Tutorials

How to Create Shape Keys in Blender for Character Animation

Bart ·
Two 3D rendered faces demonstrating shape keys in Blender, one smiling and one neutral, with arrows indicating transformation.

You don’t see a lot of fully written tutorials anymore, but I don find it nice sometimes to be able to follow along at my own page. Here’s a cool example by Gachoki Studios from Nairobi!

If you’ve ever wanted to give your 3D characters more personality—like making them smile or blink—shape keys in Blender are the tool you need. They allow you to create facial expressions and subtle movements that bring your characters to life. In this tutorial, I’ll Walk you through the exact steps to set up and use shape keys in Blender.

Link

Author Bart
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 Community Lead at n8n.
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