Essential Blender- P10 ppsx

In the buttons window, go to the Texture buttons F6, and click on the Brush button of the Preview tab.. To add a new brush texture, LMB click on the top texture channel to activate it an

Figure 70: Roughing out the eyes

Once the eyes look fairly smooth, use the Level spinner to return to multires Level 8 Then, add a level of multires, taking you to Level 9 Inflate and draw the general form of your eyelids Remember to draw them closed a little, and not to put the eyelid lines at the seam between the eyeball you've created and the rest of the head

Continue alternating between smooth and inflate until you're happy with the shape of your eyelid and eye

Figure 72: The eyes with protuberant eyelids

Working in Lower Multires Levels

We'd like you to step back from details for a moment and change some of the larger structure

of the head In particular, you need to actually create a mouth and redefine the lower half of the face While this could be done at the current high level of detail, there is an easier, faster way

Using the "Level:" spinner on the Multires panel, turn the level down to 5 The model is now significantly less detailed, showing more general forms One of the great things about multires modeling is that any changes you make to the mesh on a lower level carry through to the higher levels, and vice versa Even though you didn't shape the level 5 mesh like this, it has been pushed and pulled into this state by the actions you've taken at other levels

If Partial Redraw is enabled, disable it now, so that the individual faces show

Figure 75: The rougher forms of level 5

With the Grab brush set to a fairly large size (75 or so), drag upward on the lower, outer rim

of the jaw to form the basis of a more pronounced jaw and two upward-facing tusks

Figure 76: The lower jaw pulled out and up

Note: At this point, your monster head may look significantly different than the one in these examples, and that's fine Sculpting is a very organic process, and the odds are that even if we recreated all of the illustrations for this chapter, following the exact same process, they would

be different each time Depending on the exact topology of your monster head, the next set of instructions may work more or less well If you just can't seem to get your tusks and mouth to follow the example exactly, don't worry The example is just that: a sample to learn from, not something that needs to be duplicated

With the rough form created for the base of the tusks, move up to multires level 7 to continue adding more detail

Using the Draw brush, create a fat line around the base of the tusks that will form the lower lip It'll look fairly ugly at this multires level, but you'll smooth it in a bit

Figure 78: The lower lip drawn in

Up in multires level 8, put a separation line between the base of the tusks and lips

Switch to the Smooth brush, and give it medium values (50-60) for both size and strength Smooth the lower portion of the lip into the rest of the face until it blends nicely and seems to

be a continuous piece with the rest of the model

Figure 79: The lip blended into the lower jaw

You will notice many details in the above illustration They were created using the same method as you used earlier when making creases in the brow: parallel inflation strokes, then pinch in the middle and smooth The model itself is done at this point You can continue to add details, extra tusks, horns, etc., as you like

Using Textures as Brushes

A monster should have strange skin to go with its horns, long ears and tusks The sculpting tools allow you to sculpt with a textured brush

In the buttons window, go to the Texture buttons (F6), and click on the Brush button of the Preview tab To add a new brush texture, LMB click on the top texture channel to activate it and click the Add New button

Figure 84: The brush texture panels

Any of Blender's textures, including Image textures, can be used as brushes From the Texture Type menu that appears, choose "Musgrave." Many of the texturing options are described in greater detail in Chapter 9

Figure 91: The Musgrave and Musgrave options panel

From the Musgrave panel that appears, change the "Multifractal" setting to "Rigid

Multifractal." All you've done here is chosen a texture that will look sufficiently nasty when applied to a skin Finding a good noise texture for your projects is mostly a matter of trial and error, although the Materials and Texturing chapter of this book can give you a good starting point

With the Musgrave noise texture set, move back to the Edit buttons (F9) In order to use the new texture brush, either go to the Brush tab in the Edit buttons or focus on the "Texture" section of the Sculpt Properties floating panel

If it's not already active, click on the texture channel labeled "Tex," then click on the little automobile icon to have Blender assign the name "Musgrave" to the texture Make the rest of the panel match this illustration:

