Transcripts
1. Welcome to Handwriting MoGraph in Blender: If you're anything like me, you want to know how
to do stuff like create motion graphics
and blending. My name is Isaac Ramos and I'm an animator here to
teach you how to create a special kind of motion graphics,
revealing handwriting. This specialized
skill is useful in unlimited fields and opens up a new world of possibilities. So if you're ready to
up your Blender Game, come join me as we create
handwriting motion graphics. In Blender.
2. Write Your Word: Hi there and welcome to
another animation class. And this one is in Blender. Excited to be sharing
this with you. I've been scouring the
Internet trying to figure out exactly what I am about
to show you how to do. And that is revealing
handwriting in Blender. It's a super, super
awesome and useful effect to be used
and goes a long way. And whether you're working
on projects for clients, you're just wanting
to do something really neat and
fun for yourself. But this is it going to be hugely invaluable for you
as you work through this. So let's go ahead
and jump right in. We're gonna get into it and we will get to, get to
work on the project. So go ahead here,
have open Blender. I'm going to open
up 2D animation. And I'm going to go
into object mode, hit X to delete, get rid of that object. Let's go to Edit Preferences. Want to make sure you
have some of these things added on AD curve, extra objects and then add mesh. Mesh isn't as
important right now. But just at for this time being, makes sure that you
have AD curve at it on. For extra objects,
there's the other one. If you want to do it, you
can just type here in the search bar and it will become active as soon
as you click on it. So that's great about Blender. To get started, let's
go ahead and add, Shift a to add
curve, Bezier curve. And then let's our X 90 that will rotate the object on that curve
tab into edit mode. Let's x, and we're just going to
delete that object for now. But in edit mode, makes sure that
you're in edit mode. When you delete that object. From here, you're going to
go ahead and click Draw. And this will be where you
write out your little message. The longer it is, the more
practice you will get. So I would recommend five to eight letters
for this project. That could be hello, could
be goodbye, goodbye seven. But whatever it is
that you're wanting, and then just write it out. Okay. So looks like a huge
mess right there. That's totally okay. It doesn't really matter for
this particular project. Just makes sure
that it's legible. That's the important thing here. If you left shift with your
pinky and middle mouse click, you can drag your image
around on the same plane. If you do just the middle mouse, you will go into 3D space. Just kinda keeps things going. Tab the Num pad with zeros. And you will go back
to the camera view, the active camera view. So from here, I'm gonna go ahead and get to cleaning up
my image a little bit. I want to get rid of this
extra point right here. So exit out of the vertices. Wanted to make sure that I have some clean vertices to work
with their right-click. Let's go to that
handle type automatic. Throw it out a bit. So just be aware of that. And go ahead and clean
up your writing to where you want it to be, finished, where it's
ready to begin animating. We'll get to animating
here pretty quickly. But for this first part, I want to make sure that we
have everything ready to go. Blender is marketed as
the all-in-one tool. And you find plenty
of tutorials and how to do things
in After Effects. Now to get these similar
types of effects, but it's so hard to come across quality tutorials on
particular things like what you might
be trying to achieve. Like for me, I could
not find anything about this specific skill. I had to piece together tons of different things just to get
this one thing figured out. But makes a difference
when you're there. Okay? Handle type. If you do a line that's going to keep them the same length, automatic puts on a
different amount of weight, so you may not want that. That in mind. Let's move these over here. I want them to be
there and we're gonna be adding weight to
this line here soon. I like that. All right. Flip. I'll keep that as
kind of a flare. Okay? You don't want a ton of vertices at this
point because you don't know exactly what, what density you're gonna
be working at for this. And that'll make sense here
once we start adding weight. But go ahead, get your word. Whatever it is that
you're writing. You could write your name,
you could write hello. Hi, goodbye. Thanks, you're welcome, etc. Get whatever it is that
you're going to write and refine it to the point
where it looks great too. You work with the handles, make sure that everything is everything does
need to be aligned. And I don't believe that if you right-click and just
do it for everything, that everything will be aligned at that point. Well,
I guess so it will. So you can do that as well. Just save yourself a little
bit of a hassle there. That is, unless something
is it a sharp corner, it needs to be aligned. If you want to do some of the, some of the different
kinds of handwriting that is popular with the Brush, font and thick to thin. Not all the letters
are attached or drawn in one stroke with those. So you can also
separate your letters to get the exact style
that you're wanting. That's totally fine too. Just make sure your
letters are laid out the way that you want
them to be written. And then we will get into adding some thickness to it and
setting it up for animation.
