I'm very much a noob to animation. I quit my stressful job as a biomedical technician to pursue my dream of pitching a couple of cartoon ideas. At first, I thought it would be easy, boy was I wrong. I have to hand it to you animators, you guys are a very special breed of artists.
@@usercontent2112 aw thank you so much! I went with Stop Motion animation for the moment with paper cutouts I made by hand. I'm having a lot of fun with it! I giggle almost every time I make a short. Thank you again for the compliment.
16:11 “Now, the basic rig is finished”…my friend, this is FAR from basic…I wish I had a tenth of your talent! Love your tutorials and choice of music too!
Ty for NOT going and talking too fast! One of the best if not THE best tutorial for 2d animation in Blender 4 sure. You make it simple enough for me ;)
You have a very confident artstyle. I can respect your skills on an aesthetic and a technical level. And it's nice to see an artist that isn't terrified of their PC ❤️
Wow the blender one was actually way more smoother and more accurate in the walking! Man just when you think blender can't get any cooler than that it just completely blows your mind out of the water and to do it better than a program that is designed to do bone tool rigging like MoHo That in itself speaks volume!
I'm completely new to Blender and need this kind of animation for a project I've been planning to take on. To be honest, this was a little hard to understand but I know I'm on the right path. I just have to keep watching your videos. I have many questions but for now, I'll do a little more digging. Thank you so much for this! I'm excited to start :DD
I've been doing it using Kritas Isolate layer function. The advantage is that every picture is the same size so when importing, every layer is already at their respective location. But this definetely helped since I was wondering why there's no automatic layer exporting. One great way would be to export multilayer exr and use the layers directly in Blender. Unfortunately Blender shader editor doesn't (yet?) support using multiple layers from a single file
5:46 I'm not sure if anyone else caught this, but you can set the plane dimensions from this menu to Dpi, which will keep the scale of each image consistent to the original cutouts. The planes may be really small when they're imported, so just scale all of them up by their own origin points
Thanks for the comment. *Long Version* I started to animate with Blender as Moho's future was a little up in the air with Smith Micro no longer developing or fixing bugs. Moho has been an excellent tool for 2D rigged animation and it has recently been sold by Smith Micro to Lost Marble LLC, the company founded by Mike Clifton, the original creator of Moho, and Victor Paredes, Supervisor of Moho animation at Cartoon Saloon and former Moho Product Manager. Moho 12.5 has been great, I have found Moho 13 a little buggy, but with Victor Paredes involved, I'm certain that it will soon be an excellent tool once again (they say they will put out a new version soon). To answer your question, Which do I prefer? I would have said in the past, Moho, but really you quickly get used to the limitations of the tools you use and to take advantage of their strengths. At present, Moho's smart bones (control of pre-animated sequences) is very powerful and efficient when animating. Grease Pencil and its rigging tools are growing and expanding so both are positioned well going ahead. *Short Version* If animating with frame by frame, Blender Grease Pencil is the winner. If you have a short amount of time to rig a character, then Moho would be faster (but Blender will add more rigging tools for Grease Pencil as it develops). When animating, I find Blender GP better with its custom bone shapes and other powerful tools. Basically, it is best to be able to adapt to whatever software you have access to... Joel
@@SketchySquirrel Great explanation, I really appreaciate it. I think I'm going to try MOHO first since I need to making animation fast with bone rigging for youtube purpose
I'm loving your stuff. Your tutorials have been extraordinary and super helpful to me. I've watched your head turning rigging vids more than a dozen times while learning to master animation and blender.
I'm brand new to any kind of art and this inspired me so much. Now I have something in mind I want to do (as a hobby). Thank you for the great video and you did very well in teaching the subject.
Thanks for the tutorial. I wish I had found it BEFORE I started working it out for myself in a very winded way. There were so many helpful things to know that will defo speed up my workflow! A helpful thing to know when importing images as planes is that there is also an option under Plane Dimensions (Dpi or Dots/BU) that mean that it will import the images in relative scale. You'll have to align them, but it would save a bit of time.
Hi Fiona, Thanks you for your kind comment. I'm so glad that you liked it, and found it useful. Also thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to use that the next time I do something like this. :)
I’ve always wondered if “Flash” style flat 2-D could be done in something other than some costly $10,000 program. Its been years but i’m seeing what i think i want here! The bones give the art great “character”. PNG seems a great choice (I didn’t know it made layers). Can the somewhat cumbersome rigging be re-used for other models... say via retitling the core elements? (Old bones, new art) Nice animation too! It didn’t seem to take more than a day, once rigged up. Fascinating!
