Thats what I love about blender, you dont NEED the NLA to make animation, the animation workflow sort of goes in "layers".. You can do a simple animation in the timeline, or go deeper and play with the dope sheet editor, or go deeper with the graph editor, or go even deeper and play with NLA, etc. It all works beautifully together
I think the fact that you implement these into finished projects really makes these tutorials some of the most valuable on youtube, each one is just so eye operning.
one of the most underrated and misunderstood tools in Blender, if the foundation could polish it up and incorporate it into a character animation workflow then we could really get blender further out the door
Thank you so much for this video! One thing I noticed: at 10:50 it would have been super helpful to show that pressing N will show the side panel. Took me way to long to figure this one out.
Hi, this video is really helpful, let me understand what is Action, and what is NLA, Action is a animation clip, a shortly clip could be reuse it again, even across different object, it means use object A create a Action A, then Action A can be apply to object B, the object B animate itself follow the Action A. NLA editor like a video tracker editor, you can place and combine Action togather to create complex animation.
Thanks! That was really helpful. Would love to see more tutorials with those pieces in blender that help bridge the gap from enthusiast to professional. Long time (+10yr) enthusiast here with aspirations of professionalism :)
This morning I knew almost nothing about the NLA aand I was faced with a daunting task of animating 2 characters dancing to music. I was afraid I was looking at failure dead on. After watching this video (I love all your videos btw) suddenly the animation because much simpler! Poses make Actions which are used and reused in the NLA. Combine that with a little creative camera work and viola! 8 hours later I have the animations done and the rendering is just getting started! Thank you CBailyFilm! You're a life saver.
dood , I can't believe how the beginner tutorials do not point out that an action IS where the animation is stored. U'd think that would be in a first steps tutorial... yet it is not talked about at all !! This had me sooo confused as I wasn't aware that my animations were being attached to random objects. Once I learned this fundamental information I went back in the project and fixed everything up. It went from >> being confusing and weird with unexplainable odd occurrences to >> everything making sense + orderly + revealing new possibilities. I think it's more confusing to learn animation without learning the NLA.
Really useful video. I'm just a blender enthusiast that's been concentrating more on arcvis and modelling. Just started animation and was having trouble with walk cycles and reuse. This pointed me in the right direction. Thank you.
I learned so much and I'm not even halfway through thanks for the vid! Such a good timing as I already started working on a droid (not like your) Great vid
This video sums up everything about Blender animation features. It seems like the animation features need a better UX; Blender just needs to benchmark some of the video editing software like premier and visually integrate those blend in and out functions into the NLA strips
thank you very much, ı couldn't understand while listening to lectures in my language but thıs tutorial is perfect even for someone who dosent understand much English , thank you 🙏
Wooh, So you're saying that my character could have separate upper body and lower body animation and can do whatever he wants with his upper body while walking or running 🤯🤯, for me this is the best tutorial i've even seen man, keep up the good work, and btw Liked and Subscribed 😁
I have been messing around with NLA and action strips with mixamo, some stuff behaves strangely, but one thing I noticed from your vid is stretching the length of the action can be done without using the side panel. If you tab to edit the action, then go to the dope sheet and and work with the keyframes there, you can add keyframes beyond the length of the original action strip. Then when you hit tab to close the action it will change the length to match the last key frame you added. I bet this also will shorten it if you take keyframes out and make it shorter. One thing I dont get is assigning an action to a new object. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I have some mixamo dances saved as actions and sometimes I can use them with a new rig sometimes I cant. Another thing is if I do the add function on an action strip the character will blown up like a balloon sometimes. But I have committed the scale prior to rigging the character. So I dont know why it would be adding up scale info. But it also doesn’t look like scale as the character is distorted and not just bigger.
I discovered how to do all this in the Timeline bypassing the NLA editor entirely. Crazy stuff but it can be done regarding blending animations aka their keyframes. So I no-longer need to waste time creating actions. Dope tutorial though I will surely be using these techniques as well to layer my animations whenever I seek to create far more advanced transitions. What's tough is animating the camera as well after you apply them actions to get a more refined and finalized animated short film project. I done some camera marker animation edits in the past, but gotta get back into experimenting with it all.
It took me 7 years to find out this feature exists. I'd been animating things the hard way, until a few months ago when I discovered the action editor, along with all these systems.