3. Preparing for Animation: Hi there and welcome to
another animation class. And this one is in Blender. Excited to be sharing
this with you. I've been scouring the
Internet trying to figure out exactly what I am about
to show you how to do. And that is revealing
handwriting in Blender. It's a super, super
awesome and useful effect to be used
and goes a long way. And whether you're working
on projects for clients, you're just wanting
to do something really neat and
fun for yourself. But this is going to be hugely invaluable for you
as you work through this. So let's go ahead
and jump right in. We're going to get
into it and we will get to, get to
work on the project. So go ahead here,
have open Blender. I'm going to open
up 2D animation. And I'm going to go
into object mode, hit X to delete, get rid of that object. Or let's go to Edit Preferences on to make
sure you have some of these things
added on AD curve, extra objects and then add mesh meshes and as
important right now. But just for this time being, made sure that you have
AD curve at it on. For extra objects,
there's the other one. If you want to do it, you
can just type here in the search bar and it will become active as soon
as you click on it. So that's great about Blender. To get started, let's
go ahead and add, Shift a to add
curve, Bezier curve. And then let's our X 90 that will rotate the object on that curve
tab into edit mode. Let's x, and we're just going to
leave that object for now. But in edit mode, make sure that
you're in edit mode. When you delete that object. From here, you're going to
go ahead and click Draw. And this will be where you
write out your little message. The longer it is, the more
practice you will get. So I would recommend five to eight letters
for this project. That could be hello,
goodbye, goodbye seven. But whatever it is
that you're wanting, and then just write it out. Okay. So looks like a huge
mess right there. That's totally okay. Doesn't really matter for
this particular project. Just make sure
that it's legible. That's the important thing here. If you left shift with your
pinky and middle mouse click, you can drag your image
around on the same plane. If you do just the middle mouse, you will go into 3D space. Just kinda keeps things going. Tab the Num pad with a 0. And you will go back
to the camera view, the active camera view. Okay, so from here, I'm gonna go ahead and get to cleaning up my
image a little bit. I want to get rid of this
extra point right here. So exit out of the vertices. Wanted to make sure that I have some clean vertices to work
with their right-click. Let's go to that
handled type automatic. Throw it out a bit. So just be aware of that. And go ahead and clean
up your writing to where you want it to be, finished, where it's
ready to begin animating. We'll get to animating
here pretty quickly. But for this first part, I want to make sure that we
have everything ready to go. Blender is marketed as
the all-in-one tool. And you find plenty
of tutorials on how to do things
in After Effects. Now to get these similar
types of effects, but it's so hard to come across quality tutorials on
particular things like what you might
be trying to achieve. Like for me, I could
not find anything about this specific skill. I had to piece together tons of different things just to get
this one thing figured out. But makes a difference
when you're there. Okay? Handle type. If you do a line that's going to keep them the same length, automatic puts on a
different amount of weight, so you may not want that. That in mind. Let's move these over here. I want them to be
there and we're gonna be adding weight to
this line here soon. I like that. All right. Flip. I'll keep that as
kind of a flare. Okay? You don't want a ton of vertices at this
point because you don't know exactly what, what density you're gonna
be working at for this. And that'll make sense here
once we start adding weight. But go ahead, get your word. Whatever it is that
you're writing. You could write your name,
you could write hello, you could write hi, goodbye. Thanks, you're welcome, etc. Get whatever it is that
you're going to write and refine it to the point
where it looks great too. You work with the handles, make sure that everything is everything does
need to be aligned. And I don't believe that if you right-click and just
do it for everything, that everything will be
aligned at that point. Oh, well, I guess so it will. So you can do that as well. Just save yourself a little
bit of a hassle there. That is, unless something
is it a sharp corner, it needs to be aligned. If you want to do some of the, some of the different
kinds of handwriting that is popular with the Brush, font and thick to thin. Not all the letters
are attached or drawn in one stroke with those. So you can also
separate your letters to get the exact style
that you're wanting. That's totally fine too. Just make sure your
letters are laid out the way that you want
them to be written. And then we will get into adding some thickness to it and
setting it up for animation.
