• 🍪 Blender Basics Explore Library Guided Playlists Live Streams Articles Podcast Downloads Collabs Educators: Blender Teaching Guide What's Coming Soon Upgrade your membership
  • Questions & Answers Student Gallery Discord Channel YouTube Channel Citizen Membership Perks ✨
  • Kent Trammell Jonathan Lampel Wayne Dixon Paul Caggegi
    • Full Library
    single animationbasics

    Fundamentals of Animation in Blender

    Instructor:
    Wayne Dixon
    Subscribe
    ☆☆☆☆☆
     ( 3 )

    📝 Note:  We've released a 4.2LTS version of this Blender Course. Stream the Fundamentals of Animation in Blender 4.2 LTS

    If you want to learn to make stuff move in Blender 3D, this is the tutorial for you. 

    Animation is tough. So let's start at the start. 

    Welcome to CG Cookie's Fundamentals of Animation in Blender!

    In this Blender course, we will teach you everything you need to know to start animating in Blender without being bogged down with having to learn character animation first.

    Don't get me wrong, character animation is great! But this course is your first step into animating in Blender

    Made for beginners
    If you've never animated before, you can get started here, because we will take it from the very basics.

    Afterward, you can create your own projects with confidence and ease

    After working through this course, you'll be able to create your own animations - and have fun while doing it.

    Because animation can get very difficult, very quickly...and Blender users can get demotivated by how much there is to learn.

    We'll take it slow
    Here's what we'll cover in this series of Blender tutorials for beginners in animation:

    • keyframes and channels interpolation
    • your animation timeline
    • graph editor and dope sheet
    • Mostly, you will learn how to animate objects and armatures (and the difference between the two).

    Plus, you'll learn how to overcome some common problems
    Beginner animators often run into common issues, such as...


    S.O.S. - why is my render black?
    How do I fix transparency issues?
    We'll learn how to avoid and resolve these.

    Practice Makes an Animator Perfect
    Above all, the animation is about practice - and practice you shall get!

    As part of this course, you will take on 6 small challenges, building your animation skills step by step.

    First, we will animate your default cube, making it float around in space.

    The main idea of this exercise is to practice all the ways of setting keys, using keying sets and learn to overcome a few of the mistakes that you are bound to make when you first start animating.  
    Our practice will get more challenging as we progress.

    Next, you will work on a looping ball animation.

    There are many ways to achieve this animation, however, the aim here is to practice using the graph editor.

    I will ask you to use just 5 keyframes and render the viewport with the motion paths.

    Finally, you will be able to animate a nice bouncing ball sequence.

    This is a classic short animation that every animator has to master and will give you TONS of skills for your future CG projects.


    Once you've mastered this course you will be ready to expand those skills in Blender Animation Bootcamphttps://cgcookie.com/courses/animation-bootcamp

    Get this course and 267 others by joining CG Cookie

    Join Now
    Awarded upon completion:
    100xp +
    Course Curriculum
    3 Reviews
    • ☆☆☆☆☆
      Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) ·

      This course was exactly what I was looking for when I was getting frustrated for knowing "how" to animate in other apps, but couldn't quite work smoothly in Blender. Wayne goes in great detail about how everything is structured, all the ways to get to the same result (one of Blenders strengths I'd say), and valuable insight on workflow and speed. 

      If you are a beginner, this is a must. If you are not a beginner in animation, but a beginner in animating inside of Blender, this is a must. Great investment of my time.

      I'm sure until I get the new muscle memory within the animation features here I'll be coming back to reference several of these videos. Thanks Wayne! Now you also got me curious on character rigging and animating. Next courses on queue.

    • ☆☆☆☆☆
      Lewis Thorpe(DripInspector) ·

      Having dabbled with animation in the past I assumed I would have a decent understanding of the concepts explained in this course. I was sorely mistaken.

      Wayne takes you through the very basics of animation in blender, from outlining the different editors all the way to making a bouncing ball animation. I can safely say I learned more from doing this course than I ever would from stumbling around trying to learn without. Overall I found this course very useful in consolidating my knowledge and gaining the essential components to be a successful animator in blender. I look forward to checking out more of Wayne's courses in the future. 

    • ☆☆☆☆☆
      Mister Hermit(hermitesque) ·

      I'd learned animation and keyframe stuff by stumbling around and getting a feel for it.  I thought I was pretty comfortable with animation and I wouldn't get very much from this.

      Boy was I wrong.


      This course improved my confidence and familiarity with the animation tools and really solidified my foundational understanding.  Wayne explains things in a careful, useful and entertaining manner.  More than once I went to comment on a particularly good explanation only to see that three or four more people had already pointed it out (in particular, the explanation of parenting is perfect).


      If you even slightly think you might need this course, then you need this course.  It's made that slight nervous fear of not being able to avoid doing some animation into a confidence that leads to me adding animation unnecessarily.