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@leumeister Cool!
That’s funny that you mention those Autodesk programs, I use Maya 2016 and have attempted to use 3D Studio Max 2016. I’m taking a homeschool course from a site called School of Game Design that teaches you pretty much everything you’d need to know to make 2D and/or 3D games, and Maya and 3DS Max were two of the programs that they recommended and showed you how to use for 3D modeling and animation, and so I was able to get both under a free three year education license. Now, Maya doesn’t exactly work that great for me, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s the software or the computer. I have tried Maya on two different computers, and it does work a bit better on one than it does on the other, but it does have it’s oddities on both. So, I wouldn’t necessarily not recommend those programs (especially since one computer I tried it on, I later found out that it doesn’t meet the minimum system requirements), but they just don’t seem to work that good for me.
Can Blender export to Unity?
I think that I am a bit better at the animation side of things, but here are some things that I’ve made:
Faith ‘Spy’ Star (the star of a game that I’m still working on):
This one took a really long time to make and rig, and I’m still working on animating her.
Here’s an ad for a e-zine that I helped my mama put together:
Here’s a tiki hut that I learned how to make and animate through some of the tutorials on the School of Game Design:
And… I don’t know if/how I could upload the animation that I made with it. 🙁
And here’s a robotic spider that I also learned how to make, rig, and animate through the tutorials on the School of Game Design (this one took quite awhile to make, too):
Those are just a few things that I’ve made. 🙂
No problem. It was my pleasure. I love to answer questions pertaining to 3D and animation. 🙂 I do strongly encourage you to give it a try, at least, and to stick with it until you learn the basics. Then if it isn’t your thing, you can at least say you tried. 😛
Hopefully, he’ll understand soon enough. 🙂 I love writing, and maybe he’ll learn to as well. But at 11 years old, he may still be too young to appreciate it.
Yes. Blender. 😛 To clarify, you can make the animation in Blender with your own characters, render it out, and then stitch the image sequences in the Video Sequence Editor built into it. (Yes, Blender has a video editor! :S) He can use that for the sound mixing too.
Another program similar to what you described is the Source Filmmaker. It basically is Valve’s Source Engine made into an animation program. You can load in characters and maps from Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 1 & 2, and many other Source games into it. But, as you said, it doesn’t allow you (at least not easily!!) to bring in and use your own characters. :/
Oh, cool! Other than the glitchiness, how are you finding Maya and Max… Maya and Max…? Huhmm…? 😛
Cool that you got them for free, but the education license doesn’t allow you to use any of your work for commercial purposes. 🙁 Blender, though, since it’s free and open source already, does! 😀
Yeah, always check the system requirements for programs before downloading them. I, admittedly, never bothered to, though…. 😛
Yes, Blender can indeed export to Unity. You can actually import a Blender scene file (.blend) as an asset file, and Unity will automatically convert every relevant object in the Blender scene file into Unity as an .fbx file. That includes animations, mesh objects, materials, I think textures as well, and maybe shapekeys. It can also export to Unreal Engine, too, but Unreal doesn’t automatically convert Blender scene files. You have to do it manually, by exporting to .fbx.
Hey, wow, that’s pretty good! 😀 Clever modeling on the book and Tiki hut too. And that spider! :O Did you set up inverse kinematics on the Faith “Spy” Star rig?
I don’t think you can, at least not to KP, but you can link to a download link of the animations.
By the way, do you know what rendering engine your using?
Yup. Let’s hope. 😉
Wait, REALLY?! Well…yay! I came across Blender several times in my searches, but I passed it by because (1. As far as I could tell it was only for animation, not videos as well, and (2. It said it had a very steep learning curve, and Douglas (my brother) is incredibly liable to give up on steep learning curves. I didn’t know if he’d be able to do it. He’s not exactly good at patience or perseverance. Yet at any rate. 😛
Buuut…if it has a video editor? We may have to look into it again. What you said about putting animation in the Video Editor makes almost zero sense to me because I hardly know any animation lingo. But I daresay we’ll figure it out. Eventually. Hopefully.
What I want to know is, WHY is Blender 100% free if it’s so good? I’m always scared of hidden catches with things like this.
