Now it's rolling me - and I'm loving the ride! (uwu)
Hi! I just wanted to give a quick update to my progress with Blender after 9 solid weeks of learning and playing around with all the essential animating goodies it has to offer.
Firstly, I just wanted to ask myself - WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG!
A few years ago I posted an intention for me to start using blender, and all this time I had postponed fearing the unknown and all the scary buttons and new things in Blender i was unaccustomed too.
Now, after 9 weeks I am pleased to say I am very happy with my progress. I have delved into all the features I wanted to explore:
- Basic animation
Graph Curve & Basic translation controls
This is all very familar to me, the animation graph curve which I used in all my animations with Poser. It is much better to use in blender and offers better copy/paste and scaling options that I had to figure out a fix around for.
Dope Sheet
This is a list of all the keyframes, I am new to the dope sheet but I use its features well in order for me to control key scenes directly from here. It looks complicated, but you are seeing a 24 second animation with all the keyframes. The erratic keys at the top are more erratic than the ones below it because they are animated candlelight and each dot is a change in the brightness to simulate a flame.
NLR Editor
This literally made me dizzy when streaming last night. It is a complex piece of kit but I saw the potential quickly and I managed to input my scenes individually the way it is intended and manipulate key point in animations and blending together. I still have to learn more about this before I can use it to its potentlal. Once I understand it more I can join loops together and manupulate them into new character positions with ease.
- Fluids
This is a Halloween Special currently in the making. The POV dog climaxing to a devildog in a hellish scene. I am excited to get this one out! I have the viscosity set too high here, I will have to play with it to get it right. I have yet to master looping fluids, but I think I have an idea to get it to work right.
- Lighting, and HDRi
A sneeky peak into my second Halloween Special, two canines under a pentagram in candlelight. The whole scene is HDRi controlled (except the candlelight)
- Physics (Real-time chains simulations)
Here we have a pup in an upcoming animation chained to the floor by his feet with metal chains. Between you and me, blender is known for having simulating issues with real-time physics for small objects like chains. Physics works best with large objects (such as cars and chains for ships) In order to get the chains to animate in real-time with physics is to scale everything up, everything you see in this project (helldog) is literally the size of a city block! I could add humans in 1x scale and it would look hot!
- Fog and fire effects
Another sneaky peek into the upcoming animations. Here we have a 100% 3D environment. The grass, the log, fence and trees are all objects which I can animate and move around. The fog effects can be animated and altered in clumps to give the fog more depth. I have yet to experiment with animating fog in this way.
I also have some new characters I would like to introduce to you over the next few weeks, including horses and canines and a raptor.
All in all I am very happy with the new switch to Blender, I now prefer animating in Blender than I do in Poser; I never thought I'd hear myself say that! I hope you can agree the potential is so much more! I am so glad I finally made the leap and taken the first step.
That's all for now, Thanks for reading, and thank you for supporting! I am very excited to continue with my new animations, I have a few ideas and animations cooking nicely and I look forward to bringing you more of Trioami style animations!