I'm new to all this.

[Bytecroc]

what did you understand to animate something ?

I often read something in the web of animations, and see the whole scene was meant.

Something like let us roll a ball over a parkour or something.

 

Or in OpenGL Tutorial something like, now let us program some animations

and the result is moving some static objects around.

 

in this case programming is needed.

 

But only animating a model in it's movement or gesture is done by an rigging and skeletton or keyframe animation software

like Blender, Fragmotion, 3D Studio Max, Milkshape Anim8tor and much more.

 

If your friend must animate some character with an animation software only, then no programming is needed, but must he also move the characters inside a scene for a movie, then yes, but ask him if C/C++ is needed or if a script language or something else is used.

[Bytecroc]

textures, and whatever else, that's what Blender is for.

 

Textures are paintet with a program like Paint or Gimp and much more or Texture Generators for Walls Floors.

With Blender you give them a UV map

[SoloWingPixy]

And I'm sure this site has a section for textures in the tutorials, then.

 

@ Rick Aside from the tutorials on Lua here, any books/videos/etc for anything advanced you'd recommend?

 

@Ma-shell I think for now I'll take a crack at Lua to at least feel it out, but still I think it would be handy to know some C++ down the line, and the "C style" C++ you mentioned helps make it less intimidating. Any books/tutorials that demonstrate this that you know of?

[cassius]

There are loads of c++ tutorials on the web. Not sure you need a book anymore.

[Ma-Shell]

@Ma-shell I think for now I'll take a crack at Lua to at least feel it out, but still I think it would be handy to know some C++ down the line, and the "C style" C++ you mentioned helps make it less intimidating. Any books/tutorials that demonstrate this that you know of?

 

Unfortunately I have never used any books or tutorial series to learn C/C++. Things just came naturally to me, when I was tought programming at school and I only ever had to look up very specific things. The best thing you can do, is to look at existing projects and try to understand the code. Then start by modifying some values and see, if they have the desired effect and then move on to bigger code-changes. Of course, if you have never programmed before, you will have to learn about the general concepts like variables, functions/methods, and the C-memory-model first, in order to understand things, but, as cassius said, there are lots of good tutorials online.

 

About the "C style C++": You can just take any code that would compile with C and use it, just as simple as that . If you want to write C++ in C-style then you just need to learn C.

[cassius]

I learned c from a book by the inventor of c many years ago before the web existed.It was called "The c programming language" by Kerningham and Richie.I wouldn't rule out books completely , they are convenient.

[SlipperyBrick]

I don't think you need programming experience to work as an animator at Disney. What animation would this be, 2D computer graphics, hand drawn or 3D?

 

Pixar is Disney's animation studio for 3D as far as I am aware and I don't think to specifically do animation you would need to know how to code. Sure there may be some sort of element of coding in regards to using their tools but otherwise I don't think you would need to how to code although as Rick mentioned its a good skill to have.

 

I watched a video once on the workflow Pixar uses to make it's movies and they do use Maya and a technique called Subdivision Surface Modelling (a.k.a, sub d modelling). I don't know if the modellers actually animate as well but to be a jack of all trades it may very well be worth him learning modelling and animation all together (they go hand in hand to be honest).

 

As for yourself to make a game as a one man show you would unfortunately need to learn everything haha. It's taken me 3 years to learn and get decent at modelling and animation and texturing, coding I have been learning for about 2 years and I understand some elements of it that would be lua and C++ but unfortunately for me I don't have the brain power to do the thinking behind getting the formulas of programming, I struggle to work out the formulas to code for certain features I would like to have in my game but I am still pushing on and learning haha

 

My thoughts on programming is that you have toolbox full of words (this would be your API) there are rules to how you can use the words (syntax), you need to think of clever ways to combine these to do the things you want and thats the part I struggle with haha.

 

EDIT: Don't quote me on my analogy it could be completely wrong and stupid lol

[SoloWingPixy]

Sorry for the late reply, when I'm not here, I'm tinkering with GameMaker:Studio. Since speaking of which...

 

@Ma-shell Aside from the few python Coursera courses I took, GameMaker language is the only kind of code I've ever messed around with in my life. It's described by Yoyogames and GameMaker users as being similar to C, but one big difference I've noticed right away is that GameMaker Language doesn't require you to declare a variable type unless you want to specify whether its global, local, or temporary...which is one aspect about variables I'm not sure I fully understand quite yet, other than local variables are limited to whatever code block they're written to, whereas off the top of my head global variables are something I'm supposed to avoid altogether if possible?

 

@ ScrotieFlapWack My brother heavily prefers traditional hand drawn animation, and all the art he's ever done in his life has been hand made. (I can't draw to save my life T.T) 2D computer stuff sits pretty well with him because he thinks he'd be able to adjust to a drawing tablet.

 

Unfortunately, Disney, or at least the top brass, lately seem to be looking for more reasons to abandon not just hand drawn, but 2D animation altogether! What also doesn't help is that more modern art and animation students think that anything not done entirely through software is archaic. I'm not saying all modern artists/animators hold that opinion, but more of them do now than they did before, and animation schools seems to emphasize 3D animation over 2D now.

 

He doesn't hate 3D art and modelling, because that's what the Disney Imagineers use to design the park attractions, but it's still considerably disheartening for him.

 

As for myself, I've got my preferences, but some games work better in 2D, others in 3D. Time isn't an issue at the moment, so I'm willing to learn. Out of curiosity, does anyone ever use Blender to do 2D animation? Or is that not possible/practical?

[SlipperyBrick]

It's possible to do 2D animation in Blender, this can be done through various addons (not to sure which ones, I've never tried 2D in Blender) or you could (this is me thinking about it) project your 2D drawings onto a flat plane and just swap out the artwork using keyframes.

 

Alternatively you could use http://www.pencil2d.org/ if you have ever used Flash then this will look and feel very similar. I haven't used this for ages so I don't know if there has been any improvements or added features. The drawing tools were very simple so if you do use this I would recommend finding a decent bit of drawing software. However this takes a frame by frame approach to 2D animation giving you a timeline and ability to add keyframes I don't think there is interpolation between key frames.

 

The pro's (Simpsons, Bobs Burgers, Family Guy, etc) use ToonBoom (Harmony) you can get an evaluation version for free however there is a pretty expensive price tag if you want to purchase (or even subscribe to the software). ToonBoom is a great bit of kit to have and it takes various workflows of animation and combines it to allow you to work the way you want using whatever method of animation suits you, could be modular 2D animation, frame by frame animation, etc.

 

Hope that helps

[SoloWingPixy]

Sorry again for yet another late reply.

 

I've passed along everything you've explained to my brother, so I'll just have to see how much of it he digests, so yes, it does help.

 

Something I forgot to mention before, I have a copy of an ebook called "Beginning Blender" that's written for version 2.5, but my current version is 2.75a, so does that mean my book is outdated or can it still serve as a good introduction?

 

Thanks again in advance, ScrotieFlapWack.