The ULTIMATE Guide: How To Make A Ninjago Animation IN Blender!

so you want to make an Ninjago animation in blender but you don't know where to start well let me tell you something you've come to the right place since in today's video I'm going to be going in depth on how to make and use blender to make Ninjago animations now before we begin only 7.4% of you guys are actually subscribed so what better way to help me out than to drop a like and to subscribe to my channel anyway let's begin now this tutorial is only for PC since blender can only be obtained on a computer as well as that make sure your computer isn't a potato and make sure it's decent enough to run blender it doesn't have to be that good in essence if it can run games then it can run blender now that that's out the way here's a list on screen of all the applications we're probably going to need in this video now don't worry since I'll explain what to do with each application and yeah anyway to start off go to blender's official website and download their latest version which at the moment is version 4.0 after your download and install is finished open up blender and if you've done that all correct then you should be greeted with a screen like this now don't freak out since this is just the default layout that you start off with when opening a new blender file so obviously we aren't animating cubes so we're animating Lego so what we're going to do is if you see at the top left here it shows you everything you have in your scene so since we've got a cube there's a cube and there's also a camera and you know vice versa so for now we're just going to delete all these by sliding the left Mouse button over all these things we've got in our scene then you press the right Mouse button and delete the items now our scene is looking pretty empty so what we're going to do is actually import a Lego character into our scene and you're probably asking how we going to do that well we're going to use a site called Mecha bricks this site is absolutely amazing since it has every single Lego piece available to utilize in your animations rather than in real life stop motion where you actually have to go and buy the Lego now anyway what we're going to do is actually try and import the minifigure into our scene so what we're going to do is use this little search tab here and just type Ninjago since this is a Ninjago tutorial however obviously if you're just animating normal Lego then just search up whatever you want now it comes up with a bunch of 3D models of Ninjago characters Vehicles buildings and device versa so obviously since we're importing Minifigures we're going to click on one of them let's just do this Ninjago movie Lloyd for now and then we're going to go to editor and then go file and press export and then change the format to blender add-on or zmx now before we actually import this Loy to our scene we actually have to download the Mecha bricks add on to blender since without it this file format isn't supported by the normal blender application so what we're going to do is go to shop and download the blender light application now there is a paid one but that's not needed I'll be honest with you so yeah after you download the file you then go into blender and then go into this edit tab here and click on preferences now go into add-ons and click install and find the blender light file you just install and add it to blender now after you've added it to blender it should now show up for you here so just tick the little box and click refresh and exit out of preferences now the next step is to click on file and then import and then the Mecha bricks format Here and Now find your Lloyd model that you downloaded and click import zmx and he should be here why is ninja outfit is black that's because you're actually in solid display mode now these four little icons here are your display parameters you can say each one displays a different look to your scene now primarily focus on these last three and don't use the first one since you're not going to be using that anytime soon now just a heads up these parameters are called viewport shading which means that this is not what the final character will look like these two middle parameters are primarily used for testing and have no outcome on what your render will look like in the end now to see what it would look like as a kind of test render click the last parameter which will show you what it will actually look like in the render now here you can see the character is actually a bit dark so if you want to fix that then there's two way to do that my preferred way is to actually add a sky texture which lights up the scene as well as add a sky to the background and the way we're going to do that is we're going to go to world and then click on color and then click on Sky texture now this also gives us a bunch of other parameters to fit with as well and I'm not going to go into that you can just adjust that on your own and set it to your liking so now that we've got a light and a character now you're probably wondering how do we actually move the Lloyd minifigure well at the moment if you try to move him by clicking on a body part and moving it it will just move out of place and if you do that just go into edit and click on do to reverse the changes so what we're going to do is actually download another application called epic rig fig this allows you to move and animate the minifigure like any other animator so what you're going to do is go and download the Epic rig fig file and do exactly what you done with the Mecha bricks light installation by going to add once and clicking install and finding your epic rig fig file and then check the box and click refresh