4. Tweak and Add Shape: Alright, so now that you have that all set up to
tab out of edit mode, and we're going to just be
in object mode for a moment. Let's go ahead and add
another Bezier curve, G to move it our X 90. All right, tab into edit mode. We're actually going
to delete these. It's probably not necessary to rotate it before you do this, but that's just my
personal workflow. Alright, add two points. Inter, you're done with your
Bezier curve right there. This pin tool, it'll
allow you to add weight to the object. I don't want to. So it's
just a single click, single click to
clicks. That's it. You're not looking
for anything else. Alright? And if you ever
find yourself kind of making an error in something, you can always right-click. Grab G to grab, right-click, we'll send it
back to where it started. So right-click is the
cancel button there. Let's do scale.
Why not want yet, why? We'd be fine? And scale z 0, that will flatten them out, bring them back to each other. I'm going to tab out in
object mode that origin, origin to geometry puts it right in the center of
both vertices there. And that will actually be about
all that we do with that. We will kinda play
with it in a bit. But this is the really
cool and fun part here where we get to
start working with that. You're going to click on this, this curvy line with
two vertices on it. This is your Object
Data Properties tab. This is gonna be where we do
a lot of the work from here. So geometry, you're going
to want to scroll down. You can scroll down either using the scroll wheel
or you can middle click the scroll wheel
and then coming down here you're going to
click Object, Object. Click on this one,
Bezier curve one, and it throws it
into a huge blob. This is not ideal. So this is where we will
come back out and we will tab here we're
not in edit mode. Keep in mind. Let's
scale this down, it, down, all the way down and then our words
come into focus. We could animate it
exactly like this. If this is all the
E1, That's perfect. That's great. You can start doing
that and you can animate bottom to end, beginning to end,
here all the way to the end and get that done. This is perfect. You just click on this where you
want it to start at the very first frame
here to the end. Then let's have it
take five seconds. Change here to timeline. We'll go to frame, let's see, 24 times five. That'd be 121. Had
a new frame there. If you don't want it to keyframe everything that you
do, turn that off. Every little changes
that you make will become a key and a keys, every aspect that changes there. So you want to make
sure that you're not doing that because it can create a mess later on for
other animation. Not as important for
this one right here. But just keep that in mind. Okay? So now if you did that, there is our animation, plain and simple. That's it. You just animated
your first word and looks like handwriting. So that's a really
simple and easy way to do that. But you can do that. You can add all kinds
of different weight. We're not going to
worry about taper or the taper radius
object, et cetera. Right now the important thing is that you've got this down. If you want it to be
a different color, of course, you can come in, add a material and then put it whatever
color you want it to be. It's a little minty lime
green color right there. This turn off the render and turn off the visibility
unless you want to change it. I'm just going to do this
as the profile object. This will be hello. Great to get into naming your objects that
we don't lose them, get confused about what
something else might be or might be doing. This is a great way
to do that and come to think of it now,
looking at that curve, I don't like that a ton, so I'm going to actually get
rid of this one right here. Alright, there we go. So that'll
be how you play with it. So now if there's
anything that you want to change with your word and the way that it looks right now as far as the
actual script goes, go ahead and adjust that, makes sure that it
is ready to go. Because the next video, we're going to be actually
looking into how to add and change weight
to each of your lines. So if you want this
part to be thin, but this part to be thick, just to simulate what
pressure is being applied by the pen,
brush, or pencil. This will be where
we do it here. So go ahead, make sure you have any other tweaks
setup and ready to go and we will move
forward from there.