Excellent deeper dive into blender. Thanks 🙏. Your content is most definitely a cut above. The sci-fi orientation is a perfect fit for my own direction. Haven’t yet gotten to epic space battles but I’m getting there...it’s an incentive! (Noobie to blender but veteran to pencil & paper.) Awesome stuff & love your channel. ✌️☕️🎩🎩🎩
One thing I always miss in the NLA editor is the option to combine animations together that use the same bones. I know there is the add and combine blending functions but it seems none of them works as I want it. For example, let's say you have a breathing animation for a character that uses the spine bones. But now you also want to have that character move to the side with his upper body while breathing. This might work with combine or add on a normal standing character, but if the pose is a pose in which the default rotation values of the spines aren't around 0 (for example an old man that walks on a stick while bending forward), you will get the wrong result no matter which blending mode you use. Combine will use the average value which weakens the whole animation while add will add both values which result in the bending forward pose being way too exaggerated. The only way I found to get the result I want is to copy the spine bones, parent them between the spine bones and use those copied bones for the breathing while the original bones will handle the turnaround movement. But I'm almost sure that such a situation can be handled with the NLA editor somehow. I'm just not sure how.
😀Great video by the way Chris... it seems when I push down that rotate action like you did in the video at 7: 57 ...that it adds it to the same NLA track as the first one we pushed down ...why is that... I just created a new track above selected and move my rotate action up to that one to match yours... but I just wondered why that is I couldn't find any information on Google... I'm in blender 3.1
This is probably one of the most comprehensive explanations of NLA I've found so far! However, I'm hitting a brick wall in trying to animate 3 separate objects and baking out one linear animation to export to fbx. I've tried with and without armatures but to no avail...
some part are confusing for someone really new to blender specially NLA, but some part are well explained which I didn't understand in other tutorials.
this feels so much more convoluted than I clone 7 especially the blend and transition between NLA strips, I clone 7 u just have a slider transition between the the clips. and there dope sheet u have a transform key frame spot instead of always right clicking through a menu everything is readily prepare for you. this is gonna take a looong while to get use to especially because blender for me is soooo slow in animations getting 4-7 FPS. makes it really hard to tell how fast a character is moving.
Thank you for the tutorial, very useful. What I cannot find anywhere is how I then get these actions onto the timeline so I can place them relative to the overall animation of my scene. Any help much appreciated!
what if the action editor does not show every key frame point that can be moved for a given control bone ... what would cause it to not work or to not let me move key frames for a given movement after initial keying
Fantastic tutorial. By far the most comprehensive NLA tutorial on youtube.
Thats what I love about blender, you dont NEED the NLA to make animation, the animation workflow sort of goes in "layers".. You can do a simple animation in the timeline, or go deeper and play with the dope sheet editor, or go deeper with the graph editor, or go even deeper and play with NLA, etc. It all works beautifully together
I was getting so frustrated how hard it is to manipulate a character on a single layer, but this makes it so much easier, thank you for this tutorial!
The most instructive tutorial about animation I have ever encounter
I listened to the first 1 minute of this video then I instantly subscribed subconsciously.
You're an amazing teacher. I FINALLY understood NLA. Thank you so much for sharing this!!
I think the fact that you implement these into finished projects really makes these tutorials some of the most valuable on youtube, each one is just so eye operning.
one of the most underrated and misunderstood tools in Blender, if the foundation could polish it up and incorporate it into a character animation workflow then we could really get blender further out the door
For me, this cleared out a lot of confusion regarding how to play and blend multiple actions in a time sequence. Keep up with the excellent content :)
Thanks, will do!
Thank you so much for this video! One thing I noticed: at 10:50 it would have been super helpful to show that pressing N will show the side panel. Took me way to long to figure this one out.
You are a killer Blender contributor and teacher amigo! Love your stuffs!
From the start to minut 8 i learned sooo much life change stuff , thanks here we Go to the Full vídeo ! 🖤🖤🖤
Hi, this video is really helpful, let me understand what is Action, and what is NLA, Action is a animation clip, a shortly clip could be reuse it again, even across different object, it means use object A create a Action A, then Action A can be apply to object B, the object B animate itself follow the Action A. NLA editor like a video tracker editor, you can place and combine Action togather to create complex animation.
Excellent presentation of NLA stack and application.
Hi Chris - great video. This helped clear up some of confusion I've had with the NLA editor. Now I just need to dive in and get comfortable with it😮
Like your Videos Mann
@@matin4595 like when doesn't?
Really amazing!!! I was extremely lost on how this work that I would just animate with the timeline only but that will change now, thankyou!!
You're very welcome!
