There is a lot of tutorials where they teach you something and make you only even more confused or opposite, after watching one you feel like you didn't even scratched the surface of presented subject. And you seem to balance it perfectly, after watching your tutorial I feel that I know what actually all those tools really are, how they work together and how to use them
Just after watching this, I'm way less intimidated by animation in Blender. It has a clarity that none of the other videos I've watched on the subject had. You really have a gift for teaching.
This is the best tutorial. I can't believe after many months learn blender animation, I dont even know about NLA at all. You enlighten me! Thanks a lot.
I think this is one of the best tutorials I've ever seen on any subject. So many parts in the UI, interconnected in such a complex way, and after watching this I 'get it' enough to start experimenting confidently!
I've been going through your Rigify course, and I have to say you're the best I've encountered when it comes to actually teaching how Blender works. There is so much to learn, but you are able to break it all down in an easy to understand manner. You're amazing!
@@CGDive Not sure what the guy meant, but personally I would like more on handling the curve editor and action editor in complex scenes, where you need filters and isolation of separate tracks. Because it is a real pain, especially without knowing the fundamentals. BTW truly appreciate what you do man, acquired your Rigify course and still not done watching it. Amazing job!
@@MelvilleG Did you watch the other two videos in the series? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tAo7HxxxA08.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UxdPtVAz6Do.html
best explanation of NLA & Actions - everyone else just jumps right in doing things whereas CGDive clearly explains the high level reasoning and bigger picture, thanks a lot!
Great video. I was looking for how to interpolate between 2 actions, or as you said, use transitions. This is exactly what I needed. I liked and subbed!!
@@CGDive Quick question.. What do you think about the "Animation Layers" add on for additive animation editing? Have you used it? How does it contrast to doing it the vanilla way with NLA?
@@DevGods Haven't used it sorry. I know Luciano did a review on it. I think that is it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tOx_SAG7gl4.html
@@CGDive yea I watched that one just wanted to see if you had any thoughts.. I went ahead and bought the addon after the developer answered a question I had about it’s workflow.. Thanks
Thanks once again like always you help us. I have been using blender for almost a year but still I hope I will learn everything in proper order from this video.
Thx mate. Keep em coming as fast as you possible can churn them out. I'm just about to start messing with actions and NLA myself. I have a suggestion for you though. Please make a video where you explain why most Blender rigs comes with their control bones (AKA control curves in other apps) set to quaternions instead of Euler rotations? I find Quaternions super hard to work with on rigs. So if I'm doing something wrong I need to learn how it works fast. Luckily if the rig is made with Rigify we can use a special tool to switch to Euler even after we have started animating without loosing any work. To bad it only works with Rigify rigs though.
Thanks, mate! Oh euler vs Quaternions. That's a rabbit hole for sure. :D The general rule I follow is that I keep joints with a lot of freedom of rotation (e.g. the shoulder) to Quaternions, otherwise I use Euler. But I'll put this topic on my list. Oh, and by the way, the tool that comes with Rigify for converting between Euler and Quaternions is not only for Rigify. As far as I know, it was a separate addon, it was then added to Rigify for some strange reason... and now the devs want to separate it again :P
Your tutorials and explanations are the best, thank you so much! Really excited for the upcoming videos. I've been learning so much from your gumroad Rigify courses. I bought the Ogre and Dragon advanced rigging courses and they are FANTASTIC and 100% worth the reasonable price. Will you be mentioning the Pose Library at all? I noticed that it uses actions too!
Glad you like my stuff and thanks for buying the course! As for Pose Library... yes, it is on my list but the list is long haha But yeah, I am keeping it in mind.
Is there a video where you explain how to combine Mixamo animations in a sequence, eliminating the "origin jump back"? Is this possible with the NLA? And I agree with another comment, these videos should be on blender's website. Logical, concise and to the point.
Thank you for the summary. What things are possible in the dopesheet editor that aren’t available in the action editor? I’ve been using the action editor solely and never needed the dope sheet yet
Yeah, in recent versions they are quite similar. Even the Timeline has a lit of the features. I'll try to point out difference when/if I make a video about the dope sheet.
@@CGDive thanks alot man .. it really means alot to me .. i will keep uploading better ones .. and u keep making wonders with these perfect tutorials .. i will tell everybody i know about ur channel .. ur the best .. cheers
I NEED this! Having so many issues getting my animations into Unreal, I don’t know/understand the NLA stack/editor at all so I’m just exporting my actions but in UE4 I have to go in and manually remove empty frames because it imports from blender with too many frames and won’t seamlessly cycle like in blender 😔
I'll cover this in the next videos but if you can't wait, try this. Push your action to NLA, go to the strip options and under Action Clip reduce the End frame by 1. So if End is 73 by default set it to 72. See this image because there are two Start/End settings. You want the lower one. More info in the next videos. :) imgur.com/a/n4vOZ9i
This feels illegal watching. Soo much of my confusion was resolved by simply watching this video. That being said, I can't be the only one who thinks Blender's Animation system needs to be simplified, I mean 4 different panels are needed to be open in order to animate anything... Anyways great tutorial!