Image:Dummy.png

Figure RH01: The Brush and Sculpt Properties panels

Enabling the 3D button will apply the texture to the model throughout 3D space, as opposed

to "painting" it onto its surface When 3D is enabled, a Size control will appear Like the SizeX/Y/Z controls in the Map Input panel of the Material buttons, this size spinner works the opposite of the way you would expect Raising the value decreases the size that the texture is applied at Set the Size control to around 400

Now, use the Draw brush on the cheeks of your monster and watch the ugly ridges form within its surface

Figure 95: A nasty texture for a nasty creature

For some variety, create a different texture brush for the rest of the head Return to the

Texture buttons, and select the next empty texture channel Add a new texture with the Add New button, and select "Voronoi" from the Texture Type menu You'll just use the default Voronoi settings, so go back to the Edit buttons and the Brush panel

This time, set the brush to "Drag" style instead of "3D." Rotate to the back of the monster head and begin to use the new texture brush in Draw mode Immediately, you can see the difference between "Drag" and "3D." When working with the 3D option, it was almost like the brush was causing a texture that was already within the model to grow and become clear

With the Drag option, you are using a single instance of the texture, stamping and smearing it

as you work the brush

Figure 97: The back of the head, brushed with a different texture

When working in Drag mode, you can change both the size and rotation of the stamped

texture interactively When changing the brush size with the F-key, you actually see a

representation, right within the brush, of the texture that will be used Likewise, you can use Ctrl-F to rotate the texture for even greater variation, and see it rotate right on your display

Figure 99: The finished monster head

All Done

At this point, you can call the model finished If you were going to go a few steps more, you could disable Symmetry and put in details that differed from side to side like scars and warts You could also drop down to detail level 5 and pull some of the general shapes out of

symmetry as well Whether you decide to do that or not, you will have learned a great new way to create organic models: Blender's sculpting tools

One last tip:

The sculpting tools are "experiential," meaning that the more you experience them, the better you will become We encourage you to start this same tutorial from scratch, and, knowing what you know now, see if you don't come out with a significantly better result the second time

Figure 100: A second time through the tutorial will give even better results

!

Chapter 6: Character Animation: Discussion

By Roland Hess

Character Animation is an enormous topic that can take years to master This chapter will not teach you how to be a successful character animator What it will do, though, is give you the basic knowledge of Blender's character animation tools so you can begin to learn how to animate Once you are comfortable working with Blender's tools, we encourage you to check out some of the great work in the Blender Summer of Documentation "Introduction to the Principles of

Animation" by Willian Padovani Germano Much like painting, character animation is a skill that requires going "outside" of Blender to supplement the learning process

When producing character animation, you will most often work with a skeleton called an

"armature." The bones of the armature can be linked to each other in different ways, and, if done properly, can build a fully controllable, intuitively movable character rig (rigging is covered in Chapter 7) Each bone in an armature can be transformed individually, as though an armature was

a collection of smaller, connected objects

Although certain armature modes can look almost like blocky character meshes, armatures

themselves will never show up in a render Armatures need to be attached to meshes, so the animation of the armature moves the mesh in turn, producing an animated character Keyframed armature animation is organized into Actions in the Action Editor For more complex animation tasks, those Actions can be combined and manipulated in the NLA Editor

Creating Poses and Setting Key Frames

The bones of an armature are transformed and keyframed in much the same way as normal objects In order to pose an armature and record the poses as keyframes, an armature must be in Pose Mode, which is accessible from the 3D header, and by pressing Ctrl-Tab

Image:EB-CAD-01.png

Figure CAD.01: Selecting Pose Mode on the 3D Header

Tip:

Armatures are animated in Pose Mode, which is accessed with Ctrl-Tab

Once in pose mode, bones may be selected with the RMB, B-key border select, or the Ctrl-LMB lasso

If a selected bone is attached to other bones as part of a chain, it will only be able to rotate Bones that form the base of a chain, or that are unattached, are free to move, as well as rotate

