BLENDER TUTORIAL

Blender is an Open-Source free computer animation software. Used

by professionals and people just starting out. It can be used to make
animated films, visual effects, 3D printed models, interactive 3D
applications and video games.

Blender’s Other Features include:

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software) )
3D modeling, UV Unwrapping, Texturing, Raster Graphics, Editing, Rigging,
Skinning, Fluid and Smoke Animation, Particle Simulation, Soft Body Simulation,
Sculpting, Animating, Match Moving, Camera Tracking, Rendering, Video
Editing, and Compositing

This guide is to help beginners to start making animations with Blender

Ryan Raikes
 3D ANIMATION WITH BLENDER

Many people enjoy shows on cartoon channels

regardless of age, most of these shows are animated.
When people usually think of animation they think of
drawing frame by frame.

This is a style of animation, drawn animation it’s not the

easiest, or best, and very hard to edit. This is where Blender
comes to play. Unlike other 3D Animation softwares like
Autodesk Maya, Blender is Open-Source and Free!

This is a glance at what blender starts you with

 All you have is a blank page really, a camera and
lighting in the background. Once you get to know how
this all works, you’ll be much more comfortable with it.
First off you need a rig, a rig for Blender is usually a
.blend file. You can make very realistic rigs in Blender,
almost lifelike. However rig making takes time, effort,
and skill. So to help this be easier so you can start your
way to animation, I have rigs you can use for download.
(Download link at the end of file)
First press Ctrl +“O”

First locate and click your rig then click “Open blender File”
(The location for where to find these buttons is highlighted above)
 Once opened you should see something like this:

The block style is from Minecraft

Now you have a simple rig, without armatures or weight

paint, (Which lets you put smaller moving parts on a
bigger part) just a block. You need to learn your controls,
to move around. I won’t show all the controls, so I left a
link to a page with more information that should help
you out.
If the block is blurry in the set view then you need to
follow these steps:

Click the properties box highlighted above

Now click “User Preferences”
 Now click “System” and uncheck mipmaps ONLY if its checked,
now go back to the first step and click “Properties” Instead of “User
Preferences” to go back to the render menu
 A more zoomed out view

*POV= Point of View *

Now if you have checked the link to a page explaining

some of the more basic controls, you should know how
to move around your set.
See that wireframe triangle in the picture above? That’s
your camera, the flat side is the *POV, and this is the POV
Your set is rendered at. Want to move it? Hover over it
and right click, then press “r” twice to rotate OR click the
 arrows to move along the X, Y, Z axis. The flat side is the
POV, Press render on the left panel if you want to see
what the frame looks like, it might be blurry depending
on Blender Internal settings or your Computer.

This is what a blurred render MAY look like for you, This is different from
the blurred set viewing you saw earlier, depending on certain texture
settings and such this can happen. You may have to retexture it that will
not be explained in this guide.
Now you want to open the timeline
This is a zoomed in view (Bottom Right)
 Great! Key framing is now turned on and the timeline
opened to use. Now let’s animate! But first change your
render settings depending if you want pictures of each
frame or a video. Click anywhere on the timeline to move
the green bar. The black lines show length between each
second. Click and move your block anywhere you want,
click to the next black line, do you see a yellow mark
there? If so good! Repeat this process and then press
render. (Make sure you set your render settings, and
destination) If you go to the destination you can find
your video OR picture (depending on render settings)
and now you’re done!

Thank you for reading my tutorial on how to animate with blender, this
is a basic guide and won’t teach you much but the basics, if you want
extra help contact me at my e-mail ryanred564@live.com I will also
have a link-only video up soon on my YouTube Channel with further
information, E-Mail me if you want to see that.

Sources for everything used:

Blender.org – Blender and Blender Controls Site
Element Animation – A “Human” rig (link below)
Planet Minecraft – Cool block rigs they provided
Microsoft Word Clipart – For the picture at the start
 DOWNLOADS:
Blender:
http://blender.org

Block rig:
(MediaFire)
(DropBox)

ElementAnimation’s “Steve” rig for more advanced use:

(MediaFire)
(DropBox)

Controls Link:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Int
erface/Buttons_and_Controls