How to make FPS Animations in Blender 2.8+

hi and welcome to my tutorial on how to make first person animations in blender it's aimed at beginners but regardless of your skill level you might learn something first download blender you can download it by either website steam or provided you have a computer running windows the microsoft store for this tutorial i'll be using blender version 2.83 lts but most things should be similar in future builds such as 2.9 by default in blender versions 2.8 and above left click selects g drags s scales r rotates according to camera position and pressing r again freestyle rotates like a trackball right clicking during any of these will cancel the transformation if you'd like to access the transforms menu you can press t to toggle the sidebar or press shift space and select one the transforms are selection box which allows you to select things and tweak them easily 3d cursor which lets you set the 3d cursor as well as move rotate and scale transform allows you to see all the transforms at once also keep in mind that a selects everything while alte deselects everything for the camera middle mouse button rotates middle mouse button plus shift pans and scroll wheel zooms in and out on the numpad five toggles between perspective and orthographic view three is for side view and seven is for top view if you don't have a numpad go to preferences input and turn on emulate numpad i'll go over other hotkeys as they come up if you get confused screencast keys will always be in the bottom left for riggs tailored to first person animation game banana is a good place to look i also have a repository of rigs linked in the description which have all been ported to work properly with blender versions 2.8 and onwards for weapon models some good places to look are game banana sketchfab turbosquid although most models will cost money p3dm although a lot of models have questionable textures and vertex grouping and art station although only some are downloadable model haven used to have good weapon models as well but as of this recording they've been removed this could always change though as always it's important to give credit to the authors if you're going to be using their work if you're making this for a game or other commercial purpose be sure to check the licensing or ask the author because most of the time you're not allowed to first go to file import and then choose the file extension that your model is formatted in mine is an fbx so i'll select that find the model and click import next if your model has multiple meshes like mine you should unify them you can have multiple meshes if you need to but if you don't it will ultimately just worsen performance to merge select one mesh hold shift and start selecting the other ones press ctrl j to join them hold z and select wireframe mode to make sure you have everything if you missed something you can just repeat the process now we need to assign vertex groups you need one for every part of the weapon you want to move first make sure the model is selected and go into edit mode by pressing tab i like to use face selection so i'll switch to that in the top left go to the object data tab create a new vertex group and name a weapon make sure everything is selected click assign then deselect everything press l while hovering over the model to start selecting parts then assign them to their own vertex groups i'm going to speed this up so you don't have to watch through all of it but once again use this method to select all the parts you want to rig this process can be a problem with some p3dm and otherwise ripped models as sometimes the vertex welding is poor or missing entirely once you're done make sure everything is deselected select all the vertex groups other than the main one then click remove with the main weapon group highlighted this will prevent problems when rigging now we need to apply textures a basic pbr setup will include several maps first there's base color also known as albedo which is just the base texture of the model alternatively your model could have a diffuse map which is a base color with some lighting already baked into the image next in a pvr setup are metallic and roughness which determine how reflective the material is some setups include specular and gloss instead which are similar next are normal and ambient occlusion maps which are used to fake the lighting for extra detail adding in bumps and dark spots where light is hard to reach you could also have a combination of any of the maps listed now to actually apply those textures with your model selected open the material properties panel and replace any materials to ensure the shaders are set up correctly for blender next select the shading layout to import a texture just drag it in if you can't press shift a and search for image texture then click open and import your texture that way first import your base color or diffuse then connect it here if you also have an ambient occlusion map import that and then add a mix rgb node drag the color map into color 1 and the ambient occlusion map into color 2. the order does matter then set the mode to multiply and turn the factor value up until you're happy with the result now import any reflective maps you might have and set them all to non-colored data unless you have a specular map with color if they have apparent inputs on the shader drag them in like normal however if you have a gloss map instead of a roughness map run it from an invert node to the roughness channel finally we can add our normal map search for a normal map then drag it into the normal node on your shader if you already have one don't worry about it then drag in your normal map texture and set it to non-colored data check the normal by disconnecting the base color node if it looks a bit off around the vertical edges you can try adding a separate rgb node a combined rgb node and an invert node we'll drag the red and blue values over and then pass the green through the invert node once you're done reconnect your base color finally save the blend file and open your rig next it's time to rig the model go to file append and find the blend file you just saved open it go to object and choose your model if auto key is on make sure to turn it off here before you move the model roughly to where you want it next go to the modifiers tab and add an armature modifier select the rig and make sure preserve volume is enabled select a bone on the already existing armature press tab to go into edit mode enable cursor selection and click on your weapon model to set your cursor then press shift a to make a bone followed by s and ctrl shift s to scale it this will be the main weapon bone so move it where you want the whole model to pivot then go to the bone properties tab and rename it to the exact name of the vertex group you'd like it to control make sure to key each bone as you go along so they show up on the action editor you can do this by pressing tab to exit edit mode then with the bone selected press i in the viewport and click lock rod skill now we'll do the same for the other bones starting with the magazine you can use ctrl d to duplicate the main bone or just ctrl a to make a new one don't parent the magazine to anything as we'll set up constraints for it later key it and keep going a few things to note if you have bullets make sure to parent them to the magazine if you have a charging handle parent it to the weapon then parent the bolt to the charging handle so they move with each other once you're done