to close the tab if that's done correctly you should see the Epic rig fig tab right here click on that and then you can see you've got a bunch of options and so I'll be honest with you guys I'm not really that great at rigging the mini figures since it's a little confusing especially if you've got a minifig with fore arms like gadon which just doubles the confusion but for now we're just going to use Lloyd and so to make this guy move you're just going to hold shift on your keyboard this allows you to select multiple things at the same time then you're going to left click on these exact body parts that I'm clicking on so basically the feet the Torso the main body the arms and the hands as well as the head after you've selected all those at the same time then click rig selected minifig and now it will show you all these now clickable options to to press now to actually move the minifig click on this circle here and then go to the top left and switch your mod from object mode to pose mode now make sure you do this or the minifigure won't move properly so now that you're on pose mode you should be able to move your minifig body parts and so to do that click on the body part when it turns white that means it's activated and you can move it so let's move his arm for example we just click on his arm and then if you want to move his arm in two motions only so forwards and backwards then you press G as well and now you can move it around now if you want to turn it arm in like five motions for example so like forwards backwards left and right as well as diagonally then click R and then hold the middle Mouse button this combination of key presses allows the body to turn in three dimensions so let's say you want to turn his arm left you press R and hold the middle Mouse button which would bring up the three dimensions the X Y and Z axis now this is funny enough where maths actually applies outside the classroom so here you go now let's say we want to turn his arm on the z-axis so that's the up and down line you just adjust the arm until the z-axis starts to kind of slowly glow and then stop holding your middle Mouse button now the arm is locked and only movable in the z-axis and then you can just adjust it how you like you can then do that to any axis of your liking as well so now that you know how to animate the arms let's do the legs the legs are practically even simpler since practically 100% of the time your legs only move forward and backward and I personally don't know anyone whose legs move left or right so yeah this will be quite simple so to move the legs what you do is look for this little triangle sign on the side of the foot click on that it should turn white and then Lally just press G and move it with your mouse in a forwards or backwards motion that's it the legs were that simple to be honest now you know legs and arms next to his hands what you're going to do is click the blue out line on his hands it should turn white and then once again click G to rotate his hands how you like now there's one more body part so to speak that's crucial to the movement of a minifig and that is his torso right here now the Torso is actually what makes a minifig move forward and the legs just provide the animation for moving forward so what you do is click on the red outline around the Torso and by now you should know it turns White Once the body part is activated then simply press G and move the minifigure forward or backward and that leads me to something which I actually forgot to mention the head and the hair of the minifigure are actually not paired together so the hair looks like it's just floating in the air and so to fix that firstly go into object mode and just temporarily move the hair to the side now click on his headbone or this little circle here and then press s pressing s allows us to enlarge the circle so that's what we're going to do I'm going to enlarge it to a size that it's actually visible now so now click on the hairpiece again and by the way this can be done with anything for example a ninja hood and vice versa so click on the hairpiece and by holding shift then click on the headbone or Circle as well so you have both of them selected then switch back into pose mode and once you're on pose mode press alt and P on your keyboard at the same time to open up this screen if this is open for you then the last step is to just click this button here called bone this now pairs the hair accessory to the head so if we try to move the whole body now the hair won't just stand still it's actually going to move at the same time time so yeah at this point in the video you should know how to move the minif Fig's hands to move his arms to move his legs and to move his torso now as well as that his head can also move so what we're going to do is make sure you're on pose mode and now go to the side of his head and click this little Ark like shape now it's pretty small so to enlarge it click on this tab right here which is called bone and then go to the bottom where it says viewport display and go to custom shape then you can increase the scale on any access you like this can be also done to any other bone so for example the foot or the head Etc just to make your life a little bit easier now after that while having this circular Arc selected press G if you want to raise the head up or down click R and Z at the same time now this allows the head to move in this Dimension as Left Right forward or backwards so now you should know how to move and rotate the head the arms the hands the legs as well as the Torso apart from that there's not really anything else to move in the minifigur body that's important so we're going to carry on now the next step is actually