Figure CAD.02: The bones in the middle of the arm can only rotate The selected bone, which forms the "look-at" target for the character's eyes, is not part of a chain and can be both translated and rotated

The G, S and R-keys perform their standard functions when working with bones For your

convenience, using the G-key on a bone that is part of a chain and unable to translate acts as though it was a Rotation command

When posing part of an armature that has great freedom of movement, like a head on top of a neck, try pressing the R-key twice to put the bone into Trackball rotation mode You may find it more intuitive than the standard rotation modes

Manipulators

Even if you don't use the Transformation Manipulators when working in other portions of

Blender, it's worth it to try them out when doing character animation Use either Ctrl-Spacebar or the buttons on the 3D header to enable the manipulator and set it to Rotate mode Once the

manipulator is enabled, set the Alternative Transformation Space to "Normal." This will align the

manipulator to whichever bone is selected One thing to watch out for when working with bones

is to make sure that the transformation pivot point is set to Median Point (comma-key) and not Cursor, as the latter will give you puzzling results if you are not expecting it

Figure CAD.03: The manipulator enabled in Rotate mode, with the ATS set to Normal The manipulator is currently applied to the lower left arm bone

The advantage of using the rotation manipulator for posing is that it provides one-click access to rolling bones, and excellent visual feedback in what can sometimes be a crowded environment

Tip:

G, S and R-keys, as well as mouse gestures, the manipulators and the

standard selection methods all function with bones

Setting Keys

When you translate and rotate bones to create the poses and motion of your armature, you need to set key frames Pressing the I-key in the 3D view functions exactly like it does everywhere else in Blender A list of key types appears, allowing you to choose exactly which transformations to

key It is highly recommended, though, that you turn on Automatic Keyframing when working with armatures Sometimes, you will put several minutes into perfecting a single pose, and it would be a shame to lose your hard work by absentmindedly changing the frame

Enable Automatic Keyframing by pressing the Record button in a Timeline view

Tip:

Automatic Keyframing should be enabled for character animation

Figure CAD.06: The Timeline view and the Record button

Posing with IK

IK stands for a way of calculating poses called Inverse Kinematics With IK, you grab and move the end of a chain, say, the foot of a character, and the rest of the leg follows along Although the foot bone is a part of a chain which would normally limit its movement to only rotation, with IK applied to it, it regains its freedom of movement You can learn more about setting up IK chains

in Chapter 7

When using a rig with IK enabled, only the target bone of the IK chain needs to be keyframed The rest of the bones calculate and interpolate their positions on the fly

Figure CAD.04

Figure CAD.05: With only a foot bone selected, the entire leg moves to follow

AutoIK

AutoIK is another posing tool By enabling "AutoIK" in the Armature panel of the Edit buttons, any bone that is selected and moved becomes the target of a temporary IK chain In this way, you can start to create poses for non-IK portions of an armature, like the arms and hands, using the convenience of IK, then turn it off and finely adjust each bone's rotation individually

Figure CAD.07: The AutoIK button on the Armature panel

As AutoIK is only a posing tool, the bones that it moves will not retain those positions unless each and every one of them receives a keyframe This is directly opposed to a standard IK chain

in which only the target bone receives a keyframe Of course, if you have Automatic Keyframing enabled as we suggested earlier, keys are set for all necessary bones without you having to worry about it

The Action Editor

When keyframing object-level motion in Chapter 3, you worked with an Ipo window, which helped you to visualize what was going on with the animation When working with armatures, though, you may be setting keys for several different bones, in different combinations, at

different frames The Ipo view can only show the curves and keys for one object at a time, so how should you proceed?

The Action Editor shows a high level view of an object's animation

Figure CAD.08: An Action Editor and Ipo window view of the same animation

In the above illustration, both the Action Editor and Ipo view are focused on the same piece of object animation Notice how there is a single diamond along the Action Editor's timeline for each key position in the Ipo window

This sort of information compression allows you to view animation data from many bones at once