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The process of animating

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Marten

Marten 628

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Animating

Part 1 - Setting up a scene

So the first thing you'll have to do when you're animating is to set up a scene.

This will generally make your animation look way better than it might actually be.

Your scene does only have to include a schematic. But if you want to be more fancy than that.

You can add other details, such as; particles, 3D items etc.

Adding details to the scene will make everything pop and come to live.

Part 2 - Importing characters and gear

You can import your own custom character rig, use others (with permission) or just create a human model.

Either of these ways are acceptable. Rigs will allow you to simulate more expressions and will allow

you to be a lot more creative with your animation. I prefer to use a rig over a normal human body.

Mostly because human body is very limited. You can add as many characters as you want but make sure you're computer doesn't go butthurt about it.

Now when that is done, you'll probably want to add some gear such as items, tools, armor or other things that your character

will hold or wear. Rigs comes in handy when it comes to armor, since there's no armor object in Mine-Imator.

Part 3 - Animating

I like to split up animating in 3 parts; Basics movements, details, fixes.

So let's go with that "template" if you will.

When you're animating the basic movements, you don't have to be very precise. The only thing to focus on

is the main idea. But make sure everything flows nicely, with that I mean; no standing still!

If you make your character stand still with 0% movement, you might forget what you were ment to do at those frames.

It's okay to make him breath. You can simply do that by bending his stomach forward and rotating his upper body back.

REMEMBER, keep those movements to a minimum!

Next up, details! This is where it gets fun. When you're animating details, you want to

consider; Weight, realism and physics.

You're character is probably made out of 6 cubes. Consider this: An average human weigh around 62.0 kg.

If we split that up to 6 we get 15.5 kg. This means, each body part will weigh 15.5 kg. This doesn't take us any furthur away from our imagination.

But I like to think that if the character is 3 blocks high up in the sky, it has to have landed within 1.25 second.

(It can land earlier, depending on the situation.)

With realism, I mean: "What would someone do in this situation?" and facial expressions. For example:

if someone got shot with a gun, they would feel an incredible pain in whatever bodypart they got shot in.

So you'd have to animate that.

Physics is a quite easy thing to animate. Make sure that nothing clips through a solid object.

You can also consider the theory that I brought up before on this post.

Each object with the size of 1 will weigh 15.5kg.

Now... Fixes. This can be the most painfull thing to do. But at the end of the day, it's worth it

Just try to avoid objects clipping through other objects and glitchyness overall.

Part 4 - Lightning, camera movements and rendering

You must make sure that you have a solid light source such as the sun, moon, lava or lamps/torches.

You can place down spotlights and pointlights for different effects.

Spotlights can be used for sad expressions. Example: Steve is standing all alone in the rain, the only thing that

lights him up is a spotligt.

Pointlights are good for the most type of lights. Such as torches and other things/blocks in minecraft that gives out light,

since it gives out light in all diractions.

A lot of people move the camera around like if it was an RC-airplane. That might be because it's so easy to do.

But see the camera as a tool. If you want people to see someones facial expressions, then zoom in on the face,

if you want people to see what someone is holding, zoom in on the hand etc.

The only camera movements you need to put time into is the movement that is following the character(s).

Maybe Steve's running, then a good idea would be to make the camera follow him in a path.

No movements beside that is really needed.

Rendering is not much to talk about. But I'd recommend to render it with video quality "High" and resolution HD 1080.

 

Thanks for passing by, hope this have helped a lot of you guys!

Good luck in the future as I am leaving you guys with this.

All the best. -Martin

 

Edited by IHaz0Cape
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Marten

Marten 628

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Flying. Just move him up in the air and then drag him around and rotate him while turning. Make sure the X rotation is at 90ish. Make it look like he's flying.

Teleporting. Place two keyframes in the timeline for your character, click the first keyframe and then set the transition to "Instant". Then click on the first keyframe and drag him to another place. You can also create a particle spawner so it looks like a "real" teleportation.

Idunno what "telekenisis" means.

Summoning fireballs. Spawn a new item with the item "Fireball", parent it to his hand, and make it 100% transparent/not visable. Then make a new keyframe where it isn't transparent. Then the last keyframe, just drag the fireball wherever he's ment to shoot it.

Shooting lightning.  You'll probably have to create a particle that is the colour of yellow/light blue/white. And then parent it to your charactes hand, make sure that its at 0,0,0.

Then make it appear when you want your character to shoot it and make it go forward from where the character is facing.

 

NOTE. I did NOT go into details since this tutorial is the basics of the process of animating, telling people how NOT to make your animations look lazy. Not actually animating specific stuffs.

 

 

Edited by IHaz0Cape
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EnderHamner

EnderHamner 71

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6 hours ago, IHaz0Cape said:

Flying. Just move him up in the air and then drag him around and rotate him while turning. Make sure the X rotation is at 90ish. Make it look like he's flying.

Teleporting. Place two keyframes in the timeline for your character, click the first keyframe and then set the transition to "Instant". Then click on the first keyframe and drag him to another place. You can also create a particle spawner so it looks like a "real" teleportation.