5. Refine and Add Weight: Alright, so now that
you have this tweet, the way that you want it to be. Let's go ahead and go
in here and add weight. This is a really fun
part right here. So let's go ahead
and get into this. There's a lot to do here, a lot of tweaking and
a lot of finessing. So this is definitely
an important step. The trick here is
to use Alt S. Alt S changes the weight of that
one particular vertex. If you want it to be thin, of course you've got it to
be shrunk all the way down. That makes a huge difference. If you just hit Scale, S is going to change
the scale of the curve. You don't want it to change
the scale of the curve. You want it to
change the scale of the weight of that particular
point in the curve. That makes a huge
difference there as well. So if you want it, there's a lot of jaggedness here and you can see
what's going on if you click into the
wireframe shading, that makes a big
difference there. You can click 2D or 3D. 2d or 3D just depends on the results
that you're looking for. This is going to add
resolution to your curves. So it's going to add
more segments within, within the small space that
you're trying to work in. So it could be great to do this. It goes up to 64, halfway there is, of course 32. The lower down you get, the less tweaking and
refinement capability you have. You doesn't do anything That's a different,
different parameter. Doesn't do anything
in 2D space either. So I don't worry about it. At least not when
working on this. So you can see more what's
actually happening here. It's not visible with these overlapping vertices
here or segments. When it's actually
being written out. You can see they're just
depending on where it falls. It just throws it in together. It's not really distinguishable. But try to get the
smoothest path that you can so that it's actually appealing to look
at when it's finished. You always want the best product possible as you're
working through this. So I'm gonna go back
to my rendered view. Materials view. Want to have that way there. And the reason you can't
see the rest of these here is because it's
not revealed yet. But you can't work on
anything that isn't revealed. Adding some weight
on the section here. And it disperses everything throughout from
where that point is. Two the next point and from that point to the
previous point. So keep in mind, there's a lot to
tweak in order to get the result that
you're looking for. And here's a good point as well. But when it's going backwards, you need to manually blend the weight
between three points. You're not just
doing 1 at a time, you are actually lending
three points at a time. And it can get tedious. But it's a lot of really
fine work, I should say. And that's not a
bad thing at all, but it's just something to
keep in mind for right here. I want to change the weight
a little bit between these. It's too much space
between them. So I'm gonna go in here and I'm going to click sub-divide. I right-click to
bring this menu up. Click sub-divide and it puts
one somewhere in the middle. Then I can change weight there. And then it blends a
little bit better. From there to the next one. You can see there it's, it's working through to make it. And I think I want to
do the same thing. This point, In this point, C here is a quick sketch. So this is one thing
with this method where when there's too much
difference between weights, if there is an overlap in them than it does
not blend well. And you have to really get this dredged way out
to figure that out. So it actually a good point
to bring up right there. You either have to
change the weight. You get it to work for
you or you have to change the influence of
the handles to do that, which actually is turning into something that I like and is working in
the better for me. I may not need this
vertex right there. I'm gonna do that and
then I'm just going to pull this handle out. If you have any experience
with working with vectors like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape or something
along those lines. That is going to be extremely helpful as you
work through this. It's the same mentality and kinda thought process as going in and designing
vectors for a client, or again for yourself. Alt S to scale on those. Again, I want to add
some resolution here, so I'm going to
add that segment. Wanted to be a thinner
line weight ale. I'm fine with it being quite
a bit thinner there because it's really light
upward brush stroke. And let's add some weight here. I'm going to add some here, but I don't want
it to be at Ton. Again, you don't
want this to be two extremely dense because it'll
cause pinching like that. And the pinching
is what makes it look, look less appealing. Flesh this out and you can see
again what the handles do. When you're actually
stretching it out. You're actually
decompressing the vertices. There are the segments,
segments within that. So that's, that's really,
really useful there. This one want this to appear sharper, not incredibly sharp. And actually, there we go, that's more looking
like what I want. Okay, That's much better. And it goes around is again, the inner for a lighter
upstroke on the brush. It's going to start
pressing as it slows down to come
down and around. Heavy there. Move this
one out this way. Week. I'm still getting
roughly the same shape. Come in and do that right there. On down the way they're there, makes sure it still looks good. I like it. Okay, here we go. My new little bit
more weight there. Okay, so here is a pro tip. If you want this tip to be
a little bit more rounded, you can right-click, sub-divide. Right-click between
these, sub-divide. Right-click between
these and sub-divide. Then you can actually go back and delete those
vertices one more time. And then these a bit, it throws off the weight
when you do it this way. But you'll see why I do it this way here
in just a moment. I'm actually going to
scale this way down, so it has hardly any influence over the vertices behind it. And then I'm going to
take the weight of the handle down like that. And then I'm going to take
this, I'm going to push it way to the edge. Right there. It actually gives it
