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GROAAAAARHH!

41
By on Art 





(Hi-res version here)

I found this animation while I was stumbling around on Vimeo.com. It was captioned 'My first Blender Project', which piqued my interest ;-) I contacted its creator, Cory Collins to learn more about this project.

Cory writes:

I started the Ogre with Blender 2.44 and finished him up with 2.45. It was my first Blender project since buying Tony Mullen's excellent book, "Introduction to Character Animation with Blender". I followed his Captain Blender tutorials, changing what I needed to make my own character. The armature is loosely based on the Capt Blender rig and modified to be similar to the Eggington Rig I had been using in Animation Master. The Ogre model has some softbody muscle jiggling, softbody cloth simulation and fur on his loincloth. I also used some softbody simulation to control his chainlink suspenders, subsurface scattering and UV texture maps on his skin. This was an excellent project to "cut my teeth" on Blender, and I enjoyed trying to use all the features I could to enhance the animation and my understanding of Blender's workflow. I still have a ways to go learning Blender, but I am enjoying the experience. You can download the Oger characters .blend file here:

Links

I am a freelance artist/animator and have created characters and animation for local television commercials and corporate video presentations. I created and animated the CG characters in the feature "Despiser" from Eagle Films and helped animate the award winning "Seven Grandfathers" animation, one of fourteen animations on permanent display at the National Museum of the American Indian inWashington, D.C. I am currently animating for Dusan Kastelic's short film "Chicory and Coffee". You can see my Demo Reel, the Ogre animation and assorted other artwork here.

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

41 Comments

  2. Bob on

    Your first Blender test? NICE! You may be new to Blender, but your skill is coming along very nicely! I have found to my delight that the quality of documentation for Blender, the abilities of Blender itself, and the completed projects have all been heading from 'really good' to 'really great', and this is an example of that. Great work!
    Bob

    Reply
  3. Tesla on

    And good morning, thats a pretty great piece of animation there! The softbody and cloth really make it look more realistic. I am definately considering buying the book, but I only just recieved Bassam mancandy DVD.
    Keep up the animating!

    Reply
  4. MysticDuder on

    Very impressive! I purchased the Animation book mentioned in the article a few months ago, but i never was able to truly delve into it. I literally started looking for it once i read the article! Brilliant work! Can't wait to see any future plans with it!

    Reply
  11. IamInnocent on

    Pretty much every story has been told on this Earth, pretty much every character type has been described and all is left to the sons of great men and women is to tell the best we can, better than it ever has been recounted

    You are doing great at it. :)

    Regards

    Jean

    Reply
  14. humble on

    Really nice, it's obvious that Blender isn't his first 3D app ;)
    Otherwise, though the book is really good and helpful, he wouldn't have done such a great job with Mullens Book alone on the first try. It's still only a book to introduce basic things of Char Animation.
    I know what I'm talking about, I've worked it almost completely through ^^

    Reply
  15. Tony on

    Ah, great to see this found its way to BlenderNation! I'd mentioned this animation on my Amazon blog page a few weeks ago, but noticed lately that the link was down. I've updated the blog post to point here. And a .blend file too! Thanks!

    Reply
  16. Cory (aka JetBoy on BA) on

    Thanks everyone for the great comments! Nope, humble, it was not my first 3D project, I've been at it for a long time (thanks for noticing :)). If I remember correctly, Len, render times were fantastic, less than 7 minutes a frame, rendered on my low budget laptop.

    Reply
  20. Madpsychot on

    Well I guess after months and months of messing around with the SVN particle builds , this video has just sent me straight back to working on character animations..... again!

    Great animation, great textures, and most of all, great that that .blend file was included!

    Reply
  21. Smelz on

    That is a beautiful animation, but unfortunately it looks like his bandwidth has been sapped and I can't download the file until tomorrow.

    Reply
  25. renderdemon on

    Personally I don't like the jiggle on the tricep on the left arm,it's to fast,and the skin material is too much waxy(if you have used sss you have to decrease a bi the radius or the scatter color,or the size parameter,maybe is too much specular too)
    But its a good test,you are on the right way.

    Reply
  26. Cory on

    ElBarto: I remember the Gimp from Pulp Fiction, I chuckle every time I see the splash screen for Gimp software on my computer, but this guy was inspired more by the works of Brom and JP Targete.

    Eggyolk: I do have years of experience, not all good years, but years :)

    jim belushi: I was using Imagine from Impulse years ago, and Animation:Master from Hash.

    Thanks again for all the kind comments!

    Reply
  32. Cory on

    Rendermon: I agree, thanks for the tips.

    Coodle: that's cool, I appreciate it.

    Sorry folks, I should have checked out e-snips bandwidth, but I didn't know when I put it there how many would download it.

    Reply
  34. eface on

    Big Kudos, man.

    I already gave em in that other stuff at elysiun thread...

    I really like orcs animations.. I specially like trembling of meat with the weight of impact , in his left leg.. (I suppose is other softbody there? Not too familiar with softbodies yet my self ) and in the arm(at end of animation) :)

    The anatomy is realistic, in a way that is not cliche, no plastic muscles.

    keep 'em coming! Most of all as am seing you're building a great portfolio ;)

    Reply
  35. terence on

    Nice to see another Animation Master user coming over to Blender. I used to use A:M too, and there are a lot of character animation resources available to A:M users. I learned a lot about character animation from Eggington and Raf Anzovin. But I must say, I'm much prefer Blender now.
    Cory. Did you create a similar ogre in Hash? Yours reminds me of one I vaguely remember from my Hash days.

    Reply
  36. Cory on

    EFace: Yep the muscle jiggling is all softbody. Thanks for your comments!

    terence: I'm liking Blender as well. I know of a couple others who have moved over recently. I don't really recall doing anything similar in A:M. I did do a lot of creature stuff though, and one in particular that I used some dynamics constraints to make some jiggling flesh, but it was a six legged creature.

    Reply
  37. eface on

    I come from Max and I transfer my knowledge from that one (and some others) to Blender...I am pretty sure you are doing the same, and imho, that is great. Is putting skills of other tools into Blender (as after all, 3d is pretty similar everywhere) .Which I find interesting. I dunno, AM people seems to be really good animating, usually :)
    I still remember that ALien song :)

    heck, one of these days we should do a collaborative team short with an orcs battle....heck, I am so nostalgic of Warcraft 3 intro movies...hehe. lol

    Impressed with your use of softbodies in meat (but...I am not sure, havent look well...just in case it helps you, as am overal *amazed* with that anim...are the chaines staying like in a fixed arc, while they should fall on the body...? I possibly would have never spotted that if the rest wasn't so good...And if there are some other erors, which I haven't looked well(my monitor gamma is so dark while not in production work, that rarely i can see a thing in movies XD) , but the fact is that even if that happens, to me wouldn't be of importance, as the piece works so solid.(heck, when I do a drawing, if had strength, don't worry later if spot some lousy stroke...) )

    (btw, eface = extrudeface ;) )

    Reply
  40. larkireri on

    hi . i like the art work put out there at this wonderful blender community. i come from africa and unfortunately i cant get access to blender books. can anyone out there help. my adress is
    lark ireri muchiri
    p.o box 332
    kianyaga 10301
    kenya.
    telephone +254721917880

    Reply

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