OK…Blender sounds better than that one though, than Source Filmmaker. Basically right?
Are you familiar with any of these? These are on the list of programs to check out; they all look to have some aspect of what he wants, but not all for sure, and if you have experience with any of ’em you could just tell me if they’re good. 😉
The first one’s Lightworks, for Windows; I think it’s sort of well known.
https://www.lwks.com/index.php ?option=com_lwks&view=download &Itemid=206
http://www.videosoftdev.com/free-video-editor
I’m pretty sure the second link is just for animation, and the third one just a video editor, but I don’t know. And if you don’t have prior knowledge of these, it’ll be totally fine; he’ll just have more options to try out.
Thanks a lot for all the info. This is really helpful.
@leumeister
*bursts in with a puff of glitter*
I LOVE *ahem* I looooove 2d animation! Old cel animation like the Disney movies are one of my favoritest things ever. (My favorites are Sleeping Beauty and Jungle Book.)
I also really love some traditionally animated shows like The Last Airbender and Voltron: Legendary Defender.
I’ve never animated a sequence or anything, but I’m into drawing and character design and that type of stuff. 😀And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
Indeed.
Yes. 😛 Before you can have things to edit into videos, you have to animate them, if you’re doing animation. Yes, Blender has a fairly steep learning curve, but so does every other 3D animation and modeling program.
You can not only edit videos in the VSE, you can also layer sounds, make wipe and text effects (even export subtitles), and even put in lens flares if you have the right plugins. 😛 If you need help in figuring it out, I’m only an @mention away! 😀 … Or if you reply to this topic I’ll get it too. 😛
Blender is 100% free because it is open source. Blender used to be an in-house software for the Dutch animation studio Neo Geo, which was later aquired by NaN (Not a Number Technologies). In 2002, Ton Roosendaal, the main author of the program, organized the first crowdfunding campaign called Free Blender, and raised €100,000 to make the program open source. Now, many members of the Blender community are developing Blender. The Blender Foundation itself only has four paid members working on it, two part-time, two full-time. So there is no catch. No catch whatsoever. No hidden paywalls, no advertisements. 100% free. There are paid resources made for Blender, but Blender itself is free.
Yes, Blender is better than Source Filmmaker. Although, with the SFM, you can basically animate stuff immediately, but you have to download or create assets with Blender in order to animate them.
No, not really. I looked into them, and Lightworks and Video Soft Dev look like they could work well for video editing, but Jahshaka looks like it’s a VR Authoring Suite. In fact, its user interface reminds me a lot more of Unity or Source Filmmaker than an animation program. LOL, “The only way to build and publish virtual worlds.” 😛 Riiiight, Jahshaka. Riiiiight. 😛 I still recommend Blender though,
because I’m stiffnecked that way. 😛Cool! 😀 Yeah, The old Jungle Book was pretty good. But I really liked the new one, too. 🙂 I’ve watched some Voltron, and I quite appreciate the animation there. They blend 3D into 2D with the animation for the Lions and Voltron itself.
If you want to get into this stuff, I found OpenToonz. Like Blender, it’s free and open source. There’s are few others too, like Synfig Studio and Pencil. Of course, if you want to go by the paid route, there’s Adobe Flash. I just like recommending free and open source stuff, because they can be just as good, and contain what the artists or users want them to. 😛
@leumeister Thanks for the recommendations! I may have to check them out 😀
It’s on my list of things I’d like to get into. Sadly, right now, I don’t have the time to commit to a project like that. I really admire people who put the time and energy into animation, as it’s quite time consuming!
Do you have a favorite something to animate, like animals, robots, or people?
Oh, and do you happen to know whether Voltron uses cel or flash for the 2d stuff? I’ve always wondered.And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
Whoa, you really know your Blender history. OK…that’s…good. Very good.
“The only way to build and publish virtual worlds.” 😛 Riiiight, Jahshaka. Riiiiight.
I KNOW though. C’mon, guys. Seriously.
Thanks for looking into those; I’m still going to keep ’em in mind, but we’re definitely going to have to check out Blender. (Because you’re stiffnecked that way. XD Seriously though, it sounds like it’s the closest to what we’re looking for, and to know it’s a good program from a frequent user is excellent.)