more of a rounded tip. So it's not such a harsh finish. And you can do the same
thing with the beginning. As it feels kind of
like a downstroke. It can be heavier up
to lighter. Here. I'm going to add some
resolution right there. Thinner so it's consistent. Add one here. Heavier weight. In this is all about refining. When you take the weight
here and you push it away, if it's feeling
bunched up like that. It's because there's not enough, for lack
of a better word, pressure pushing it,
pushing the vertices in segments away from this point. So you take that handle, push it away and
it's going to push more of the influence to the other vertex point. You can balance it
out between them. That's what I like there. Do the same thing here, change the width all the way
down and all the way down, but most of the way down. And let's scale the
influence of the handles. Hey, down. Zoom in, looks a little bit messy so that handle their influence here. The influence of this handle is pushing beyond
this vertex point. We actually need to
pull it back a bit. There we go. Alright, there you have it. I'm going to tab
out of object mode. All the way to beginning hello. It's a really effective tool to use paths using the start and
end animation right there. If you want to go in and
you want to tweak anything with the graph editor, you'll get some different
speeds as you go through. The more dense a mess
is in one section. One section, the
more that it will push through or slowed
down in that section, it rushes through larger areas. So if you want to
play with the timing, you gotta go in and you gotta
kinda tweak it as you want. But this is a
really cool effect. Tig use for words
to use as a reveal. You can use it for logos, you can use it for gift cards, whatever, or like
a birthday cards, whatever it is that you wanna
do, revealing a message. So go through, have
fun with this, play with the weights, play with everything
that we discussed. Always feel free to go back and re-watch any sections that
you have questions on. But yeah, this is great
and I really look forward to seeing what
you put together.
6. Troubleshooting: Alright, so now for some
troubleshooting tips, let's say that you are
running right along. You're doing great. You love exactly how
everything is turning out, but then you run
into a major hiccup. Let's go ahead and
add our curve, Bezier curve, having to
edit mode delete vertices. Then I'm just going
to write this in here with my drawing tablet. Actually, this is how I
first noticed this issue. I'm just gonna get
rid of that top dot doesn't really matter there. Then I am going to
tab out of edit mode, add another Bezier curve. And alright, so at this point
I'm setting my pen down. Everything looks exactly as it has with everything
we've done so far. But the catch is, and comes when we actually come to this space to do
this step right here and adding the geometry of
Glick object Bezier curve. And now we see that the stroke
has been applied sideways. I'm not sure exactly
why blender does this, but it is something that we
need to take into account. So I'm gonna go and
scale this down. So I make my geometry
a little bit thinner. I'm tab out that back in here, back into edit mode
for your word. I'm just gonna go ahead
and add a material to it. More visible. All
right. Looking good. Tab into edit mode. On your control points menu, you're going to tilt right here, built and do 90 degree. Right? So that should get your geometry
flat towards the camera, exactly as we've been
practicing and working on. Just going straight through
here and doing that. Another issue that I've found
with this is that sometimes your geometry right
here will be set off forward away
from your points. So in that case, if that's to happen, again, I'm not sure exactly what
it is that causes it. But if that happens, you can come here
to geometry offset. And it will push
your points away from the vertices that
you have lined up here. If they are forward, then you're gonna
go this direction. Actually, let's just pick. Let's see if we can
break it a little bit. It's going to still
want to do that. On occasion you'll
find that Blender does something that
you were expecting. But then again, also
that you weren't. And it's not always easy to duplicate or replicate in issue. But just know that if, let's say this is the curve
that we're working with. If this curve happens
to be back here, when you click on this slider for geometry
and click Offset, going to take your geometry
and move it closer to your actual vertices and endpoints so that
you can edit it. Normally. That's a huge help for
anything that you are doing there and just makes a big
difference in doing that. Then if you're wanting to add an I in your words and you
are trying to add a dot. You can either draw
the dot and put it in there as you normally would when we're
doing this process. Or you can add a mesh
object or scale it down. Tab into edit mode, hit
F to fill the mesh. Back out. Add the material, the color, size it, how you want it to be. Then you have your
dot, your dotted I. It's as simple as that way
that I like to use it. Do dots on the eyes. It works perfectly fine. But you don't want it to be
there the whole time as you are writing out your word. So if you're going to do that, you're going to want
to make sure that you have the dot set at invisible and you're gonna do it here on the object
properties tab. You can click on the
viewport display. No visibility. And invisibility. You're going to turn off. Make sure you have correct
object highlighted. Turn it off at the
point that you want it. Let's say we want it to
come in on frame 2122. I'm going to turn them on. And if your automatic
keyframing is on, once you change that setting, it'll actually keep it for you. Then it automatically pops in as you're going through and
writing out your words. That is quick and
easy fix for that. Does the same thing as
you normally would there. From frame two to frame 18, their frame that you have dotted your eyes. So that's another
quick tip there. If you're having any
issues with that, a great way to get in there
and make a difference there.
