Non-Destructive Modeling with Shape Keys in Blender
Shape Keys are a technique that seems unfamiliar to many users. Kent Trammell presents a a new Blender Cookie tutorial on their advantages and how to use them.
Kent writes:Whether you want to venture into the profession industry of computer graphics or want to create the most beautiful CG Images, you can’t help but learn to sharpen your skill set to be as efficient as possible. A non-destructive philosophy will save you a lot of time and frustration. By “non-destructive” I mean a layered workflow that builds upon itself and doesn’t destroy the old work with the new. You see this encouraged a lot with photoshop artists who use many layers and masks to preserve their work each step of the way. This same philosophy can be applied to a modeler’s workflow using Blender.
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This is one of those videos where I learned way more about Blender than just shapekeys.
Little things you miss when you’re tutorial jumping a lot .. like, being able to change the rotation orientation to the 3D cursor. I never knew that! HOT DIGGITY that made some stuff I’m working on so much easier!
Good tutorial. As usual, BlenderCookie delivers quality.
I agree, I often learn new stuff that’s not the primary topic in BlenderCookie tuts. Or else I forget about certain features and relearn. This tutorial looks interesting to me – will need to give it a look.
Aren’t the five basic rotation points covered in the very first wiki lesson, including 3D cursor?
Is it too unbelievable to consider that maybe people don’t always remember the details on everything they might have read, esp. when they’re new to it? There’s a difference between reading and realizing.
Great tutorial! I never realized all that can be done with the shape key system.
Excellent tutorial ! Thank you ! I like a lot Shape Keys. Unfortunately, this great tool has been broken several times in the past. So I had to redo many things from scratch in some important projects. I hope that it will remain stable for a while ! For my own, I use Shape keys mainly for the animation of background characters. This kind of animation allows to make standalone walking characters without armatures, making them very portable (one unique self animated object), so easy to use, and not consuming too much computing ressources.
https://vimeo.com/40218727
I checked out your tests for the shape key walk cycles, and I think that is an excellent idea. Your tests with these shape-key-walking characters going over uneven terrain were also really cool. Thanks for sharing!