this tutorial went so fast, that even when slowing down to the lowest, I had no idea how most things were done. for example at 7.41 I had no idea how you did that =/ This is my 2nd week learning this as much as I can
Hi there. I'm glad to hear that you're following it. I'm sorry that it's going too fast. It can be difficult to find the right pace for this type of video. At 7:41 I begin binding the images to the armature. Each image is a mesh object, so we can enter edit mode, just as we would when 3D modelling, and add more resolution, by subdividing the mesh, or adding loopcuts (CTRL+R). Then, to bind it to the armature, we add an armature modifier to the mesh, then under the vertex groups, you can add groups for every relavent bone, named exactly the same as the bone. Then back in edit mode you can assign different vertecies to the groups, and then the armature will deform them. I really hope that this reply helps. Good luck, I believe you can do it. If you have any more questions feel free to ask here, or email me and I will do my best to get back to you in a reasonable time span. Good luck again, and thank you for the comment :D
@@SketchySquirrel well I still have alot to explore and learn of course, and I will try to get into it more by time. But it was great video even if I didnt understand too much
@@SketchySquirrel thank you for your support. You know I actually made some rigs similar to this using photographs but they are NSFW like 99% of my art. It's nice to know that this is a real work flow that actually works. It really seems like blender is the best program for everything
Thanks for making this tutorial. I hope you don't take this the wrong way but I have some constructive criticism: - It would have been nice to be able to see your inputs. - The dissonance between your slow way of speaking and the speed of the timelapse made it really frustrating for me to follow. I had to speed the video up to 1.25 for the normal talking speed but had to slow the video down as much as I could to see what exactly you were doing.
Hi there. Thank you for you feedback. Always welcome :D. I agree that it would have been nice to see the inputs. I've been trying to do more of that in recent video, (though I could improve at remembering to turn it on) Also, yes, it's always difficult to find a balance between talking slow enough to follow, while keeping the video to a reasonable length, so It's good to get some feedback like this, so I know what to change in future. Thank you again, and I hope to see you around :D
This is really good totorial, i like it because all steps clearly described. If compare by this video process of animation is little bit harder than in moho?
I would have said Moho, but really you quickly get used to the limitations of either and take advantage of their strengths. At present, Moho's smart bones (control of pre-animated sequences) is very powerful and efficient when animating. Moho has new (excellent) owners now which will mean good things for its future. Grease Pencil and its rigging tools are growing and expanding so both are positioned well going ahead. Thanks for your comment!
He thanks very much ! Again fantastic how you master the greacepencil rigging system which is sooooo complicated to me (compared to Moho, i'm totaly lost and Moho being abandonned...) :( ... i tried a few times but can't even make a simple bone system work so let alone deformer bones controled by controle bones ;) If one day you have the time to make a "very much beginners rigging tutorial" for technical deadheads like me :) that would be great. In the meanwhile i'll try to slow down the tutorial to catch a l the different steps. Could you tel me whether bone animation is combinable with the sculpting tool (or even the drawing tool)? Thanks any way for your inspiring explorations !
Thanks for your encouragement. I've found that tutorials are harder to make the more beginner friendly they are, but for my next one, I'll try to aim it at complete beginners to GP. :)
Thanks for commenting. I haven't really thought about doing an animation tutorial, I never felt I had a lot to say on the subject, but it's certainly something to consider. We'll see :D
Great work ad tute Joel, Bravo. Blender is so clunky though, how there are no short cuts to do anything. Vertex groups, yawn. It's pretty easy to lose interest in the art when it takes so many intermediate, behind the curtain bindings to get the simplest thing to work. I don't like it. Even though Moho is essentially dead in the water thanks to Smith Micro, the fact that the meshes are automatically generated by default ( though you can make your own), means that rigging is a lot quicker. Same for smart bones, Moho is actually almost fun, when blender is just frustrating. A good Moho-esque add- on would be brilliant.
I totally get it, but what I have found is that the more you use Blender the easier it gets. For this type of animation, there is the COA Tools Addon which is probably the closest thing to what you are suggesting (at the moment). I am certain that Grease Pencil tools will be developed especially if we start using GP in a Moho way. Thanks for your comment! All the best, Joel
Thank you so much for detailed Video. want to ask a question. Which software will be easy for small 2d animations, blender or After effects? Though I've not used blender. But after watching your video, this seems very interesting, specially bone rigging. So please guide me.
Hi there. I'm glad that you liked it, and thank you for the question. Overall, you will be able to achieve what you want in whatever tool you choose, experience is more important than the features in the tool you use. With that said, each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. After effects is a lot easier to learn in the beginning and will give highly polished results without too much effort, however it is limited in features and is suited to small projects. Blender, on the other hand, takes longer to pick up, but is more powerful in the long term, and so is suited to larger projects. I'm also a big fan of the open-source business model, so that's another big reason that I choose to use Blender. I hope that you find this helpful, and decide on the best tool for you. Thanks again. :D
Thank you so much. I might not be able to publish a "Jazza" monkey as it's not my character, but I'll be making another GP character soon. :) Thanks for your encouragement.
I cant figure out for some reason when i press ctrl r to get the grid thing to pop up nothing happens and when I make my bones it makes all new armature layers?
Hi Aqrmoney So I think that when you are trying to add loop cuts, (grid thing) you must be in object mode. If you press tab, you will be in edit mode where you can move individual vertices, etc including adding loop cuts. As for the armature, once again, adding a bone in object mode will create a new armature, however, if you select the armature and press tab to go into edit mode, pressing shift + A will create a new bone within the same armature. Hope this helps, Joel
Si, absolutamente. Cuando hace clic en el espacio de trabajo de animación 2D en un nuevo archivo, es lo mismo que el entorno 3D predeterminado con algunos cambios de configuración útiles (ninguno es necesario para lograr estos resultados). Yes, absolutely. When you click on the 2D animation workspace in a new file, it is the same as the default 3D environment with a few helpful setting changes (none are necessary to achieve these results).