7. Handwriting 3D Geometry: They finally, if
you are wanting to apply this to a 3D effect, you're going to use
very similar practices. Again, all of this
is very similar in the way that it,
you go about it. But there's a couple
of things with, with 3D that are
slightly different. So let's go ahead and instead of using an object that
we're going to profile, if you want your letters to be round, you can
just click around. That is totally fine
with doing that. You don't need another object. However, if you want them
to be a different shape, you will need to
create that shape as a NURBS curve or something else. The Bezier curve, however,
you want to do that. But this is the way to
get your 3D letters. If you want them to
be done like this. Very similar practice to how you would go through and
smooth everything out. You're basically subdividing
there between vertices. Let's go ahead and they'll caps. And you can see that it closes
off the cap right there. You can see the
difference there. But one thing that
is interesting about this is that it does not, the tip isn't actually attached. So if you did go
into sub-divide it and and make it finished, you're not you're not
gonna be able to you don't even see anything
there as it is. So if you were to, let's say you go in here
and you sub-divide it, it's not going to
do much for you. Like it's not going to round the tip because
it's not attached. So let's go ahead and
go here and we're going to apply a weld modifier. Bring it up above that, makes sure that
that is on still. I did not have it on. Okay. There we go. So now the fill cap is attached. But it's got this weird
geometry that's gonna make it a bumpy and goofy looking. So if you want to fix that, we're going to take the
resolution and we're going to bump it all the way down to 0. Now we've got a couple of different other hiccups that
we need to deal with here. But this is much
more manageable than if we tried to have more geometry and get some of
those funky deforms there. That just does not work with it, but it's still going to
behave in a way that you can write with 3D
geometry in a curve. Again, super useful here
and very, very helpful. I wanted to write backward. So lots of things that
you can do there. Again, if you want the tip of your letters to be
enclosed in the 3D, you feel caps to the Modifiers. Add a weld modifier that
attaches the tip to the mesh. And then you can
click on sub-divide, smooth out your letters, and make it look wonderful. Again. So this whole object right
here is only a curve. It is. Nothing else. It's not any actual
3D mesh or anything. It's just the curves
that we're dealing with. It's not even, I'm not even any kind of geometry
that we'd be able to use. We wanted to as though go ahead, have fun with how you
are getting through this and just let it run, run wild with your imagination. But whatever you
wanna do with this, the, really the
sky is the limit. And this is a hugely, hugely invaluable tool for you to have in your
arsenal with Blender. After Effects is typically what you would need to turn to
to do something like this. But with this tool, you really are able to
match a lot of what you can do in After Effects. And in a much simpler, in my opinion, way, then after effects achieves it. So hope that helps. It's really fun to
play with all of these different techniques and variables, things like that. So just get after it and I would love to see what
you post in the end. Api animating.
8. Post and Review: That was a really awesome class and hopefully one that
you found a lot of value as you learned how to animate from
beginning to end, how to design your word, how to add weight and add
some thickness to align. In. All done
completely in Blender. I was trying to use different
vector programs and we import them into here and
give them wait there, but it just wasn't working. Blender is an extremely
powerful tool and one that you will be
able to use her forever. You can use it for
just about anything. And I hope that this gives you just one more tool
in your tool belt to be able to quickly
moving forward as you do any projects that you work
on in professional work, your passion projects.
Thank you so much. Please make sure
to leave a review. Would love to see your
projects and see what you do. And hope you'll join me for
another class in the future.