I've recently finished a 5 minute animated music video, which you can view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlGLgStPt4

The animation does have blood and dark themes in it so don't watch it unless you are ok with those sort of things

Not going to embed it as it's a 1440p animation and it's not going to be 1440p when viewed through a tiny PMC embed, If I wanted y'all viewing it at crap resolution I would just have made it at crap resolution. o_0

But I don't want this blog to just be advertising it, I want to explain a bit about how I made it, and what sort of things I did to stop it looking completely awful.

What did you use to make it?

I used Blender 2.92, a free 3d modelling/video editing/designing program which anyone can download and use. A lot of 3d software is very expensive, but Blender has all the features needed for pretty much anything you want to make and it doesn't cost anything. Some more advanced things might only be doable in Substance Painter or Zbrush but unless you're planning something quite advanced you don't need to be paying for expensive software.

Did you make it ALL yourself?

All of the models and textures? No, that would have taken YEARS. A lot of 3d models and textures are free and as my project was non-commercial all I need to do is credit the creators of those assets and I am allowed to use them. You don't need to buy a good camera and find the perfect sheet of metal to take a picture of when there's hundreds of free textures online you can use.

Some sites you can get materials from: https://www.poliigon.com/ https://www.blenderkit.com/

So where did you get the textures/some models from?

A few of the models (the crane and part of the machines) are from CGtrader: https://www.cgtrader.com/, a site where you can find loads of free models - and if you're willing to spend some money there's also some really good paid for models. The character models are from PonySFM: https://ponysfm.com/ a site for models for Source Film Maker. These models are not in a format which Blender can use so I had to decompile them using Crowbar: https://valvedev.info/tools/crowbar/ and I also needed to get a Blender addon called Source Tools, which allows importing/exporting of Source Engine things. (also crowbar will say "windows protected your PC" when you run it, don't worry, it's safe, loads of people have used it just look online and you'll see.)

The characters look different to the ones on the site - what did you do?

I added a hair particle system to the hair models, and I added a noise texture connected to a bump map to make the fluff. It wasn't the most realistic way of doing it but my computer can't handle realistic fluff. Also SFM models don't work very well when put in blender, the rig still worked but did not always deform the mesh correctly so the eyelids and eyes were not properly moveable - I had to make separate models for the eyelids.

Got any tips for making stuff in Blender?

I'm not a professional, there's still a lot I don't know about Blender, but I do have a few tips.

• make sure your computer won't explode trying to run what you've created
  
• use bevel modifiers on anything with corners. Light won't reflect off edges as they are infinitely sharp, you need to add faces to them so that light can reflect in a realistic way.
• Use rim lights and learn about lighting. One light is not usually enough.
• watch tutorials
• if you want to animate, you NEED to learn about the 12 principles of animation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_basic_principles_of_animation
• remember you aren't limited to only using models which blender supports, a lot of file types can be changed and converted into other formats.
• You can parent objects to individual bones on a rig - which I found very useful for attaching eyelids/hair to the characters.

What could be improved in your animation?

A lot. There's only one blink in the whole video, the movements are too stiff, the eyes were not movable, some of the textures are blurry and badly UV mapped, I forgot to add normal/bump/metallicness maps on a few of the materials, the red lights in some places look awful, the hair looks weird and doesn't move much, more detail was needed on a few scenes, I'll probably look back on this in a few years and cringe at a lot of it - but hey, this is the first time I've made something like this, and considering how new I am to doing this kind of thing I think I did ok at it.

Are you going to make more videos like this?

I don't know. I guess it depends if people actually like this one, If people want me to make more then I might, but I'm not promising anything.

How is this Minecraft related?

1: Not everything on the site has to be Minecraft related, it's a site for the community, and the community has other interests other than just Minecraft.

2: Some of the information here can also be used in making Minecraft animations (especially the bit about bevel modifiers)

How come there isn't the usual Youtube compression on it?

I upscaled the video to 1440p so that Youtube would encode it using VP9 instead of AVC, videos on large youtube channels usually use VP9 anyway, but for small channels like mine it won't use the nice VP9 codec unless you have it at 1440p or higher. Encoding in VP9 on Youtube takes a LONG time, for my video it look all day to process and that's only 5 minutes long. Still, it's worth it to get rid of the bad Youtube compression.