Idunno what "telekenisis" means.

Summoning fireballs. Spawn a new item with the item "Fireball", parent it to his hand, and make it 100% transparent/not visable. Then make a new keyframe where it isn't transparent. Then the last keyframe, just drag the fireball wherever he's ment to shoot it.

Shooting lightning.  You'll probably have to create a particle that is the colour of yellow/light blue/white. And then parent it to your charactes hand, make sure that its at 0,0,0.

Then make it appear when you want your character to shoot it and make it go forward from where the character is facing.

 

NOTE. I did NOT go into details since this tutorial is the basics of the process of animating, telling people how NOT to make your animations look lazy. Not actually animating specific stuffs.

 

 

telekinesis=moving/controlling things with your mind.

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AmateurMator

AmateurMator 0

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On 22/12/2015 at 1:30 AM, IHaz0Cape said:

Animating

Part 1 - Setting up a scene

So the first thing you'll have to do when you're animating is to set up a scene.

This will generally make your animation look way better than it might actually be.

Your scene does only have to include a schematic. But if you want to be more fancy than that.

You can add other details, such as; particles, 3D items etc.

Adding details to the scene will make everything pop and come to live.

Part 2 - Importing characters and gear

You can import your own custom character rig, use others (with permission) or just create a human model.

Either of these ways are acceptable. Rigs will allow you to simulate more expressions and will allow

you to be a lot more creative with your animation. I prefer to use a rig over a normal human body.

Mostly because human body is very limited. You can add as many characters as you want but make sure you're computer doesn't go butthurt about it.

Now when that is done, you'll probably want to add some gear such as items, tools, armor or other things that your character

will hold or wear. Rigs comes in handy when it comes to armor, since there's no armor object in Mine-Imator.

Part 3 - Animating

I like to split up animating in 3 parts; Basics movements, details, fixes.

So let's go with that "template" if you will.

When you're animating the basic movements, you don't have to be very precise. The only thing to focus on

is the main idea. But make sure everything flows nicely, with that I mean; no standing still!

If you make your character stand still with 0% movement, you might forget what you were ment to do at those frames.

It's okay to make him breath. You can simply do that by bending his stomach forward and rotating his upper body back.

REMEMBER, keep those movements to a minimum!

Next up, details! This is where it gets fun. When you're animating details, you want to

consider; Weight, realism and physics.

You're character is probably made out of 6 cubes. Consider this: An average human weigh around 62.0 kg.

If we split that up to 6 we get 15.5 kg. This means, each body part will weigh 15.5 kg. This doesn't take us any furthur away from our imagination.

But I like to think that if the character is 3 blocks high up in the sky, it has to have landed within 1.25 second.

(It can land earlier, depending on the situation.)

With realism, I mean: "What would someone do in this situation?" and facial expressions. For example:

if someone got shot with a gun, they would feel an incredible pain in whatever bodypart they got shot in.

So you'd have to animate that.

Physics is a quite easy thing to animate. Make sure that nothing clips through a solid object.

You can also consider the theory that I brought up before on this post.

Each object with the size of 1 will weigh 15.5kg.

Now... Fixes. This can be the most painfull thing to do. But at the end of the day, it's worth it

Just try to avoid objects clipping through other objects and glitchyness overall.

Part 4 - Lightning, camera movements and rendering

You must make sure that you have a solid light source such as the sun, moon, lava or lamps/torches.

You can place down spotlights and pointlights for different effects.

Spotlights can be used for sad expressions. Example: Steve is standing all alone in the rain, the only thing that

lights him up is a spotligt.

Pointlights are good for the most type of lights. Such as torches and other things/blocks in minecraft that gives out light,

since it gives out light in all diractions.

A lot of people move the camera around like if it was an RC-airplane. That might be because it's so easy to do.

But see the camera as a tool. If you want people to see someones facial expressions, then zoom in on the face,

if you want people to see what someone is holding, zoom in on the hand etc.

The only camera movements you need to put time into is the movement that is following the character(s).

Maybe Steve's running, then a good idea would be to make the camera follow him in a path.

No movements beside that is really needed.

Rendering is not much to talk about. But I'd recommend to render it with video quality "High" and resolution HD 1080.

 

Thanks for passing by, hope this have helped a lot of you guys!

Good luck in the future as I am leaving you guys with this.

All the best. -Martin

 

Very very Cool and Me help By this Post

Thz⌛

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Marten

Marten 628

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On 2016-04-05 at 4:55 PM, AmateurMator said:

Very very Cool and Me help By this Post

Thz⌛

You didn't have to qoute the whole topic... I'd suggest you to edit your post and delete that qoute before your reply gets deleted as spam.

On 2016-04-06 at 2:57 AM, MooMooHead said:

i cant find the tool that allows me to do basic movements, im trying to make my first animation but i cant even find the most simple tool for the base creation of animations.

There's a timeline on the bottom. Press somewhere to the right of an object twice to make a keyframe. Now move the object or rotate it. (Repeat)

 

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