Hello, I am currently using Blender version 4.0. Your tutorials are great, but I don't think they are for beginners as there is no intuitive explanation of what hotkeys to use (like a tutorial with a programme that shows you what button you pressed on the screen when you press a hotkey). Since the 4.0 update, the tabs related to Bone Layers have been changed to Bone Collections, so the Control bones chapter is hard to follow, especially the part where when you copy a bone, the image is also affected by the copy's Control bones. I think I need to get this straight to use your Smart bone addon.
Question: since you've used both Moho and Blender for 2D character rigging, is Moho sufficiently easier and/or better than Blender to merit Moho's price tag? I'm trying to decide between the two.
Hi, can you suggest where to learn 2d animation things especially for blender from zero until advance ? I'm learning blender 2d animation right now from youtube tutorial, but do you have any suggestion for make the learning faster ? Thank you I don't have any idea what you do with the blender but i enjoy your video 🤣
Hi there, Im so glad that you liked it. When learning 2D animation in blender, I would recommend that you try and find a balance between watching and following tutorials, and experimenting on your own. For 2D animation in blender I would recommend LevelPixelLevel : th-cam.com/channels/pxizXEIm73-GJJwayhGceA.html , but feel free to try and find other creators as well. I also think that a basic understanding of 3D in blender will be very usefull, if you don't already. If that the case, I would get used to blender with a tutorial series like this one : th-cam.com/video/TPrnSACiTJ4/w-d-xo.html appart from that learning to rig is really important, I've tried to show some of good techniques for this on this channel, however I learnt it from 3D rigging from people like Pierrick Picaut : th-cam.com/users/PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN or CG Cookie : th-cam.com/video/h7p5TIFFC0E/w-d-xo.html or Dikko : th-cam.com/channels/dEz1N-xB-mYNpeU5ZKbGLw.html These are all great resources, and though I still have a long way to go, these tutorials got me to the point that i'm at now. I hope that you find this helpful, thanks for commenting :)
Hey there, that' super simple. Blender is referencing the image files that you exported from your painting software. So, you can go back to your painting software, make the changes that you want, and if you replace the image files, then in Blender you can press file>revert and then the images will automatically update. I hope this is helpful, let me know if you run into any problems :)
Thanks for the tutorials sketchy. Do you prefer rigging these 2d characters using planes or as grease pencil strokes? Trying to find a good workflow for rigging grease pencil characters and haven't decided on one yet.
Sorry for the late reply. :) Honestly I don't have much of a preference. It all depends on the project. In my current project, I'm using grease pencil, but if I needed a more painterly style, then I would probably choose to use images. If I were you I wouldn't just choose a workflow and stick with it, I would try and learn both and know that you can do either depending on which one is more appropriate. :) Thanks for the comment
Hi there, I'm sorry to hear that. Does anything happen when you press Shift + A? If not, then you might be using another keyboard layout on your computer, if so try pressing 'Windows/super + Spacebar' to toggle between any keyboards that you've applied. If that doesn't work, you might have to change the keyboard shortcuts in your preferences. To check you can go into your preferences, and under the keymap tab, search for the 'add' command, and scroll down until you see the add function under 'object mode' Make sure that it's set to use A set to 'press' with the Shift modifier. Finally, if all else fails, in the top right of the 3D viewport, there is a short row of buttons. Of these press the 'add' button, and the same drop-down menu will appear as it should when pressing Shift + A. I hope that this is helpful, and if none of this works, can you record your screen, as you try to add an image, and send it to me at my business email on the about page of my channel, th-cam.com/users/sketchysquirrelabout
Hello goodies!!! I have been following your tutorials and I have learned a lot, I already have a fully controllable character and I am making sceneries to animate... my question is how can I join these two things... can I export the character with all the bones or should I make the background in the same file? I don't know whether to make the background in the same file as the tiger or separate and then import them together or something... very grateful for all your content and hopefully you can answer me.
Hi there, what I did for this project was to make the background in the same file as the character, however, if you want a more scalable solution, for a larger project, then you have two options. Appending or Linking. So in a new file, you can press File > Append, and choose the character file, and find the collection that contains your character. This is the easiest way to import your character and rig into another file, but if you want to change anything about the rig, you will need to make that change on both the original character file and the new one. So if instead you choose File > Link and find the same collection you will "Link" the rig, which means that any changes you make in the original file will carry over to the new one. In the new file, you will need to select the rig, and press F3, and search for "Make Library Override" Otherwise you won't be able to pose the character or animate it. I hope this is helpful, let me know if you have any more questions. :D
@@SketchySquirrel Thank you very much, I will try to do it, although for now I have not understood very well how it works to add or link some animated character to a different file (usually it only lets me select a collection, animation or individual things) but I will keep trying... by the way, I have another doubt, how can I do to generate a change of hands? i have tried with the mouth system but the problem is that when generating keyframes to animate, you see the change between -for example- hand 1 to hand 10, but you see all the other hands in the middle... i think in one of your videos you mentioned a property of a bone to select the hand from outside or something like that, i hope i am not bothering you and thanks again for the help, regards
This method should work fine in blender 2.79, but there has been a huge jump in 2D tools recently, so you may have to be creative with the tools you have available. :)
Hi there, I think you're referring to 5:07 (if not let me know). If that's the case then I would imagine that you don't have the image selected. The various settings and tabs along the right of the screen change depending on what object you have selected. (e.g. if you select a light, you will see lighting settings, like colour or power. A camera has it's own settings like focal length etc) So just click on the image and the tab with the square and triangle, should appear. If not then I think you would have added the image as a plane using the addon, import images as planes. At that point in the video, I used a built in type of image, a reference image. This has different settings, as it's a different type of object. I hope you find this helpful :D
Nice work! I have to ask what's that feature called where the keys show on your action path around the 23:24 mark? Is that a built-in thing or an addon?
