Blender Addons Animators Need In 2024

blender is becoming more of a 3D software for animators because it is getting better with every update especially in the last four years or so the thing is blender has proven itself with the open movie projects that the blender studi has created in addition to many animation projects like NextGen by Netflix and I lost my body movie in which blender played a big role however as a solo animator using blender you will probably need some additional tools or add-ons that can help you work faster smarter and get better results so in today's video we're going to take a look at these tools that can help you as an animator these days I wanted to let you guys know that the blender Market is having right now a huge winter sale with 25% discount on thousands of blender products from add-ons courses shaders you name it also if you don't know where to start I have in the description of this video a list of the best anal and courses that can take your project to the next level without further Ado let's Jump Right In so if you are a blender animator I highly recommend the stop tier solution for rigging characters in blender known as Auto R Pro it is focused on speed by offering smart features to simplify the process for you generally speaking using it makes regain a character very easy and you can do it in a short period of time as it works by simply placing a couple of green markers on top of your model and that's it this helps you achieve editable results that are easily f- tuned to your liking but keep in mind that this feature Works only for humanoid characters however Auto R Pro isn't limited to humanoid characters since it also provides manual tools for rigging non-humanoid characters such as animals also you can easily adjust and rig various parts of the model including fingers Wings toes spine bones multiple neck bones and more there is so much more that this addon offers like the ability to R dresses and skirts in addition to I spines and it also comes with a feature to add corrective shape Keys joint fans CH of constraints and so much more by the way we recently made a video about the story behind this add-on and how it became successful and the thought process of the developer in making this add-on and I highly recommend you take a look at it now if you want to improve your process of Animation there is animation layers which is an anal that introduces a simple yet very effective workflow when working with curves and key frames this one has been around for many years now and animators love it from what I can see it can be a valuable add-on for you as a blender animator because it streamlines the anla iterature into a a standard layer workflow which enhances control and efficiency by allowing for an easy layering merging baking and duplication of animations and if this sounds good you're right because it is generally speaking the Anon offers intuitive tools for managing layers and key frames including shape keys and cyclic actions as well as features like smart bake and key frame extraction in addition it offers options for Library overrides and editing multiple layers at the same time as of recent updates the addon introduced a new feature called share layer Keys which synchronizes key frames across layers by automatically generating empty key frames at matching frame positions still with animation add-ons I'm going to suggest the ultimate animator bundle which is a set of five anons that makes animating a whole lot easier you can get them separately but I think this is the most value for the money kind of deal these anal offer many tools for managing your curves in the graph iter like amplify for adjusting the intensity as well as a tool for offsetting your key frames automatically in addition you can Loop your curves and adjust the looping range randomize them PL on holds and so much more another nice feature is the fade tool which helps to fade in and out of animations using standard ease functions also so there are more features to manage your key frames in the interface for instance you can delete static channels that are not doing anything other than filling up your space in the graph editor you can also copy animation data from one object to many also edit multiple key frames at once from the interface and easily create and delete key frames for selected objects and material properties at the same time which is interesting another interesting thing is the next app on called face it which tackles one very specific aspect of rigging and that is rigging faces as its name indicates this addon is really popular with thousands of sales and many top reviews but the thing is in addition to facial rigain it can also do motion capture and animation offering plenty of tools that can be used non-destructively using a semi-automatic workflow when it comes to using the add-on it's really easy and it is as easy as placing and scaling your faet landmarks to fit your character's face after doing that you can take a seat and watch it as it automatically detects and generates facial expressions based on your character's face and the best part is you can load any facial expressions from AR kit audio to face tongue or fromus preset this means that you can easily import motion capture footage all inside blender or you can choose to create your own face it also comes with a control rig that is compatible witho cap Utilities in addition it has powerful retargeting tools to specify and select which shape keys to be animated now we're going to talk about a very unique add-on called voxel heat diffuse skinning which is a game changer for creating weight maps in blender the ano simplifies the process of generating perfect vertex weights for complex characters and unlike the built-in heat map algorithm vle heat diffuse skin can handle non seamless meshes