animating the minifigure and so to do that we do it by something called key frames which signify the start and end points for actions in an animation so basically let me give you an example if I set a key frame at the start of an animation and then make a movement on Lloyd's body and set that on for example frame 10 in the 10 frames the animation of the movement takes place the computer in essence predicts how and where the movement will occur anyway not to get too complicated let's just begin doing it so to start off I'm just going to animate Lloyd walking since that's the basics so what we're going to do is first click this little button here this button allows you to automatically make key frames so you don't have to do the hassle of adding a key frame each time since it will do automatically so turn that on then go to frame zero and just click G on the leg this is because this will be the leg starting position now before I continue I'm going to quickly go to this tab here called output and then to frame rate you here must then decide what your frame rate should be because if you decide it after you animate it's going to mess things up so I typically like smoo animation so I'm going to go with 50 as the frame rate however that's totally up to you to choose anyway now that you've chosen the frame rate move to let's say frame 20 and move your character's leg again with either G or R like I told you before which will now move the leg forward now go back to the start and you should see his leg start to move now the next step is actually to move the Torso because that moves the whole body so we then click on torso and set a key frame just before the middle of when the leg moves you should then set a key frame for the Torso at the same time the leg starts to move since that will just make it look bad and not work so yeah set in this area I'm highlighting here and then go to the last frame the leg moves on and click back on torso and move the Torso forward like this you'll see it then has made a walk animation like that so now we also need to move the other leg so what you do is click on the other leg and set a key frame just before the middle of when the other leg moves so like in this range then go to the last frame where the first leg moves and move your other leg forward like this to get this walking animation which looks pretty sweet so at this point he should probably understand how to move his legs the same process is basically for his arms Now set the arms on their starting position at frame zero and create a key frame then as the character moves change the position of the arm forward or backwards how you like and do that with both arms arms and repeat these steps until we get a walking animation that looks like this so at this point you should probably know how to make the character walk and move but this is a Ninjago video after all and what would Ninjago be without elemental powers so I've actually created this nice elemental power of Destruction effect that can be used in your animation now at the moment it's actually purple however I can change the color of it to for a green and it practically be Lloyd's elemental power so it say which can as well easily be animated I'll provide a link to download that in the description totally free of charge if you want to import that into your scene go to file and then click append append in this context means to import another blender file into this one so that's what you press then find the file and click on collection and then click this and should import it into your scene now to actually change the color of it click on this little tab here and then click on Shader editor and go to this color ramp node and click on this tab below position and then you can change the color how you like so that will be linked in the description if you want that now obviously you're going to need buildings and life into your scene so the same thing you do with a min figure you do with a building per se so go back to Mecha bricks and find the building you want then import it into blender just like how you'd normally import a minig now if your building is stationary and isn't going to move at all in the animation then it would be best to fully select the building like this and press contrl and J at the same time this turns the building or in my case the Destiny's Bounty into one big object this can be useful so that it doesn't get in the way when trying to select a mini figure for example however if you're going to animate something in the building for example in my case let's say the Bounty was moving then don't do control J if you want to for example move these little weights on the bottom of the bounty here to make an animation of them so it can be realistic to a real moving ship so yeah now you should know how to animate character and how to import the elemental power and animate that as well as import buildings and any other assets into blender now a few more things before I end it off if you've watched my previous video then you would know that I actually had a cloud Kingdom asset in my scene here and that's actually not anywhere on the internet and so the way I got that was by using an application called minor ways this application allowed me to in essence make a 3D model over a part of my Ninjago in Minecraft world and then use it after so I'm going to leave a link in the description for the tutorial to download and install M ways and use it for 3D assets however the cloud Kingdom model wasn't actually made with Minecraft blocks but rather actual Legos and the way I've done that is by going back to Mecha bricks and going into the building mode here and then importing your Minecraft build into here which then converts