Hi. Yes this is in Blender by default. First select the bone, then under the armature tab, under "motion paths" you can calculate the path of any bone. This is really helpful to make sure the motion is smooth. Thanks, hope this helped.
What about new sprite limbs? Like if the head looks towards the camera, then away, youd need different sprites rigged to same bone. But in animation, how do you swap sprites? Unless you have all angles on a sprite sheet and move through that??
Hi Jinxie, As you said, creating a sprite sheet should work, in conjunction with a UV offset modifier. Otherwise you could import each frame as a separate object, and create a control that toggles their visibility. Another option is to create a procedural head turn rig, I made a tutorial series on this subject, th-cam.com/play/PLvrk7pBVZDRl7yQExCoODrZbuFqajNfix.html
@@SketchySquirrel Hello and thanks for the fast response! I already know the first methods, but was actually looking for a method of creating 3D looking rotations without 3D, like the link you sent. So this response was VERY handy! Thank you!
I'm very much a noob to animation. I quit my stressful job as a biomedical technician to pursue my dream of pitching a couple of cartoon ideas. At first, I thought it would be easy, boy was I wrong. I have to hand it to you animators, you guys are a very special breed of artists.
don't give up, you'll get there man
@@PRYMA9 it's getting a lot better now. Just takes time to navigate through everything but I'm having a lot more fun. Thank you for the support. 😁
@@RandomActsofAnimation I saw your lastest videos. Congrats, you're doing a amazing work!
@@usercontent2112 aw thank you so much! I went with Stop Motion animation for the moment with paper cutouts I made by hand. I'm having a lot of fun with it! I giggle almost every time I make a short. Thank you again for the compliment.
@@RandomActsofAnimationi want another update. Hopefully you didn't quit
16:11 “Now, the basic rig is finished”…my friend, this is FAR from basic…I wish I had a tenth of your talent! Love your tutorials and choice of music too!
0:45
moho: going to ezan in any other day
blender: *menacingly walking towards* ezan at friday
Ha!
Ty for NOT going and talking too fast! One of the best if not THE best tutorial for 2d animation in Blender 4 sure. You make it simple enough for me ;)
You have a very confident artstyle. I can respect your skills on an aesthetic and a technical level. And it's nice to see an artist that isn't terrified of their PC ❤️
Wow the blender one was actually way more smoother and more accurate in the walking! Man just when you think blender can't get any cooler than that it just completely blows your mind out of the water and to do it better than a program that is designed to do bone tool rigging like MoHo That in itself speaks volume!
Wow I’ve been watching a lot of tutorials but this one is so straightforward and helpful thank you!
We need more tutorials using Blender 2D animation and Grease pencil, and yours just nailed it! It’s clear, concise, and up to date. Great job.
Thanks you so much. I'll try to keep them coming. :)
@@SketchySquirrel AWESOME!!!
I used to use Moho (Anime Studio) a lot for my animations.
I'm glad to see that I can recreate them in Blender, with the same (or better) results.
I'm completely new to Blender and need this kind of animation for a project I've been planning to take on. To be honest, this was a little hard to understand but I know I'm on the right path. I just have to keep watching your videos. I have many questions but for now, I'll do a little more digging. Thank you so much for this! I'm excited to start :DD
Finally found time to try this and it is an amazing tool for cut-out animation.
Clearly the best cut out animation tutorial for Blender.
#great
3:33 Oh my God this method is going to save me so much. The time I've wasted manually doing each layer one by one.
Me too. :)
I've been doing it using Kritas Isolate layer function. The advantage is that every picture is the same size so when importing, every layer is already at their respective location.
But this definetely helped since I was wondering why there's no automatic layer exporting.
One great way would be to export multilayer exr and use the layers directly in Blender. Unfortunately Blender shader editor doesn't (yet?) support using multiple layers from a single file
Amazing how a bit of Django Reinhardt makes all this work so well. Excellent job!
"make sure you name your layers"
pff... haha ... good joke... * nervous laughter *
(great tutorial. already looking forward to the next one.)
Thanks! 😃 yes, I forgot to name several layers, which made importing them a pain in the neck. oops.
Awesome. Thanks for showing the incredible 2D possibility of Blender!
Amazing amount of work for only a couple seconds.
True. The idea is that once you have rigged the character, you can then use it over and over again with minimal effort. Thanks for commenting.
5:46 I'm not sure if anyone else caught this, but you can set the plane dimensions from this menu to Dpi, which will keep the scale of each image consistent to the original cutouts. The planes may be really small when they're imported, so just scale all of them up by their own origin points
Hi there, thanks for the useful insight :D I didn't know about that
WOW, you are so talented! Which one you prefer for easy of use (2d animation) ? I planned to switch to Moho from After Effects
Thanks for the comment.
