I'm a newbie and I'm lost. In the previous lesson I was learning about motion paths and key frames. All of a sudden you'r...

Question

I'm a newbie and I'm lost. In the previous lesson I was learning about motion paths and key frames. All of a sudden you're talking about rigs, bones and drivers. Did I accidentally skip 20 lessons? Do I need to take another course and come back later?

Answer 1 · 2017-03-28T21:39:45Z

Wayne Dixon replied March 28, 2017 9:39pm

Just make sure you haven’t skipped any. You will need to learn about rigs for character animation. It’s essentially the same thing as 'animating the ball in a circular path' but a rig will give you more flexibility. But if you are lost, just try some of the fundamental courses to learn more about Blender and come back when you have a little more experience. You will understand everything when you are ready, and not before. Never stop learning.

Answer 2 · 2017-03-28T22:26:07Z

b

replied March 28, 2017 10:26pm

I haven't skipped anything, it just feels like I've skipped 10 chapters. This lesson suddenly throws around several terms and concepts not mentioned before, as if they're already familiar. So I've had to suspend this course and start another one on rigging, just to figure out the terminology. It would be helpful to insert a lesson before the Multiball Rig Demo, explaining the meaning of "rig", "armature", "bone", "empty" et al, for those of us completely new to the subject.

Answer 3 · 2017-03-31T07:29:59Z

b

replied March 31, 2017 7:29am

OK, I worked through the Fundamentals of Rigging course, and now it makes more sense. But I'm confused how to export my rendered circular ball exercise. In the manual I see boxes for compression, frame rates, etc., but I can't find any of that. The Export menu is for saving Blender files to other formats, not videos. Where exactly does one make all those rendered frames (.PNG files) into a video?

Answer 4 · 2017-04-02T05:41:05Z

Wayne Dixon replied April 2, 2017 5:41am

Self directed learning is hard. But you don't need to understand how everything works or what it’s called at first. Don't overthink it, bkkjohn. You will pick things up along the way and everything will fall into place with time. Try things, make mistakes and learn. But trust in yourself. You can do this.