effortlessly so it works by converting non- seamless characters into solid volumes which helps to produce natural and accurate weight Maps it also addresses issues with blender bone heat weighting offering corrective smooth baking to automate the process and I think what sets this Aron apart is that it uses advanced rracing technology providing better results than traditional veliz plus it offers a a range of adjustable parameters to fine-tune weight Maps giving you as a user full control over settings like Vox resolution and influence bones this in addition to many other stuff that you might find useful now did you see how VFX artists create realistic animals and stuff with realistically moving muscles underneath the skin like what you can see with tools such as Zea VFX from Zea Dynamics and tissue from digital while the Anon c x muscle system is the closest thing to that in blender it was specifically designed to optimize the creation of muscle systems and organic objects in the software so its primary goal is to enhance skin Surface deformations by preserving the volume of muscles fat and skeletal bones making all of these complex tasks a couple of clicks away which is very useful I must say so this Anon offers a couple cou of convenient features when working with muscles and tissues thanks to its flexor and extensor muscle types sculpting biceps and triceps can never be easier also the XM option ensures perfect symmetry in tissue shape properties and behavior saving you both time and effort additionally it comes with muscle pinning and bendy muscle features which allows for the creation of advanced and realistic muscle systems automatically and the good thing if you decide to purchase this add-on you will gain access to some Co Anatomy bundles for human male and female skeletons as well as a couple of animal skeletons which you can use to work on your project and do some fun stuff now if you want to make animation physics I recommend bone Dynamics Pro which is a blender add-on that simplifies the task of adding physics simulation for bones enabling realistic effects like cloth chains and jiggles it is also packed with lots of features for instance you can tweak multiple bones parameters and you can do that on the Fly giving you Advanced control and allowing for precise adjustments during the animation process also the addon offers Collision detection for realistic interactions and easy setup in addition to the ability to stretch bones and create bone chains which enables the creation of complex structures and dynamic deformations which can be interesting for a lot of different things and we can't forget that the Anon utilizes soft body physics under the hood which ensures realism without being too complex and from the same developer of bone Dynamics we have another add-on called simply cage which you can think of as a complimentary add-on from bone Dynamics Pro what this add-on does is it helps to generate Collision boxes and physics gauges for mesh bones or Vortex groups of your objects generally speaking the interface is user friendly with Tangles for input and output options as well as advanced settings including cloth presets and simulation management using simply cage is kind of straightforward because you just need to select the mesh and specify the input or output then create the collision and you are good to go now if you want to get help with one of the most important tricks of Animation which is ghosting you can take a look at ghost tool which helps you preview the animation of your objects and characters by displaying previous and next frames allowing you to freely adjust and tweak the motion of your animation using this addon is also easy all you have to do is navigate through your timeline and manually select where you want to add a visible copy of your geometry which will give you an onion skinny look you can also select what you see in the viewport for example you can select only view actions that happen relative to your active frame or future action actions and of course you can choose to view all of the actions whether it be the previous or the next one in addition you can select the color and adjust the transparency of your current previous and next frames which can be really really useful we also have a simple but useful add-on called grabit it is an add-on designed to simplify the process of attaching objects to other objects or characters and dropping them during or after the animation grabit can simplify animating objects interactions with its intuitive features so basically you can grab parent or dropped object at specific points in the timeline with automatic maker creation for tracking the Anon also offers bone detection for grabbing objects in pose mode along with options to clean markers and grab operations additionally the an Works smoothly with motion blur rendering and it just has a small file size in addition to other features so guys if you are interested in these add-ons you will find all the necessary links in the description I hope you found this video useful and informative if you did let's give it a thumbs up you can also check some of our previous videos thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: InspirationTuts

Views: 14,021

Keywords: Blender, Addons, Animation, Auto-Rig Pro, Faceit, Ultimate Animator Bundle, Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning, Animation Layers, X-Muscle System, Bone Dynamics Pro, Simply Cage, Ghostool, Grab-It, 3D animation, Rigging, Motion Capture, Character Animation, Toolset, Workflow Enhancement, Blender Addons 2024, Animation Tools, Character Rigging, Motion Capture Integration, Physics Simulation, Object Interaction, Animation Workflow Optimization, Blender Plugins, Animation Workflow Efficiency.

Id: XG5vs6rhBYo

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024