3 Simple Head Animations

My 3 simple animations for the end of section 1 challenge. I had the eyes blinking and maybe a bit better animation, but had issues with constraints and learning the NLA editor which resulted in having to redo a bunch of work and getting lazy/burnt out at the end… Intended to take the day off today, so much for that haha!

There was so much more I want to do with this model, but so little time… However, I think this turned out well enough to leave it as is for now and continue pushing forward.

To any future students reading this, good luck and keep pushing onward! You got this!

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Yes, it’s true. The NLA editor has an UI of the stone age. Mistakes are easily happening.

That, and I spent far too much time learning how to model an ear lol. Still very new to all this… maybe 2 months in now? Its a lot to take in, but I think pushing through and learning at-least the basics of the NLA editor was the right thing to do. It feels far more organized and I honestly feel more motivated to go back in and work on them then if they were in one long timeline as I had before. Now to keep practicing and learning more.

edit: I also agree that the UI could use some improvements, but for what it is and having no experience with anything else like it, it works alright for me.

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Hey FedPete, Is there any way to easily remove/Unlink actions from the Action browser in the ‘Action Editor’? As well as managing your ‘Action Stash’s’. Or does this course go further into detail on this whole subject as I’m still struggling a bit with properly removing and setting up different animations… Thanks in Advance eh.

P.S. I decided to update my Model and Animations as that has been bugging me since I uploaded the previous ones lol :grin:

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To be honest, I don’t know. The NLA editor is so strange, I have the same questions as you do.

What I understand is thatat you create an animation sequence and push it on the stash. For example one single walk motion (one step). You do this also for arm movement, eye movement, etc. All Stashing in the NLA editor.
All these movements, can be combined in th NLA editor, repeated sequences, etc…

My problem is that I get a lot of test animations. Which I want to get rid of. But the NLA slots stay there empty, cluttering my project. Because of this I make a lot of mistakes, because of the ‘special’ way of activating things.

So, I can’t help you that much. I understand what the NLA editor does, but working with it is a different story.

Good Luck!

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Hey, Im not sure how to message you so i’ll leave this here(Might help others too). I found, after spending a fair amount of time watching tutorials and reading online blogs etc as well as playing with the NLA editor, that the best way to keep organized is to give any ‘Action’ that you make in the ‘Action Editor’ a Fake User and then Unlink it from the armature and have it stored that way, completely avoiding the stash.

Then, while building your animation in the ‘NLA’ window with the blocks, I build it up with each action on the next track overlapping slightly at the end of the previous action on the previous track. And if you have any issues with test pieces you can just left-click on the ‘NlaTrack’ you want to delete under the Armature in the NLA window and hit ‘x’.

It has helped me keep more organized in building my animation, especially since I had the same problem you do with many ‘test’ actions. Not sure if this will cause issues later yet… But I hope this helps man, 'cause you’ve helped me a lot recently!

edit: I also do not ‘activate’ any of the tracks by highlighting the star next to the track name, I keep them all deactivated so that they all play simultaneously one after another. Hence why I add the next action in the next track and build up that way. Not sure if its the best way as I’ve still got loads to learn!

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Thank you! For the tips and insight.
A few people are interested in animation on this forum. It’s difficult to improve the skills.
I did also the Character build course. But 40% repetition of what you already know from the blender course. And the the real stuff is handled superficial.

My goal is to understand the behavior of Eevee because it’s fast. But some problems in shadows rendering glass stuff. Secondly I want to improve my skills in rigging and problems around rigging (mesh structure, weight paint. Then creating animations and finally short movies.

I’m working on two projects, but probable want to join them.

Eevee, render time 5 min.

and

I want to animate the green martian. But, because it’s my first character, the anatomy isn’t very handy to animate. Lesson learned. I made some test movies, got in trouble with the NLA editor.

Other problem is to have a script for the animation.
So, that’s it. I hope you got some inspiration en new energy to go on. Blender is fun!

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Woah, those are awesome dude! I really like the detail put into the first image with the grass pollen blowing around and the varying hues to the grass. Even having the mushroom roof deform around the support beams, very nice! And too bad about that little martian, hes a cool looking little dude.

Definitely inspires me to want to get better and make more! I have to stop procrastinating now and start learning textures and working with nodes… it really can make a huge difference just by adding proper color, textures and lighting eh. Anyways back to it! The hardest part is getting started. :sunglasses:

Thanks for sharing!

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