Into Animation: Blender 3D Essentials for Animators

Learning 3D Character Animation can be hard.

There are animation principles to be learnt alongside understanding acting and performance. This is further complicated by the fact that, before you can even start your first basic exercise, you must learn to use a complex software application.

This class is designed to teach you the software essentials that you need to get started without being overwhelming.

Blender is a powerful application, providing everything that is required to create high quality character animation. But, with that power comes complexity. Thankfully, as an animator, you will only ever need to know a small subset of the features available in the application.

This class will teach you the absolute essentials that you need to get started and provide a solid foundation of knowledge which we will build upon in the future.

By the end of this class, you will have created your first simple animated scene in Blender, and you will be ready to start learning character animation with confidence.

 

  

What you will learn:

• You will be introduced to the Blender interface before going on to build a simple scene. We shall then cover the essential animation tools within Blender and use them to add some simple motion before learning to light, render and export our final scene.
• By the end of the class you will have built your first, animated, 3D scene in Blender and will have created a rendered version which you can share here on Skillshare or beyond.

 

Good to know:

• This is an entry level class using the free 3D software application Blender. No prior knowledge of animation software or principles is required to complete the class, although, if you are already familiar with another application then this class will provide a solid introduction to Blender.
• This class has been updated to be fully compatible with Blender 4.1 or higher.
• The Blender software application can be downloaded for free from: blender.org

 

 

Once you have finished this class, you will be ready to move on and learn character animation with my Into Animation: Character Animation Fundamentals class.

Also, don't forget to check out the other animation classes here on Skillshare.

 

Music: Bensound.com

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Class Updates
• Interface
• Transform Tools
• Modelling the Slide
• Modelling the Swing
• Adjusting the Model
• Class Update: Principled Shader
• Adding Materials
• Class Update: Modifier Menu
• Applying Scale
• Joining Objects
• Adding a Bevel
• Modelling the Bird
• Adjusting the Bird
• Rigging the Swing
• Parenting
• Deforming the Bird
• Setup the Camera
• Class Update: Keyframe Menu
• Animating the Swing
• Animating the Bird
• Add the Environment
• Lighting the Scene
• Render a Still with EEVEE
• Class Update: Rendering in Cycles
• Render a Still with Cycles
• Render Animation with EEVEE
• Render Animation with Cycles
• Final Thoughts