For our second project, we decided to create a short animated film using Blender. It is not interactive, but it is a film, so it can be enjoyed. The film runs on the Internet, so it can be enjoyed on any modern computing platform. The source code can be found here. The README contains all of the information to build, deploy, and look at our Blender file (but it should not be modified). Hello from our website, and enjoy our animated masterpiece.
Design and Implementation
Once we created the body of Grey, we used Armature to create a skeleton for the model. Once we did this, it was easier to move and pose the robot for each scene. The film is made up of 930 frames, with 24 frames per second.
As far as how we split up the work, we worked on everything together. This was easier to do because of the way Blender works. There is only one file to work from, so we didn’t really have another choice (unless we wanted to figure out how exactly to split up scenes, which was difficult since we didn’t know how many frames we were going to be using for actions and whatnot).
Outcomes
For our project, we were able to create a 35-second animation using the software, Blender. We learned a lot about film animation and have a greater appreciation for how much time and work it takes to create animated worlds we see in films. Additionally, we learned a lot about patience. It took 3 hours for us to render half of the film each, and it’s not even in the highest quality. We followed many tutorials to get us started and familiarized with the software (since it’s not that intuitive when you first open it) and consulted Stack Overflow whenever things went awry. For the most part, once we were familiar with what we were doing, it was pretty easy to keep going (if not tedious).