give you the knowledge needed to model any character.
-Alex
Here is thee link to the 2010 Character course: http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/2010-blender-training-series-intro-character-modeling/
Please help. The eyes don’t look like spheres. But you still able to move the pupils…. Please explain as I’m trying to do a similar look with a character I’m making. Eyes are more flat than round…
Great series by the way
Hi Ailin,
The eyes are being deformed by a lattice modifier, that is placed below the armature modifier. This way the armature controls a spherical eye, but then the lattice modifies the shape.
This course is only $ 10 per month and with that then we will not have access.
This helped me a lot with animating a character
Brilliant series!
Getting a realistic walk cycle is very hard, and even David admit it’s not made properly in this video.
I wish there were a dedicated tutorial on this important subject with or without mocap aids. I’ve seen very few examples of convincing walk
Hi Eli,
As you’d said, realistic walk cycles are very difficult and take a not of practice, not to mention a lot of patience. If animation is really of interest to you then I recommend checking out Beorn’s training series on Character Animation Fundamentals. He goes into much more than this tutorial, talking about weight, motion paths, transfer of weight, etc. You can find the series here: http://cgcookie.com/downloads/blender-animation-fundamentals/