Thanks! That was really helpful. Would love to see more tutorials with those pieces in blender that help bridge the gap from enthusiast to professional. Long time (+10yr) enthusiast here with aspirations of professionalism :)
This morning I knew almost nothing about the NLA aand I was faced with a daunting task of animating 2 characters dancing to music. I was afraid I was looking at failure dead on. After watching this video (I love all your videos btw) suddenly the animation because much simpler! Poses make Actions which are used and reused in the NLA. Combine that with a little creative camera work and viola! 8 hours later I have the animations done and the rendering is just getting started! Thank you CBailyFilm! You're a life saver.
This video was SOOOOO HELPFUL!!! I had to watch it a few times but each time I learned a lot. Thank you so much!
Most things in blender were new to me but NLA etc really surprised me lol thanks!
Glad I could help!
The best way to explain these things ! really appreciate it! 🙏
Great, my animation skills will get way better thanks to this video
This seems to me to be the greatest authority on nla Blender, he knows a lot.
So informative, intuitive, and concise! Thank you so much
dood , I can't believe how the beginner tutorials do not point out that an action IS where the animation is stored. U'd think that would be in a first steps tutorial... yet it is not talked about at all !!
This had me sooo confused as I wasn't aware that my animations were being attached to random objects.
Once I learned this fundamental information I went back in the project and fixed everything up. It went from >> being confusing and weird with unexplainable odd occurrences to >> everything making sense + orderly + revealing new possibilities.
I think it's more confusing to learn animation without learning the NLA.
This is one if not the BEST blender tutorial i have ever seen! You helped me so much!
Really useful video. I'm just a blender enthusiast that's been concentrating more on arcvis and modelling. Just started animation and was having trouble with walk cycles and reuse. This pointed me in the right direction. Thank you.
I learned so much and I'm not even halfway through thanks for the vid! Such a good timing as I already started working on a droid (not like your)
Great vid
This video sums up everything about Blender animation features. It seems like the animation features need a better UX; Blender just needs to benchmark some of the video editing software like premier and visually integrate those blend in and out functions into the NLA strips
Couldn’t be any more clear! Thanks brother
thank u , u literely changed my all animation procces , bless u
Finally a good explanation of the once confusing editor :) Thanks a lot for an amazing tutorial!
One of the best tutorials i've seen (on any subject) really well explained :)
thank you very much, ı couldn't understand while listening to lectures in my language but thıs tutorial is perfect even for someone who dosent understand much English , thank you 🙏
Great series of tutorials, thank you!
awesome as usual indeed
Thank you! Cheers!
This tutorial just saved me a lot of time. 😅👌
woot!
Feel like the is an under represented blender topic.
Thank!
Wooh, So you're saying that my character could have separate upper body and lower body animation and can do whatever he wants with his upper body while walking or running 🤯🤯, for me this is the best tutorial i've even seen man, keep up the good work, and btw Liked and Subscribed 😁
this cleared up so much for me thank you
Man, I spent so much time looking for a good tutorial, I think I finally found it!
I have been messing around with NLA and action strips with mixamo, some stuff behaves strangely, but one thing I noticed from your vid is stretching the length of the action can be done without using the side panel. If you tab to edit the action, then go to the dope sheet and and work with the keyframes there, you can add keyframes beyond the length of the original action strip. Then when you hit tab to close the action it will change the length to match the last key frame you added. I bet this also will shorten it if you take keyframes out and make it shorter.
One thing I dont get is assigning an action to a new object. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I have some mixamo dances saved as actions and sometimes I can use them with a new rig sometimes I cant.
Another thing is if I do the add function on an action strip the character will blown up like a balloon sometimes. But I have committed the scale prior to rigging the character. So I dont know why it would be adding up scale info. But it also doesn’t look like scale as the character is distorted and not just bigger.
Thank you so much... You just saved me from Copying and Pasting THOUSANDS of Keyframes.
Fantastic tutorial! Thanks so much for taking the time to share the NLA anim workflow. So many possibilities!
Thanks for making this, it's quite an unexplored feature for me. And I was looking for something exactly like this for animations
Awesome!
I discovered how to do all this in the Timeline bypassing the NLA editor entirely. Crazy stuff but it can be done regarding blending animations aka their keyframes. So I no-longer need to waste time creating actions. Dope tutorial though I will surely be using these techniques as well to layer my animations whenever I seek to create far more advanced transitions. What's tough is animating the camera as well after you apply them actions to get a more refined and finalized animated short film project. I done some camera marker animation edits in the past, but gotta get back into experimenting with it all.
Great tutorial! Clears things up
Packed full of info, sir. Thanks very much! I can see myself coming back to this many times as I venture into the NLA
What a great tutorial. everything is so clear now! thanks.