*Long Version*
I started to animate with Blender as Moho's future was a little up in the air with Smith Micro no longer developing or fixing bugs. Moho has been an excellent tool for 2D rigged animation and it has recently been sold by Smith Micro to Lost Marble LLC, the company founded by Mike Clifton, the original creator of Moho, and Victor Paredes, Supervisor of Moho animation at Cartoon Saloon and former Moho Product Manager. Moho 12.5 has been great, I have found Moho 13 a little buggy, but with Victor Paredes involved, I'm certain that it will soon be an excellent tool once again (they say they will put out a new version soon). To answer your question, Which do I prefer? I would have said in the past, Moho, but really you quickly get used to the limitations of the tools you use and to take advantage of their strengths. At present, Moho's smart bones (control of pre-animated sequences) is very powerful and efficient when animating. Grease Pencil and its rigging tools are growing and expanding so both are positioned well going ahead.
*Short Version*
If animating with frame by frame, Blender Grease Pencil is the winner. If you have a short amount of time to rig a character, then Moho would be faster (but Blender will add more rigging tools for Grease Pencil as it develops). When animating, I find Blender GP better with its custom bone shapes and other powerful tools. Basically, it is best to be able to adapt to whatever software you have access to... Joel
@@SketchySquirrel Great explanation, I really appreaciate it. I think I'm going to try MOHO first since I need to making animation fast with bone rigging for youtube purpose
hai bang rizky :v, lah ada disini
Woah the set up is a little complex, maybe i'll stick with moho for now. Nice vid!
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks for the awesome tutorial! One question though. How do you swap images?
I'm loving your stuff. Your tutorials have been extraordinary and super helpful to me. I've watched your head turning rigging vids more than a dozen times while learning to master animation and blender.
Wow thank you so much. I'd love to see what you've made. :)
I'm brand new to any kind of art and this inspired me so much. Now I have something in mind I want to do (as a hobby). Thank you for the great video and you did very well in teaching the subject.
Great job dude! It's awesome to see all these blender tutorial on grease pencil. Finally this feature is getting the popularity it deserves!
Thanks a ton! It is really cool to see Blender and GP being used in this way.
I wondered if this was possible, good to know!
Thanks for the tutorial! I've been making 3D animations but wanted to do more 2D so this was perfect! I'll post a link when I finish my first project!
I'm so glad to hear that this tutorial has been helpful. Can't wait to see it, good luck. :)
@@SketchySquirrel th-cam.com/video/VY-p77tD0_A/w-d-xo.html
seriously helped thank you!!
I'm so glad to hear it
wonderful!
Thanks for the tutorial. I wish I had found it BEFORE I started working it out for myself in a very winded way. There were so many helpful things to know that will defo speed up my workflow! A helpful thing to know when importing images as planes is that there is also an option under Plane Dimensions (Dpi or Dots/BU) that mean that it will import the images in relative scale. You'll have to align them, but it would save a bit of time.
Hi Fiona, Thanks you for your kind comment. I'm so glad that you liked it, and found it useful. Also thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to use that the next time I do something like this. :)
Isso veio em boa hora. Vou tentar aprender esses conceitos pra melhorar minhas edições. Obrigado! 🙏
thank you for wonderful video
that was a nice video it definitely helped out, thankyou so much and you just earned a sub
this is EXACTLY what i need. i love this style for animation and it's just way too hard to do this with actual paper
I'm so glad that you find it helpful. Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. It means a lot to me :)
unbelievably well explained...to the point, no wafsofte wafsofte chat...you´re the dude ..thanks!
thankyou
One of the best tutorials. Thank you.
You're very welcome! Thanks for your encouragement!
Excellent tutorial for rigging with Blender. I loved it. Thank you for creating and sharing. The character looks dam cute too! Best wishes!
This looks cool
Hope you enjoy. :)
Thank you for this video, I wouldn’t be able to start my project with out it!!!
Damn I LOVE your art style
Thanks so much!
If you want to make the bones transparent you Press Alt + Z in object mode and then switch to pose mode and then the bones should be transparent
This is what I've been waiting for! THANKS
No problem! Hope it helps. Thanks for the comment. :)
Finally, a tutorial that i looking for, thank you
you saved the day... this is so helpful and detailed
I’ve always wondered if “Flash” style flat 2-D could be done in something other than some costly $10,000 program. Its been years but i’m seeing what i think i want here! The bones give the art great “character”. PNG seems a great choice (I didn’t know it made layers).
Can the somewhat cumbersome rigging be re-used for other models... say via retitling the core elements? (Old bones, new art)
Nice animation too!
It didn’t seem to take more than a day, once rigged up. Fascinating!
Yes, you can definitely reuse rigs in the way you suggest (with a few tweaks). Thanks for your comment!!
this is the best I this is the best I could find for 2D animation in blender. Thank you so much. You helped me a lot!
So glad I could help :)
wow, very useful to me as a beginer..thanks
this tutorial went so fast, that even when slowing down to the lowest, I had no idea how most things were done. for example at 7.41 I had no idea how you did that =/ This is my 2nd week learning this as much as I can
Hi there. I'm glad to hear that you're following it. I'm sorry that it's going too fast. It can be difficult to find the right pace for this type of video. At 7:41 I begin binding the images to the armature. Each image is a mesh object, so we can enter edit mode, just as we would when 3D modelling, and add more resolution, by subdividing the mesh, or adding loopcuts (CTRL+R). Then, to bind it to the armature, we add an armature modifier to the mesh, then under the vertex groups, you can add groups for every relavent bone, named exactly the same as the bone. Then back in edit mode you can assign different vertecies to the groups, and then the armature will deform them. I really hope that this reply helps. Good luck, I believe you can do it. If you have any more questions feel free to ask here, or email me and I will do my best to get back to you in a reasonable time span. Good luck again, and thank you for the comment :D
@@SketchySquirrel well I still have alot to explore and learn of course, and I will try to get into it more by time.