And it’s quite reassuring to know you’re only a @mention away if we lose it. XD I’ll remember that.Really appreciate the help. It’s quite convenient to have experts’ brains to pick when needed. 😀
Well, I had looked it up before, and looked it up again just to get facts straight… It’s on Wikipedia if you want something a little more formal. 😛
XD
You’re welcome. I’m enthusiastic about anyone getting into CG, especially in the animation realm. Obviously, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine…I mean, it is quite a niche interest. Most people prefer consuming the results of animation and CG rather than create it themselves… I suppose, in a way, it’s like writing stories. It’s something that’s consumed more than it is created.
Once again, you’re welcome. It’s my pleasure. Please, tell me if and when you need help. 🙂
Eh, it’s all right, I trust you. 😛 Wikipedia is great though.
Yeah. I’m definitely more on the consuming end in this area. Like, all the way. XD When Douglas gets older though, we’ll see where he goes. He might not ultimately end up using a program such as Blender, ’cause he got this thing for his birthday that’s some kind of tablet you draw on, which when connected to the computer puts your hand-drawn art into a program where you can fiddle much with it on the computer; basically a way to do digital yet hand-drawn—not computer mouse-drawn—art. We’re still trying to figure it out, but it sounds really cool. So we’ll see. Even if he did do that, Blender might still be helpful.
Thanks. 🙂
Yeah it is. 😛
Okay then. 🙂 I think it’s good that he’s getting into 2D animation. I kinda fear that’s a dying art. I mean, Disney hasn’t released a 2D animated feature film since 2009!
Well then, hopefully he’ll go somewhere with it! 😀
@destiny those look cool. (Especially the spider)
@leumeister Yeah… I haven’t really done anything animation (besides aiding my brother in a stop motion a good time ago.).
I really liked the new jungle book, very real. But I like simpler animations sometimes too, it really depends on the movie.
…
I have done some games Scratch though. It’s fun to play with a bit. I haven’t made a story with it yet, just mini games (while trying to figure out all the coding stuff.).IMMA KAPEEFER! Til we're old and gray!
Hopefully! 😀
Oh cool. What kind of stop motion was it?
You’re right. It does depend on the movie. I’ve sometimes wondered why some animated movies don’t go for a more photorealistic style, given that we have the capabilities of that, but the answer is probably quite close how it depends on the movie… That, and budget restrictions.
I’ve heard of Scratch. I think it uses a similar programming system to LEGO Mindstorms. Yeah, I haven’t made story-driven games yet either. It’d be cool to do that, though. I’d like to do something similar to Minecraft: Story Mode, only with a little more in-depth gameplay.
@leumeister It was with Legos.
It also depends on the person.
I don’t know what Mindstorms is. I like choose your own adventure stories, they’re probably hard to make though. Lots of threads…
I like watching how they make movies, it’s intresting.
IMMA KAPEEFER! Til we're old and gray!
Oh cool! If it’s still around, I’d like to see it! 😀
That’s true. There are a lot of fans of anime, and though I like the style, I’m not into it.
Mindstorms is a robotics system that LEGO made, with computers built into LEGO bricks (and this pretty big by LEGO standards), which you can program in a linear fashion (I think) using action blocks. I actually had the chance to see an EV3 model today, the latest one as far as I know.
Oh yeah! I actually started making one a little while ago… It’s probably gonna be pretty big. The granularity of the choices is pretty small. I have a list of possible reactions to quite a few things that may or may not be imperative to drive the story… Except it builds a lot of the character. I’m using Inklewriter for that story I mentioned, and there’s a combined online/offline program called Twine 2 that’s pretty good too, allowing the user to go through threads or paths of the story using inline text instead of a bit of narrative, choice, a bit more narrative, choice, etc.
I do too, especially animated movies nowadays. A lot of the ones from the 90s and early 2000s used Silicon Graphics workstations running the program Softimage|3D. In fact, VeggieTales used both of those until they switched to Maya in Jonah: A VeggieTales movie. Alas, Softimage, a few years after upgrading into Softimage XSI, was purchased by Autodesk, and then they discontinued it in 2015.
By the way, have you seen the original Jurassic Park?
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