Blender Tutorial: Dissolve Animation

in this video I'll be demonstrating how to use blender to make this animation of text falling apart and dissolving I'll be using blender version 2.6 9 let's start by creating a new project so from the file menu select - new and then click on reload startup file the default scene has a cube that's been already added we're going to be using this cube later so let's go ahead and set the material for it so right click on it to make sure that it's selected then click on the material button now come up here and change this from blender render to cycles render then click the use nodes button I'm going to keep the default diffuse surface and I'm going to change the color to yellow then click here to rename this material I'm just going to name it yellow now grab the red arrow and move the cube out of the way next let's switch to orthographic mode you can do that by pressing 5 on the number pad now let's add some text so press shift a and select text I'll zoom in to see this better now rotate the text by 90 degrees on the x-axis by pressing R then X then 90 then enter now to change the text go into edit mode by pressing tab then backspace to delete and then enter your new text now press tab again to return to object mode now come over here and click on the object data button set the extrude value to point 0 5 this will give the text a thickness I'm also going to bevel the edges a little and I can do that by setting the bevel depth value I'm going to use point zero two then set the resolution to 2 to round out the beveled edges now let's set the text material so click on the material button now click on this little button on the left side of the new button and select yellow this is the same material that we use for the cube next we need to convert this text into a mesh to do that press alt C and select mesh from curve meta surf text since we're going to be creating an animation will be used in the timeline we can use the timeline to set and control which frames are being displayed the green line is the time cursor and it shows the current frame that we're on if you click on the timeline then the time cursor will go to the location that you click if you hold down the left mouse button then the time cursor will follow the mouse this value here displays the current frame number if you enter a value then the time cursor will move to that position if you click on the render button it will display some animation settings these values set the start and end frames these are the same values that you see down here our animation is going to be 135 frames long so set the end value to 135 we're using a frame rate of 24 frames per second and so our animation will be a little over 5 seconds long now we're going to add a particle system to the text so click on the particle button you may need to resize this panel to bring the particle button into view next press the plus button to add a particle system this value is used to set the number of particles we're going to be changing this to a larger value later but for now keep it set to 1000 as soon as I change this to a large value later on blender will start to respond more slowly because there will be a lot more geometry present so 1000 will be fine for now the start value is used to specify at which frame the particles will start to be emitted set this value to 20 set the end value to 30 with these settings the particles will start to appear at frame 20 and by frame 30 all of the particles will be present the lifetime value specifies how long the particles will be visible set this value to 100 frames now all the particles will be present by frame 30 and then 100 frames later at frame one-thirty they will all be gone next make sure that the faces button is selected so that the particles will be emitted from the surface of the mesh faces there should also be check marks next to random and even distribution click the random button here so that the particles will be emitted from random locations on the text to see what the particles look like so far come down here and press this button which will set the time cursor to frame 1 then press the play button then press the pause button to stop it I'll do this again now come down here to the render section click on the object button so that each particle will be rendered as an object now click in this entry box and select cube now each particle will be rendered as the yellow cube that we made at the start of this video but the particles are too big so set the size to point 0 1 now open up the field weight section click on the gravity value and set it to 0 now I'll reset the animation to frame 1 and play it again you'll notice that since we set the gravity to 0 that the particles no longer fall down now come up to the velocity section change the normal value from 1 to 0 now I'll reset the animation to frame 1 and play it again this time you'll notice that the particles stay near the surface of the text next we're going to add a force field which we will use to move the particles so press shift a and select force field and then turbulence then grab the red arrow and drag the force field to the center of the text to set the strength of the turbulence click on the physics button then set the strength value to 2 now I'll reset the animation to frame 1 and play it again this is looking good so far so now would be a good time for me to save my work so from the file menu I'll select save as I'm going to name this dissolve dot blend now we need to control the visibility of the original text so right click on the text to select it then click on the particle button come down to the render section when the emitter has a checkmark next to it the text will be visible in the final render we're going to control this checkmark using keyframes so reset the animation to frame 1 by clicking this button make sure that there is a check mark next to emitter then hover the cursor over the check mark and press the letter I on the keyboard the check mark box should turn yellow which means that a keyframe has been added if you move the green time cursor you should see a yellow line at frame 1 which means that a keyframe has been added to that frame now set the time line to frame 30 then hover the cursor over the emitter check mark and press the i key again this added a second keyframe now set the time line to frame 31 then remove the emitter check mark then hover the cursor over