Thank you, I'm just starting to learn animation in Blender and this was exactly what I needed to understand the NLA editor and workflow!
Crisp and clear. Excellent tut, as always! Thanks!
I did find this super helpful & applying it on my current project. Thanks for this video it is excellent! Much love!
really. the most demonstrative. though not being a youtuber i suppose him as one of the best
Extremely helpful good sir.
Ive been Blendering around for 4 years now and the NLA editor is an area Ive been scared to enter, lets see if you cure my fear of it with this video.
It took me 7 years to find out this feature exists. I'd been animating things the hard way, until a few months ago when I discovered the action editor, along with all these systems.
This has been really helpful, subscribed!
Excellent deeper dive into blender. Thanks 🙏. Your content is most definitely a cut above. The sci-fi orientation is a perfect fit for my own direction. Haven’t yet gotten to epic space battles but I’m getting there...it’s an incentive! (Noobie to blender but veteran to pencil & paper.) Awesome stuff & love your channel. ✌️☕️🎩🎩🎩
Amazing tutorial! Thank you :)
Great tutorial and very helpful 👍
ah helped to demystify actions and nla, thanks !
Very helpful feature and a very good explanation and demonstration. thank you.
Thank you for your tutorials.
You've been so helpful
VERY INFORMATIVE for NLA editor... RECOMMEND.
Bro it is awesome tutorial, thank you soo much.
One thing I always miss in the NLA editor is the option to combine animations together that use the same bones. I know there is the add and combine blending functions but it seems none of them works as I want it.
For example, let's say you have a breathing animation for a character that uses the spine bones. But now you also want to have that character move to the side with his upper body while breathing. This might work with combine or add on a normal standing character, but if the pose is a pose in which the default rotation values of the spines aren't around 0 (for example an old man that walks on a stick while bending forward), you will get the wrong result no matter which blending mode you use.
Combine will use the average value which weakens the whole animation while add will add both values which result in the bending forward pose being way too exaggerated.
The only way I found to get the result I want is to copy the spine bones, parent them between the spine bones and use those copied bones for the breathing while the original bones will handle the turnaround movement. But I'm almost sure that such a situation can be handled with the NLA editor somehow. I'm just not sure how.
Great tutorial, many thanks
Thank you Chris. Very nice!
This video was amazing. I learned a lot and it was very clear and concise!
VERY helpful! thank you!
13:14 Pose > Clear transform all. Resets rig to default pose.
That’s gold
Such a useful video, thanks mate.
Wow this was brilliant!! 🙏🏽
This video was very helpful, thanks for making it!
😀Great video by the way Chris... it seems when I push down that rotate action like you did in the video at 7: 57 ...that it adds it to the same NLA track as the first one we pushed down ...why is that... I just created a new track above selected and move my rotate action up to that one to match yours... but I just wondered why that is I couldn't find any information on Google... I'm in blender 3.1
Love you man!
This is probably one of the most comprehensive explanations of NLA I've found so far! However, I'm hitting a brick wall in trying to animate 3 separate objects and baking out one linear animation to export to fbx. I've tried with and without armatures but to no avail...
some part are confusing for someone really new to blender specially NLA, but some part are well explained which I didn't understand in other tutorials.
Super helpful!!
Great video. Very helpful. Thanks!
A crucial tutorial. Thank you.
Thanks for this awesome tutorial! Keep it up!
Cool stuff, thank you for sharing!
1:16 Master Chief is in da video 😎
Thank you man
Thank you. so much. You solved my problem
This is awesome
Very interesting! I had no idea this existed and WOW does it look like a powerful tool!
i wish my brain understood this
Thank you a lot!
Thank you for this tutorial, very usefull info! :)
You're very welcome!
thank you for the tutorial
pretty advanced topic, but really good explanation. thanks!
this feels so much more convoluted than I clone 7 especially the blend and transition between NLA strips, I clone 7 u just have a slider transition between the the clips. and there dope sheet u have a transform key frame spot instead of always right clicking through a menu everything is readily prepare for you. this is gonna take a looong while to get use to especially because blender for me is soooo slow in animations getting 4-7 FPS. makes it really hard to tell how fast a character is moving.
thanks gr8 tutorial
16:47 Bookmark.
Extrapolation: Holds the end of an action strip indefinitely.
thank you
Thank you for the tutorial, very useful. What I cannot find anywhere is how I then get these actions onto the timeline so I can place them relative to the overall animation of my scene. Any help much appreciated!
17:30 That explains a lot!
what if the action editor does not show every key frame point that can be moved for a given control bone ... what would cause it to not work or to not let me move key frames for a given movement after initial keying