and the weapon is rigged go to the hierarchy and click the cursor icon next to your mesh so you don't accidentally select it also make sure to re-enable auto-key before starting with the pose we need to constrain the magazine to the weapon in case you need to resize or move the model during posing select the weapon bone then the magazine bone press ctrl shift c and select child of constraint go to the bone constraint tab click set inverse and press i while hovering over the influence value to key it now it's time to go through posing for this step it's important to just use lots of reference material and tweak it to your liking you'll get better at this over time but here are a few tips we'll start with a left hand and a normal pose i like to rotate the wrist at this sort of angle that way the weapon is held by the palm not the fingers for the thumb it really depends on the weapon but i like to angle it down a bit so that it's sort of in line with the barrel the other fingers can just sort of support the grip but it doesn't matter too much as you shouldn't be able to see them anyway for the left hand on a vertical grip position just make sure the hand makes sense you don't want to have the cavity between the thumb and index finger look weird so make sure the hand is right up against the grip also the thumb should go over the other fingers otherwise it'll look weird you won't see most of this from first person but it's always good practice the right hand is similar to the vertical grip make sure the cavity between the index finger and thumb is filled by the pistol grip and make sure that the thumb is over the bottom three fingers for the trigger finger i like to angle the bottom thread out a bit then point it back in with the top two this is a more realistic pose and makes it easier to animate pistol posing is a bit different just use lots of reference material and after a few animations you should get the hang of it next we'll take care of the constraints for the hands it's the same process as earlier for the magazine select the weapon bone then the right hand ctrl shift c child of constraint set inverse key influence same thing for the left hand as well except for instead of the main weapon bone select the magazine bone then the left hand most people parent the left hand to the magazine because it helps for background animations in addition the magazine is connected to the weapon anyway so moving the main bone will move everything finally we can tweak the origin a bit a good rule of thumb for this is to line the top or barrel of your weapon up with a line going from the bottom right of the viewport to the crosshair you can turn this line on by selecting the camera going to the camera properties tab opening the viewport display and composition guides tabs and then enabling center diagonal you can always tweak it a bit from there though i also like to rotate the weapon a bit it's more interesting that way don't overdo it though otherwise the barrel won't line up with the crosshair and it'll just look weird now it's time to begin animating i'd like to mention that for this tutorial i'll be animating in a lot of rigs including mine are set to 30 fps by default that's because most people animate in 30 and then interpolate to 60. i recommend you try both but keep in mind the frame timings i use in this tutorial will be for 60. with that in mind we'll start with the draw animation go down to the action editor click the new action button and rename it to draw what i usually do for draws is to move the summary keyframe over a bit then take the main weapon bone and move it down what we're doing here is making the holstered pose so try to make it where the weapon would actually come from not some random location now we have two poses holstered and drawn but as it is this is really linear open the main weapon keyframe to view all the axis values now it's just a matter of adding a few more keyframes to vary the motions you can try using the graph editor for this but i wouldn't recommend it until you've done a few animations without it after varying it with more keyframes we should be ready to move on to the next animation next we'll make a fire animation once again go down to the action editor make a new action and rename it to fire then duplicate the start keyframe for recoil i like to go to the side view first which you can once again do by pressing 3 on your numpad then i usually rotate the pitch down then quickly up over the bass pose then down under before the last keyframe this doesn't look so great so we'll follow a similar process as the draw to add more variation on the other axes make sure to adapt this technique for the type of weapon you're animating depending on the type of ammunition being fired and the size of the weapon you should add varying amounts of force it helps to look at reference videos i think this looks decent for an mp7 in this configuration so we'll move on to the next animation [Music] finally for the animation portion i'll just give tips for the reload a reload typically consists of two to three main poses the mag out the mag in and if you want a bolt hole release there are lots of ways to do this you can animate the weapon first then the hands you could make the key poses and then add detail or just do everything as you go if you want to key the constraints for instance on a mag throw where the movement of the magazine needs to be independent from the movement of the weapon the easiest way to do it though tedious is to key the bone then the influence at one so that to zero on the next frame and then move the bone back as accurately as possible you have to do it like this because as of this recording blender hasn't had a single version in which the constraints act normally like in other programs next is time to render if you'd like to go into the output properties tab and set where you'd like the video file to end up change the file format to ffmpeg video and then drop down the encoding tab set the container to mpeg-4 and the video codec to h.264 you're now ready to render to render a viewport animation go to the bottom of the viewport you'd like to render click on view and select viewport render animation to render your animation normally press ctrl f12 [Music] to export to fbx go to file export and choose fbx scroll down make sure the bake animation box is checked and expand the drop down menu sampling rate is how often it will export frames the lower the finer the export quality will be simplifying is similar turning it down will simplify less meaning that if you want a lossless export turn both values down as far as they go keep in mind the lower you set these values the longer it will take to export finally change any other settings you need to set your output path and click export fbx my advice for next steps is just to keep practicing that's how you improve it also helps to experiment with different styles techniques and assets feedback can be helpful as well so i recommend joining an animation community if an animation comes up poorly just move on to the next one and remember that it takes time to improve in addition you should always take breaks if you don't you could experience burnout thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: thriftydonut

Views: 284,916

Keywords: blender, 2.8, 2.9, tutorial, fp, first person, fps, shooter, gun, weapon, arms, hands, rig, animation, animating, keyframe, export, fbx, render, eevee, viewmodel, reload

Id: IV6XP-EDzw8

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021