But it was great video even if I didnt understand too much
Dud needs to make a game
Tank You very much . I was seeking for this tutorial. I am appreciate you
Hope it helps. Thanks for the comment!
This is awesome ! Thanks for sharing and showing us your workflow
My pleasure! Thanks for the comment. :)
Look awesome and clear tutorial, thank you very much! Excatly what I was looking for!
Well done man, really professional
great drawings man. really cool to watch
Thank you so much 😀
Thank you very much for the very detailed video
you are an amazing artist👀
That was amazing. I would love to see more 2d animation. Thank you so much
Awesome, thank you!
Your tutorial is good but too confusing for a beginner....it would be great to have a simpler version..
what throws off is the step sequencer. i ntally associate it with a soft/clip whether it's being used or not. also when you do
thanks a lot bro.. :D
No worries. Thanks for the comment!
Great tutorial, thanks man i needed this ❤❤
Beautiful!
Wow!
Nice job on your Grease Pencil tutorials!!! Thanks for the wow :)
@@SketchySquirrel thank you for your support. You know I actually made some rigs similar to this using photographs but they are NSFW like 99% of my art. It's nice to know that this is a real work flow that actually works. It really seems like blender is the best program for everything
Thanks so much for this !
No worries! Thanks!
thank you . . . . . .
Always welcome
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! THIS IS SO USEFUL
Glad it was helpful, thanks for commenting.
Thanks for this. It really helps!
Thanks, Glad to hear it!
Please Bro..share asset file
I plan to upload the assets - watch this space!
Hi, I've just uploaded the final project, as well as the images. Links are in the description.
Amazing bro 👏👏👏
Thank you so much 😀
amazing stuff !
Glad you think so!
Thanks for making this tutorial.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way but I have some constructive criticism:
- It would have been nice to be able to see your inputs.
- The dissonance between your slow way of speaking and the speed of the timelapse made it really frustrating for me to follow. I had to speed the video up to 1.25 for the normal talking speed but had to slow the video down as much as I could to see what exactly you were doing.
Hi there. Thank you for you feedback. Always welcome :D.
I agree that it would have been nice to see the inputs. I've been trying to do more of that in recent video, (though I could improve at remembering to turn it on)
Also, yes, it's always difficult to find a balance between talking slow enough to follow, while keeping the video to a reasonable length, so It's good to get some feedback like this, so I know what to change in future. Thank you again, and I hope to see you around :D
This is really good totorial, i like it because all steps clearly described. If compare by this video process of animation is little bit harder than in moho?
I would have said Moho, but really you quickly get used to the limitations of either and take advantage of their strengths. At present, Moho's smart bones (control of pre-animated sequences) is very powerful and efficient when animating. Moho has new (excellent) owners now which will mean good things for its future. Grease Pencil and its rigging tools are growing and expanding so both are positioned well going ahead. Thanks for your comment!
I don't understand why we need to use control bones with constraints and such, wouldn't it be simpler to just use one rig?
He thanks very much ! Again fantastic how you master the greacepencil rigging system which is sooooo complicated to me (compared to Moho, i'm totaly lost and Moho being abandonned...) :( ... i tried a few times but can't even make a simple bone system work so let alone deformer bones controled by controle bones ;) If one day you have the time to make a "very much beginners rigging tutorial" for technical deadheads like me :) that would be great. In the meanwhile i'll try to slow down the tutorial to catch a l the different steps. Could you tel me whether bone animation is combinable with the sculpting tool (or even the drawing tool)? Thanks any way for your inspiring explorations !
Thanks for your encouragement. I've found that tutorials are harder to make the more beginner friendly they are, but for my next one, I'll try to aim it at complete beginners to GP. :)
@@SketchySquirrel that would be suuuuper awesome :)
@@SketchySquirrel omg, that would be awesome! i'll be looking forward to that amazing tutorial
Soo helpful thank you. 🙏🏻
You're so welcome! Thanks for commenting :)
帮大忙了 非常感谢
谢谢你的好意评论
ANIMATION TUTORIAL PLEASE THANK YOU
Thanks for commenting. I haven't really thought about doing an animation tutorial, I never felt I had a lot to say on the subject, but it's certainly something to consider. We'll see :D
Great work ad tute Joel, Bravo.
Blender is so clunky though, how there are no short cuts to do anything.
Vertex groups, yawn. It's pretty easy to lose interest in the art when it takes so many intermediate, behind the curtain bindings to get the simplest thing to work.
I don't like it.
Even though Moho is essentially dead in the water thanks to Smith Micro, the fact that the meshes are automatically generated by default ( though you can make your own), means that rigging is a lot quicker.
Same for smart bones, Moho is actually almost fun, when blender is just frustrating.
A good Moho-esque add- on would be brilliant.