it to Lego bricks after that you simply export as a blender add-on and import it to blender this this then allowed me to use the cloud Kingdom as an asset for my Lego Ninjago Recreations so if you want a Lego Cloud Kingdom 3D model or any other 3D Lego Ninjago model that I've built from this list here comment down below that you want one these won't exactly be free I'm thinking of listing them as a benefit of a channel membership of mine that I'll be starting soon the prices will be cheap though so it's very affordable and yeah if you want a Ninjago 3D model from my ninjo in Minecraft world please comment it down below and yeah that should basically cover everything in the tutorial now I've almost forgot to mention that you also need to add a camera into your scene otherwise you can't render it and to do that go back onto object mode and press add here and then click on camera then a camera will be added to your scene and firstly before we activate it click this button here which lets the camera follow your exact movement so you can adjust its position then by pressing zero on the keyboard the camera might have a different bind on your keyboard so you have to search up what it is normally anyway press the desired key and it should open up the camera view like this now it might look a little weird and clip so make sure to then go to camera properties here and increase the End by adding a bunch of zeros this increases the view distance of the camera so it doesn't cut off your scene now your camera is ready to be used activate it and move it around how you like you can also use key frames to move the camera between shots and vice versa now if you want to add multiple camera shots first you make sure the camera is active and selected then go to this tab here called marker and then press bind camera to marker this then binds the camera to a specific shot in the time time frame and if you want a different camera shot now add another camera and then bind that to marker wherever you want your second camera shot to be and that is pretty much it the last thing to do now is to actually render the animation and the way we're going to do that is by going to our render settings first and adjusting all the properties now render engine is an engine that that converts all your 3D animations to 2D so you can then watch it afterwards I prefer to use Cycles since that makes your animation looks stunning however you can also use Eevee which is faster but not as good now if you want a technique to R faster on Cycles then obviously what you can do is reduce your render samples to like 100 to 400 anything above that doesn't make that much of a difference unless you're going to render in 4k or just want extreme high quality so set it to like you know 125 to 150 now there are other settings you can adjust to make them look good we're not going to use them since that's just way too long of a video what we're actually going to do is go to output and then go to this tab called time stretching what this basically does in essence is it speeds up your animation so if your animation is less say 400 frames long and the time stretching is set to 100 the animation will play 400 frames at normal speed however if you set it to 50 it will play your animation at Double the speed and finish at frame 200 now this speeds up your render by up to 99% theoretically however you also lose frames at the same time but not to worry since I found a technique to fix that now before you render change the format to ffmpeg video I know that this isn't the greatest format to export as but it's just way too long to explain what to do to export as pictures so just as this then just render your animation and once that's done come back to the video now after your render is done you now need to download two more applications the first one is Cap cup we're going to use this application to slow our animation back to the normal speed it already was before we set time stretching to 4 a 50 if you then on cap cut do 0.5 time speed this will slow down your animation to its original speed before however you may see it's a little choppy so to fix that export your video at the same frame rate you set it in blender so mine was 50 so I'll set mine to 50 here then export and then download this application called flow frames this application is revolutionary since it uses this technique in maths called interpolation to basically add frames between frames which in essence makes it smoother so download flow frames and install it now go to interpolation and click browse video and find your video then import it into flow frames and then you can set your output FPS so times two will do twice as many frames as the video had done before I'm just going to set it to times two for now then just click interpolate and wait for it to finish and now you're basically done that's your final render and video done thank you guys to anyone who's made it this far into the video this video took me an extremely long time to make to the point I'm actually quite burnt out now so it would mean a lot if you liked and sub guys if you have any questions or any problems please do comment them down below so I can help you out and yeah that's pretty much it see you lot next time [Music]

Channel: Ninjago Central

Views: 1,731

Keywords: ninjago, lego ninjago, tannerfishies ninjago, lego, tannerfishies, ninjago fortnite, ninjago in fortnite, fortnite, lego fortnite, hypex, new fortnite update, lego dreamzzz, ninjago dragons rising, ninjago coming to fortnite, ninjago new update, ninjago tannerfishies, crusty783, bendobricks, ninjago fortnite update, lego fortnite update

Id: 34ok9xnwvoc

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 31 2023