Animating with Blender

1: An Overview of the Short Animation Process 1.1: Overview1.2: Importance of following the workflow1.3: Common pitfalls and how to avoid them2: Story 2.1: Story scope, your resources and reality2.2: What story to tell? Objective vs. Subjective story lines2.3: Incorporating Theme2.4: Putting together a short screenplay, and how it can helpOrganization4: Storyboarding and the Story Reel4.1: The benefits of storyboarding4.2: Suggested tools4.3: Recording a temporary soundtrack for timing4.4: Assembling a Story Reel in Blender's Sequence Editor5: Character Design and Creation5.1: Finalizing design in line with your theme5.2: Modeling based on storyboard requirements and theme5.3: Creating level of detail proxies, and mesh animation issues5.3: Believability and render times with materials6: Libraries 6.1: What are libraries and why should you bother?6.2: Creating groups and libraries6.3: Linking libraries from your production files6.4: Animating library assets7: Rough Sets, Blocking and an Animatic 7.1: Creating rough sets7.2: Setting cameras to match storyboards7.3: Adding static characters and doing general blocking7.5: Adjusting timing of the Story Reel with real blocked shots and the dialogue track8: Recording Good Sound 9: Rigging and Animation Testing (7000 words)9.1: An iterative method for rigging, skinning and testing9.2: Maintaining the scope of the project (i.e. not doing a full rig for a character that needs 3 seconds of animation)9.3: Creating shape keys for facial animation and deformation tweaking10: Character Animation: Blocking and Finishing 10.1: Creation of per-shot working files, with links to character and set libraries10.2: The Pose-to-pose method is shown10.3: Using Blender's various animation tools to enhance timing and show weight, anticipation and follow through.10.4 Enhancing your ability to get real-time previews for better feedback11: Lip Sync11.1: Adding portions of the dialogue track to the per-shot files11.2: Audio issues and scrubbing11.3: A general workflow for lip syncing entirely within Blender12: Special Effects: Physics, Fluids and Particles 12.1: When to make it and when to fake it12.2: Common rigid body effects and how to record them12.3: Common soft body effects12.4: The fluid simulator12.5: Particles12.6: Integrating effects with keyframed animation13: Final Sets and Backgrounds13.1: Minimizing the use of live (fully 3D) sets13.2: Assembling the final sets to match the roughs13.3: Breaking the sets into different libraries based on storyboard requirements13.4: Taking and tweaking background shots for static backgrounds13.5: In each per-shot animation file, the final sets and backgrounds are linked in14: Rendering and Post-Processing 14.1: Using the renderer and in-line compositor to put everything together14.2: Help with optimizing render times14.3: Adding common post effects like color enhancement, motion blur, depth of field and bloom/glow.14.4: Setting up and using a render farm 15: Editing and Final Output 15.1: Compiling the rendered scene into the full short in the Sequence Editor15.2: Using the SE to experiment with timing and cuts15.3: Mixing the sound15.3: The different finished animation formats