the empty check mark box and press the i key this added a third keyframe so now when we render the final animation the original text will be visible from frame 1 through frame 30 but it frame 31 the text will no longer be visible since the admit er will be unchecked at frame 31 it should not be noticeable when the text disappears because by frame 30 all of the particles will be present now let's also set some keyframes to control the size of the particles if we shrink the particles during the animation it will look like they are dissolving so set the time line to frame 70 then hover the cursor over the size value and press the i key now set the time line to frame 1:30 set the size to point zero zero one hover the cursor over the size value and press the i key again so now after frame 70 the particles will start to shrink until they reach their smallest size at frame 130 so to summarize what we have so far the particles will start to appear at frame 20 and by frame 30 all of the particles will be present at frame 31 the visibility of the original text is turned off then the size of the particles will shrink between frame 70 and 130 also because we set the lifetime of the particles to 100 the particles will start to disappear at frame 120 and finish disappearing by frame 130 so next let's add a floor for the text to sit on so press shift a and select mesh and then plane grab the blue arrow and position the plane just below the bottom of the text now scale the plane up in size by pressing s then 100 then enter to set the material for the plane click the material button and then click new set the surface type to mix shader' so that we can combine two different shaders set the first shader to diffuse set the second shader to glossy set the roughness value of the glossy shader to zero also set the FAC value to 0.3 so that the diffuse shader will be stronger than the glossy shader I'm also going to leave the color of both of these shaders set to white next we need to enable collision to prevent the particles from moving through the floor of the animation to do that click on the physics button you may need to resize this panel to bring the physics button into view now click on the collision button next let's set up the light source so press three on the number pad to switch the right side view I'm going to zoom out a little and then pan the view until I can see the light source now right-click on the lamp to select it then grab the green arrow and drag the lamp over here then come over to the right and click on the object data button make sure that the point lamp is selected and then set the size to 3 now click on the use nodes button I'm going to set the strength value to 5000 next let's set up the camera view so switch to camera view by pressing 0 on the number pad I'll zoom in a little when I'm in camera view I like to lock the camera to the view to do that press in to open the properties panel and put a check mark next to lock camera to view then press in again to close the properties panel now I can zoom pan and rotate the view while looking through the camera now I'll position the text now let's change the background color to black so click on the world button then click on the grey color and change it to black next let's increase the number of particles that we're using so right click on the text to select it then click on the particle button I'm going to use 20 thousand particles you will probably want to experiment with this value if you have fewer text characters then you can use fewer particles if your font size is larger then you may want more particles but avoid making this value too large however because it will not only make rendering times really long but it can also slow down the response time of blender which will make the interface feel sluggish on my computer even this value of 20 thousand that I'm using makes the blender interface feel sluggish that's why I saved this step until I'm close to the end it can help to speed up the interface however if I set the timeline to frame 1 this is because the particles don't start to appear until frame 20 now let's set up some rendering options so click on the render button then open the sampling section I'm going to set the number of render samples to 50 since we're going to be rendering 135 frames I'm going to keep this value pretty low to help minimize the rendering time now come up to the output section this is where you set the directory where your animation will be saved on my computer the contents of this default temp directory are deleted when blender closes so be sure and select a different directory to do that click on this button and select a directory next click here to set the file format there are multiple movie formats that you can choose from I'm going to use Oh Gigi fiora now we're ready to render the animation but I'm going to save the project first it's a good idea to save the project before rendering in case something goes wrong during the rendering process to render the animation click on the animation button if you want to abort the rendering before it's finished and press the Escape key since this is going to take a while I'm going to pause the video until it's done the animation is done rendering now it took a little over an hour to render this is the final frame that was rendered it doesn't have any particles so it looks pretty plain if you want to return to the previous view you can click this button and select 3d view to view the animation click on the play button if you're using an older version of blender that doesn't have the play button then go to the render menu and click on play rendered animation the animation will play through to the end and then start back at the beginning again now if you open up Windows Explorer or something equivalent you can navigate to your movie file now assuming that you have a video player that will play the movie format that you specified you can now play your movie I've set up this player to repeat the video in a loop so that it will keep repeating well that concludes this video thanks for watching and please subscribe and leave a comment

Channel: tutor4u

Views: 736,019

Keywords: blender, dissolve, text, 3d, cycles, cycles render, blender version 2.69, how to, tutorial, tutorials, 2.69, tips, tricks, beginner, intermediate, Blender (Software), 3D Modeling, animation

Id: Q93pE5jB1Uw

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2014