Anttilat

After another long break I'm back in business. And I had a great chapter to continue with. Chapter 6 of the Essential Blender was about character animation. This chapter was apparently abridged from "Introduction to Character Animation"-tutorial

To be fair I should tell you that I didn't do all this in one day. I did a little on one evening and a little bit more on the next. I think this is third or fourth day actually as I kept getting distracted. Also these cuts in my workflow weren't a good thing. In this particular chapter I suggest that other students should do it in one sitting if possible. Or at least the walkcycle part.

Really this part was a lot of fun. At least after the intial "I don't remember how everything worked"-part and once I was able to put the book down and position Hank by myself. Most frustrating part was that the computer had trouble keeping up - we still haven't got the new graphic card drivers plus this computer isn't really top notch. Also I realized how hard it is to really understand how a human moves while they walk.

I know that character animation is a whole other world and I just might continue studying it closer after I've finished the Essential Blender -book. The results were unbelievably rewarding, seeing the final video was so totally different feeling than seeing final renders of still modelling.

Here's the video of the final render, Hank walking and waving. It's far from perfect but I'm pretty pleased. There's not much gliding and the movement is not nearly as stiff as it was at first :)