bsod-itca-weightpaint-29.jpgWe've already seen the results of the Blender Summer of Documentation with the Game Engine, now it's time to have a look at Ryan Dale's phenomenal Introduction to Character Animation project.

From Ryan's intro:

When you complete this tutorial, you will have a fully rigged character (with facial expressions and skeleton) and an animation, lip synched to sound, starring your character. You'll end up with the tools and knowledge to make your own character and make it do whatever you want. It's your one-stop-shop for learning many of the tools in Blender.

From modeling to animation to lip synching, Ryan certainly seems to have covered almost everything imaginable to create a great animated character.



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28 Responses to “BSoD: Introduction To Character Animation”  

  1. 1 LukasT Edit Link

    I must say, it is really great resource for learning Blender.

    Thank you Ryan

  2. 2 lawsonf Edit Link

    I recently completed this tutorial. It taught me a lot thanks!

  3. 3 Cortot Edit Link

    Excellent work!! I will recommend it and guide my pupils through this extraordinary stuff!!

    Thanks
    Cortot

  4. 4 Sandra aka dreamsgate Edit Link

    I had a great time doing this tutorial. Although I have used blender for a long time, He covers alot of tools I hadn't gotten around to learning yet. Very easy format and fun to work through.

  5. 5 Marco Edit Link

    Four thumbs up!!!
    It will sure quickly become a reference for all the newbies!!
    Thank you a lot Ryan!!!

    I also thank a lot Ton and the community for the BSoD :-)!

  6. 6 WeWa Edit Link

    Nice stuff

  7. 7 Joeri Edit Link

    Very good. Nice compact and still complete.

  8. 8 Hexa Edit Link

    Great stuff. Thank you. The only thing left to do is to get a lot of practice :)

  9. 9 Dnas Edit Link

    Excellent.

    When I get time to try and learn modelling and Blender again I'll be sure to chedck this one out.

    Minor nitpick:
    http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation/Face_and_eyes
    This notice about GNU/Linux compatibility isn't entirely accurate. what's happening is that the alt-drag shortcut for moving windows is grabbing the mouse event. You can either turn off that shortcut or (what I do) press some dummy key at the same time (like the Windows key, assuming you haven't mapped it to anything.) The Window Manager will no longer grab it and Blender doesn't care.

  10. 10 Trager Edit Link

    Thankx to Ryan for the great tut!!
    When I started using Blender, the famous "Gus" the gingerbread man tut helped me learn the basics and a few advanced techniques. I wish I had this tut then! Even knowing a bit about Blender, this really helped explain a good clean character creation, set-up, and animation.
    Kudos Ryan!

  11. 11 keir Edit Link

    @dnas: I added your tip. Great tip btw, I didn't know about it. Also, wikis rock :)

  12. 12 Gihei Edit Link

    hardy har i just made a weird connection, the acronym BSoD also stands for, "Blue. Screen of. Death." you windows veterans will be familiar with this lovely error message.

    i guess i have something good to attach to the letters now!

    ;P Blender owns your socks!

  13. 13 Morris Edit Link

    Excellent, excellent!! This is truly a model tutorial to be used as reference for future tutorial makers. It would also form a good basis for a high school class.

    Is it not done yet? The outline says "you'll learn": custom bone shapes, stride bones, and envelopes, but they weren't there!?! (not that they need to be, but the outline should be updated if its done.

  14. 14 gokudomatic Edit Link

    I've done this tutorial and I've learned many things. It's a very good tutorial for beginner/intermediate.

    Still, I wished to send corrections to Dale because some things were not clear enough for me, and I had to look somewhere else to understand.
    As example, when an animation of face shapes is converted to action(a flag), Ryan forgot to write that the animation can't be changed until the conversion to action is disabled. Thanks to that, I've found a crashing bug in blender.

    but, it's an excellent tutorial which cover many features and aspects of blender. And in top of that, it uses new features of blender 2.4x (new IK, modifiers, face shape…). Only the envelop feature was voluntary forget, but it's because this feature is maybe not the best for that.

  15. 15 Giovanni Gallo Edit Link

    I am following this crystal clear and helpful tutorial in these hours and I think it is a great source of information for Blender and beyond.
    It will be the "suggested reading" for my 101 class in 3d Computer Graphics for Artists next Spring.

  16. 16 Daniele lusardi Edit Link

    someone ave corrupt a blwender wiki page with some s..t
    this is the link of the main page, all the child pages are "corrupted"
    http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Rigging/Face_Rigs
    hope this is the right place to report

    sorry for bad english

  17. 17 Eugene Edit Link

    @Daniele lusardi
    I'm not sure what you mean. All the page seem to work for me. I think you might be going to pages that aren't complete yet. Several of the BSoD authors did a main tutorial bulk, then left spaces open for later addition (like the page you linked to).

  18. 18 Ryan Dale Edit Link

    @Morris:
    I removed the link to the outline, it was from an earlier version of the tutorial. Sorry about that.

    @Gokudomatic:
    Good point, I'll make a note of that in the next round of updates.

    Everyone: thanks for your comments. I'm glad the tutorial is getting some use!

  19. 19 Daniele lusardi Edit Link

    @Eugene:
    okkey sorry i'm not too expert whit Wikipedia , it my mistake, really sorry andf thanks to the reply

  20. 20 Tio Ilmo Edit Link

    Fantastic !!!

    One of the best tutorial I ever seen.

    I hope I could find all the steps and memorize the main features to walk alone along Blender World. I've been using Blender for a year but in fact I've never done something complete. With this simply tutorial I think I will improve a lot.

    Thanks guy for your contribution. I will being waiting for something interesting like this focused in texturing process including UV.

    Thanks again,

    Tio Ilmo

  21. 21 TheJolliBengali Edit Link

    Ryan, this is by far the BEST tutorial on the whole process of creating and animating a character, very informative! Thanks for all the time and effort putting into this to help us users learn. Is there not a PDF for the whole tutorial?

  22. 22 ShiftingClouds Edit Link

    I know that it is not ideal but just in case that you missed it, there is a link on the left of every Wiki pages that leads to a printable version which, if really not sexy, is still usable.

    Jean

  23. 23 Marko Edit Link

    I think it helps to place some focus on the tutorials and documentation out there. Too often I'm hearing about new features coming left and right and all, but I can't even figure out how to use more basic features with all of these piecemeal tutorials that seem to predominate. Ryan's tutorial, and its comprehensive coverage, is fantastic and in general I'm just glad to see the fruits of the Blender Summer of Documentation. Thanks!!

  24. 24 scatterbrain Edit Link

    i just finished going through the entire tutorial and as a newb found it extremely easy to follow!

  25. 25 Drew Vogel Edit Link

    I am looking forward to working through this tutorial.

    I wish there was an easily-printable version of the whole thing.

  26. 26 Ryan Dale Edit Link

    @Drew Vogel,
    @TheJolliBengali:

    I just made a downloadable PDF (all 182 pages!) of the tutorial. It's a snapshot, so as always check the wiki for the most recent version. It took a little while to do, so I don't anticipate re-creating the PDF too often. You can find it here:

    http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation

    -Ryan

  27. 27 melon Edit Link

    this tutorial is awesome. GREAT WORK RYAN!

  28. 28 Agiofws Edit Link

    Ryan great tutorial …. astonished …. how you follow the reader and guide him through every step Really great
    I'm at the end of the tutorial and hope to give it one or two more passes

    one thing : when we want to insert Key shapes in NLA editor you describe the process after showing the jpg its was quite confusing till someone read the rest and figured it out maybe its due to 2.46RC some things have changed ?

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