Haha thanks! As for the editors, I get it but at the end each one is needed. I tried to show this in the video but what you'll use depend on your needs. For very simple stuff you can just use the timeline. For more complex stuff add dope sheet and graph editor. Then NLA if needed. I hope the video didn't make you think that all have to be used and open at the same time. Only use what is necessary at the time.
Sigh.. thanks. None of this except the Action Editor and maybe Graph Editor matters if you're exporting for games does it? I came here because the NLA was interfering with my actions - and I thought action animations were separate from the general dopesheet (world animation). Although, I still don't really understand why creating an action alone creates a strip on the NLA automatically - perhaps for preview purposes? Regardless, thank you for the rundown. I was about to pull my hair out - I understand Blender is an animation tool first, but for a simple game character loop this was very confusing.
Not sure what your mean by procedural animation. Can you give an example from Godot? Blender has animation curve modifies which can create certain type of procedural anims.
Your videos are awesome. I am searching for a feature in blender for weeks, Found no answer. Can you help me a bit. I want to save a material change animation as action for later use in blender. e.g. I want to change the color of default cube from green to red. And I want to save this animation as action. How can I do this? what are the steps?
Ah, good question. The animation of a material property is part of the material itself. I guess you could create a custom property on a mesh object or rig and make it drive e.g. the color of the material. That way it will be part of the object or armature action...
@@CGDive Is my problem not a high priority topic? There is no video tutorial on RU-vid about saving material animation as action for later use. Actually I was looking to 2d face speak animation in 3d characters. There are lots of tutorials with image sequences. But I don’t find any work around for saving that animation as an action for later use. It would be a great tutorial.
@@CGDive Haha I thought after doing everything the final key frames will end up on the timeline like most video/audio editing softwares but they kept disappearing after I switched to a new animation. SO I'm using NLA instead of the timeline keyframes since a lot of bones are present and it's not just a simple location keyframe. Thanks for the quick reply 🙏🏼
I find that default behavior of actions weird compared to other parts in blender. Every else in blender if you do something on a material or object, it automatically gets a user. I dont understand when creating these keyframes, why the action does not get a user. I really messed up my beginning days of Blender. because in most placed when something doesnt have a user it is still stored. Except here in the action editor, i find that very strange and very inconcistent. Wonder what the idea behind that is.
Hmmm... not sure what you mean. The way actions are handled is consistent with materials etc. When you create a new action it's automatically linked to the object you're animating. When you unlink it (X button), then it no longer has a user and it can be lost. This is exactly what happens with materials and other data that is linked to objects, isn't it?
@@RomboutVersluijs Yeah, there is like 84% chance that a piece of unlinked data will be deleted after reloading. So random :D I hope things will become easier to manage with the asset manager.
Hello again. So I've finished a rig up and began animating it. I set keys using the gizmo inside the viewport.. Say I set a key for a Z location moving the selected bone up and down on the global axis. The key gets set properly, However when I got to tweak that key in the graph editor moving it up and down translates the bone on the local z axis which is killing my workflow.. I basically cant use the graph editor with this happening. Does anyone know what that is and how to fix it using a rigify rig?
Hey there. This is normal. All animations are recorded on the local axis only. Global axis when moving a bone or an object are there just for convinience. One of the many technicalities of 3d animation that you have to get used to, I am afraid. 😟
@@CGDive is there a way to get the controllers to follow global space so things are more predictable in the graph? I feel like this should be an important feature to have. Or will I just have to get used to moving things in local space in the view port? which is pretty awful imo. Can I gain more control by having better bone rolls? Or does this not have anything to do with the bone set up?
@@CGDive I found the answer! Since I only want the transforms you follow global space the solution was to create a bone on the control rig that is lined up with world space and constrain the transforms of the IK control to that bone.. that way in the graph editor all the transforms will line up correctly
I am not sure if you're asking a question or suggesting I use the Animation workspace. The Animation workspace is nice but it wasn't exactly what I wanted for this video.
please help my dumbass, I have already created all my actions, that part is done completely, I have deleted the action instances from the nla window, now I want to start recalling and arranging my saved action clips back into nla and arrange them- how do I get the action clips back into the nla without using pushdown(which just creates new action instances I don't need)?
Hey hahaha I am not sure how you got them in the NLA in the first place but one way is to set them as active action, then push them down. Another one - a more professional approach - press shift+a in the NLA. That brings up a menu and you can choose your actions from there.
Not sure if you're joking, trolling or actually asking a question haha Don't get me wrong, it's just hard to say on the internet. So I'll assume it's an actual question. NLA is the Nonlinear Animation Editor in Blender. It has nothing to do with Crypto.