I totally get it, but what I have found is that the more you use Blender the easier it gets. For this type of animation, there is the COA Tools Addon which is probably the closest thing to what you are suggesting (at the moment). I am certain that Grease Pencil tools will be developed especially if we start using GP in a Moho way. Thanks for your comment! All the best, Joel
Knew how make drawing for blender animation did not know you can export layers
Hope it helps!
@@SketchySquirrel it did thanks
Thank you so much for detailed Video. want to ask a question. Which software will be easy for small 2d animations, blender or After effects? Though I've not used blender. But after watching your video, this seems very interesting, specially bone rigging. So please guide me.
Hi there. I'm glad that you liked it, and thank you for the question. Overall, you will be able to achieve what you want in whatever tool you choose, experience is more important than the features in the tool you use. With that said, each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. After effects is a lot easier to learn in the beginning and will give highly polished results without too much effort, however it is limited in features and is suited to small projects. Blender, on the other hand, takes longer to pick up, but is more powerful in the long term, and so is suited to larger projects. I'm also a big fan of the open-source business model, so that's another big reason that I choose to use Blender. I hope that you find this helpful, and decide on the best tool for you. Thanks again. :D
I use "Dragonbones" for 2D it is free open source also. Then I use Blender 3D for my 3D work.
Hey thanks for pointing out Dragonbones. I downloaded to check it out. I feel it would be excellent for game development.
Good bro you have super Tallent in animation
Thank you so much. I might not be able to publish a "Jazza" monkey as it's not my character, but I'll be making another GP character soon. :) Thanks for your encouragement.
CHEERS!! : )
Thanks for your comment!
I cant figure out for some reason when i press ctrl r to get the grid thing to pop up nothing happens and when I make my bones it makes all new armature layers?
Hi Aqrmoney
So I think that when you are trying to add loop cuts, (grid thing) you must be in object mode. If you press tab, you will be in edit mode where you can move individual vertices, etc including adding loop cuts.
As for the armature, once again, adding a bone in object mode will create a new armature, however, if you select the armature and press tab to go into edit mode, pressing shift + A will create a new bone within the same armature.
Hope this helps,
Joel
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks man you did a good job with the animation and the video
Que tan factible es hacerlo pero en el ambiente 3D de blender... desde la ventana de Dafault?
Si, absolutamente. Cuando hace clic en el espacio de trabajo de animación 2D en un nuevo archivo, es lo mismo que el entorno 3D predeterminado con algunos cambios de configuración útiles (ninguno es necesario para lograr estos resultados).
Yes, absolutely. When you click on the 2D animation workspace in a new file, it is the same as the default 3D environment with a few helpful setting changes (none are necessary to achieve these results).
Great
Thanks! :)
Hello, I am currently using Blender version 4.0. Your tutorials are great, but I don't think they are for beginners as there is no intuitive explanation of what hotkeys to use (like a tutorial with a programme that shows you what button you pressed on the screen when you press a hotkey). Since the 4.0 update, the tabs related to Bone Layers have been changed to Bone Collections, so the Control bones chapter is hard to follow, especially the part where when you copy a bone, the image is also affected by the copy's Control bones. I think I need to get this straight to use your Smart bone addon.
Question: since you've used both Moho and Blender for 2D character rigging, is Moho sufficiently easier and/or better than Blender to merit Moho's price tag? I'm trying to decide between the two.
Can this type of cartoon speaks also?
Yes, by using a UV offset modifier you can use a sprite sheet of all your mouth shapes. Thanks for your comment!
Hi, can you suggest where to learn 2d animation things especially for blender from zero until advance ? I'm learning blender 2d animation right now from youtube tutorial, but do you have any suggestion for make the learning faster ? Thank you
I don't have any idea what you do with the blender but i enjoy your video 🤣
Hi there, Im so glad that you liked it. When learning 2D animation in blender, I would recommend that you try and find a balance between watching and following tutorials, and experimenting on your own. For 2D animation in blender I would recommend LevelPixelLevel : th-cam.com/channels/pxizXEIm73-GJJwayhGceA.html , but feel free to try and find other creators as well. I also think that a basic understanding of 3D in blender will be very usefull, if you don't already. If that the case, I would get used to blender with a tutorial series like this one : th-cam.com/video/TPrnSACiTJ4/w-d-xo.html
appart from that learning to rig is really important, I've tried to show some of good techniques for this on this channel, however I learnt it from 3D rigging from people like Pierrick Picaut : th-cam.com/users/PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN
or CG Cookie : th-cam.com/video/h7p5TIFFC0E/w-d-xo.html
or Dikko : th-cam.com/channels/dEz1N-xB-mYNpeU5ZKbGLw.html
These are all great resources, and though I still have a long way to go, these tutorials got me to the point that i'm at now.
I hope that you find this helpful, thanks for commenting :)
@@SketchySquirrel wow, thank you so much for your information. I’ll learn from your suggestion first. Really thank you for it 🙏
4:48 what?
Why isnt my Add Menu appearing? I'm using 2.90.2. My keyboard is working fine. The Add Menu works on on 3D, not in 2D animation format.
i have a question: if after i make an armature i have to change the clothes of the characther or the color of a particular what do i do?
Hey there, that' super simple. Blender is referencing the image files that you exported from your painting software. So, you can go back to your painting software, make the changes that you want, and if you replace the image files, then in Blender you can press file>revert and then the images will automatically update. I hope this is helpful, let me know if you run into any problems :)
Thanks for the tutorials sketchy. Do you prefer rigging these 2d characters using planes or as grease pencil strokes? Trying to find a good workflow for rigging grease pencil characters and haven't decided on one yet.
Sorry for the late reply. :)
Honestly I don't have much of a preference. It all depends on the project. In my current project, I'm using grease pencil, but if I needed a more painterly style, then I would probably choose to use images. If I were you I wouldn't just choose a workflow and stick with it, I would try and learn both and know that you can do either depending on which one is more appropriate. :) Thanks for the comment
Hi shift A isn’t working I’ve checked and fiddled and I have import image as planes on
Hi there, I'm sorry to hear that. Does anything happen when you press Shift + A? If not, then you might be using another keyboard layout on your computer, if so try pressing 'Windows/super + Spacebar' to toggle between any keyboards that you've applied. If that doesn't work, you might have to change the keyboard shortcuts in your preferences. To check you can go into your preferences, and under the keymap tab, search for the 'add' command, and scroll down until you see the add function under 'object mode' Make sure that it's set to use A set to 'press' with the Shift modifier. Finally, if all else fails, in the top right of the 3D viewport, there is a short row of buttons. Of these press the 'add' button, and the same drop-down menu will appear as it should when pressing Shift + A. I hope that this is helpful, and if none of this works, can you record your screen, as you try to add an image, and send it to me at my business email on the about page of my channel, th-cam.com/users/sketchysquirrelabout
Thanks for replying
Really good lesson but rigging was too fast for me
Thank you for the feedback. I'll try to make things at a more manageable pace in the future. :)
Hello goodies!!! I have been following your tutorials and I have learned a lot, I already have a fully controllable character and I am making sceneries to animate... my question is how can I join these two things... can I export the character with all the bones or should I make the background in the same file? I don't know whether to make the background in the same file as the tiger or separate and then import them together or something... very grateful for all your content and hopefully you can answer me.
Hi there, what I did for this project was to make the background in the same file as the character, however, if you want a more scalable solution, for a larger project, then you have two options. Appending or Linking. So in a new file, you can press File > Append, and choose the character file, and find the collection that contains your character. This is the easiest way to import your character and rig into another file, but if you want to change anything about the rig, you will need to make that change on both the original character file and the new one. So if instead you choose File > Link and find the same collection you will "Link" the rig, which means that any changes you make in the original file will carry over to the new one.
In the new file, you will need to select the rig, and press F3, and search for "Make Library Override" Otherwise you won't be able to pose the character or animate it.
I hope this is helpful, let me know if you have any more questions. :D
@@SketchySquirrel Thank you very much, I will try to do it, although for now I have not understood very well how it works to add or link some animated character to a different file (usually it only lets me select a collection, animation or individual things) but I will keep trying... by the way, I have another doubt, how can I do to generate a change of hands? i have tried with the mouth system but the problem is that when generating keyframes to animate, you see the change between -for example- hand 1 to hand 10, but you see all the other hands in the middle... i think in one of your videos you mentioned a property of a bone to select the hand from outside or something like that, i hope i am not bothering you and thanks again for the help, regards
This can do in blender 2.79? Because my computer don't run 2.80
This method should work fine in blender 2.79, but there has been a huge jump in 2D tools recently, so you may have to be creative with the tools you have available. :)
@@SketchySquirrel Thank you!
i am having trouble find the opacity i can't even find that square witht the triangle on it
Hi there, I think you're referring to 5:07 (if not let me know). If that's the case then I would imagine that you don't have the image selected. The various settings and tabs along the right of the screen change depending on what object you have selected. (e.g. if you select a light, you will see lighting settings, like colour or power. A camera has it's own settings like focal length etc) So just click on the image and the tab with the square and triangle, should appear. If not then I think you would have added the image as a plane using the addon, import images as planes. At that point in the video, I used a built in type of image, a reference image. This has different settings, as it's a different type of object. I hope you find this helpful :D
MORE!!!!! 😘😘😘
I'm glad you like it, I'm planning on doing one more focused on Grease Pencil next time. Thanks for your comment
Blender 2d cat out animation
Ha! Very punny :)
Good idia
Thanks
Nice work! I have to ask what's that feature called where the keys show on your action path around the 23:24 mark? Is that a built-in thing or an addon?
Hi. Yes this is in Blender by default. First select the bone, then under the armature tab, under "motion paths" you can calculate the path of any bone. This is really helpful to make sure the motion is smooth.
Thanks, hope this helped.
@@SketchySquirrel thanks for the reply! It feels almost like that feature merits its own quick tip video tut!
What about new sprite limbs? Like if the head looks towards the camera, then away, youd need different sprites rigged to same bone. But in animation, how do you swap sprites?
Unless you have all angles on a sprite sheet and move through that??
Hi Jinxie, As you said, creating a sprite sheet should work, in conjunction with a UV offset modifier. Otherwise you could import each frame as a separate object, and create a control that toggles their visibility. Another option is to create a procedural head turn rig, I made a tutorial series on this subject, th-cam.com/play/PLvrk7pBVZDRl7yQExCoODrZbuFqajNfix.html
@@SketchySquirrel Hello and thanks for the fast response! I already know the first methods, but was actually looking for a method of creating 3D looking rotations without 3D, like the link you sent. So this response was VERY handy! Thank you!
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks a lot for the Head Turn Tutorials playlist. will come in handy (: