How to Create VFX Animations Like a Professional Even If You're a Beginner

1. Introduction: Want to create the fixed animations like a P, even if you're opening the blender for the first time. A lot of courses and tutorials for beginners, just tell you how to create a specific scene or render. And after watching, you still don't know how to create something yourself without spending a lot of time and money buying and watching another tutorial. And after watching this course, you'll need to watch another course on creating visual effects for static footages like these, because in this course, you will learn all the basics needed to create your own visual effects. Despite this, we will also cover common problems and mistakes which you may encounter when creating your own animation. So that you can actually learn and apply knowledge in the future and save your time and money. So let's not waste a minute and get started. 2. Basic knowledge + Secret: This lesson will be useful not only for absolute beginners. We have learned how to open a blender, but also for pros because we will also learn a secret technique that will make your work much easier and save you a lot of time. This lesson, we will learn all the basic knowledge that will be necessary not only to create today's masterpiece, but also which will serve as a basis for you to create a Fred model, which will give you unlimited possibilities and create in masterpieces. So let's get started. The first thing we need to do is open a blenzer and create a new project. And congratulations, you have learned Blenzer. Just, we have a lot of new things to low. But let's start with the theory. The three D world consists of three directions of length, width, and height, or x y, and z axis. In bundle, we can notice them as red, green, and blue lines. You can also find out which axis you are on by looking. Here. In blender, as in other programs, you can scale, rotate or move an object along the x cric or z axis. To scale an object, you must first select it by clicking on it, and then press S. In order to rotate, press R key, in order to move gk, and also if you then press the x qu or. That keys, you can do these three actions along a specific axis. Blender also has modes that you can choose here. As you can see, there are a lot of them, but today we will analyze only two of them, the edit mode, and the object mode, in which we are by default, and which allows us to select different objects and make changes that I mentioned earlier. A edit mode is intended for more detailed changes to the object. To go to the edit mode, we need to press top, and in it, we have the opportunity to choose between changes to voices, edges, or faces, which we can select using one, two, or three keys. And we can also rotate them, move them, and scale them. But in Edit mode, there is another new action available, and this is extrusion. To extrude, you need to select the vertex corner or face and press the key. Let's move on to how to rotate the camera and create objects. To see our object from different angles, you need to hold down the middle mouse button and move the mouse or rotate the mouse wheel to zoom out, or move closer to the object. But how to create an object. Everything is simple here. To do this, we press Shift plus A, and here, we can select a different set of things that we can create from standard ships to Suzanne. You can play with it and find out where everything is. Now the trick I promised at the beginning. Now a question for the experts. Did you know that in edit mode, you can simultaneously select vertices, edges, and faces without switching between them every time and without using the annoying menu or keys. Well, this is possible. To do this, let's go to the edit mode and withholding shift, select, for example, vertices and corners in this menu. Now we can select both. You can even not waste time and select everything at once to save a lot of time and save your fingers from hard work labor. In this lesson, we learned all the basic knowledge that is useful for creating a freed model, and also learned a secret that will make your work much easier and save you a lot of time when changing an object. And in the next lesson, we will apply the knowledge again and create all necessary object for animation. And in the next lesson, 3. Everything you need to start creating VFX: Let's start. To start creating fix, we need to download two more applications in addition to blender, namely FS pi and FSpi addon for Blenza. I believe all the files in description. But if you are creating V fix for the first time, you may have problems or questions with the installation. I will show you how to do it correctly. First, let's download Fp itself. To do this, we'll just need to run the installation file and download it like a regular up. With the F Pi blender addon, things are a little more complicated. To do this, let's open planer and create a new project. Then click on edit preferences make sure that you click on the addon. Then we need to click on the Install. I tack the Spy blender addon file. Now once we have selected our file, we need to enter Fp into sarge bar and then check the box next to the FS Pi addon. Then we can close the setting window, and we can also close the blender for now. Now, let's find out how the F spy works and what it is. Open it. Here we need a reference or picture for the fix. I will attach a couple of references in the description below that you can use to create a fix scene. I will use this one. As we can see the image is dm, so let's deselect the dem image. If you're happy with the image, you can leave it as it is. Now imagine this picture is a free D render or a blender project, and you're just looking at it from the camera view. Knowing that, we need to show where the x and the gre axis will be. We can show that with this green and red lines. The green line is the g axis and the red line is x axis. So I'm going to put the first quick line somewhere here at the top of the billboard. And the second line, I will put at the bottom of the billboard. For the x axis, I'll grove it and place it here. Okay. In the free guide, the g grid floor. By looking at it, we can see if we have done earthing correctly. If we have done earthing correctly, the grid should align with the billboard screen. As you can see, we have eth correctly. Also, this point will serve us as the bland. Objects will be created in this place. And when we satisfied with the result, we can click on the file and save it. Now let's import this project into Blender. Open Blender again and create a new project. We can delete all of these objects. Now, click on file import here because of the addon, we have a new option, which is F. Click on it and just select the recently saved fp project. As you can see, our image has become d again. Let's fix that. Click on the camera settings here, and then open background images. And we just need to increase opacity to one. Here we go. In this lesson, we have installed all the necessary files to create the fixed animation in Blender and also learned how to use FS Pi and imported the FSI project into blender. In the next lesson, we will learn how to create the environment and main objects for our fixed imation. 4. Modeling: Okay, let's create the basic objects for the fixed animation, and we will start by creating an environment. So press shift plus A and create a plane. And as I said in the previous lesson, the object will be created where replaced the mesh. Now, let's press R, grin 90 and rotate it on 90 degrees. Then move it and now go to the edit mode by pressing up and here we need to align our plane to the billboard screen. Make sure you do this with attention to details to avoid problems in the future. Just grab it, press G, and move it according to the reference. Okay. After we're done with the plane, select the top edge and extrude it along the z axis. Then select all the right edges and extrude them along the grch axis. And we also need extrude the left edges along the grch axis. And also side the bottom edges and also extrude them on the axis. Then select the middle base, and also extrude it. Now we can exit at it Mt. Now if we go to the Render view, Go to the render settings and change V two cycles, and in device, change to GPU compute. As we can see, these faces are in the way and do not allow us to see the picture. So let's fix it. Go to material setting, and click on the plus two types to add two materials and create a materials for them. Let's rename them. The first material I will call a room and the second material holdout Then for the holdout material click here, and select holdout. Then go into the edit mode and select all those faces. Then click on the material and click a sign. Now we have this beautiful result. Optionally, we can create a floor for the scene. So to do that, let's create a plane again. We can move it a little bit down and scale it. And we also need to add a holdout material to it. And here we go. Let's save it by pressing Control plus S and name our project. Then press three on the bed, go to the front view press Shift plus A and select the reference that I have attached to this scores below. Let's move the reference on the x axis so that it doesn't interfere with us when modally. Now I will show you a unique way of creating objects from reference using coves. So press Shift plus A and create a basi cove. Let's rotate on the x axis by 90 degrees. Go to the edit mode by pressing up, and similar to the penol in Photoshop, we will replicate the shape of the can by selecting this points, moving them, and scaling them, and also rotating them. When you're done with that ankle, press e two, duplicate the core, and then we need to repeat this process until we duplicate the shape of the can. To be honest, this tool takes a bit of practice and may take you some time to get used to it. Okay, we have already covered half of it, and we don't need to do the same on the other side. And now I will show you why. Okay, now that everything is Right click. Click convert two and select mesh. Now it is no longer a curve. Then go into the edit mode, select pin by pressing A, select the spin tool on the left side of the screen, and make sure that ax is selected here, and the color of this line is blue. Then grab this las icon and move your mouse. And you can see that the can magically appears on your eyes. Now, in the lower corner, there's a setting menu for the tool in which we can change the angle, which will be 360 and the number of steps. I'll set it to 17 steps, but if you have a slow computer, you can leave it less, but don't set it to a very small amount because our can will be too low poly for a realistic render. Okay, let's tweak our can a little. At the bottom of the can, let's select all these vertices by holding alt and turn on proportional editing here. Press G, and by rotating the mouse wheel, you can adjust the proportional editing radius and just move along the axis. Thanks to it by changing the, vertices, we can influence and change those that are around to hide this whole press F. Let's go to the top part. Here we need to select all these potices Press, then to scale. Then press again and move it down on the axis, and we can also scale it a little. Let's add more polygons to it and add a subdivision modifier here. Okay. Trade it smooth. I decided to get rid of all these vertices because I fought that we wouldn't need that many vertices. But later on, I was wrong because we will need them for a little bonus that will add more realism to our C. But if you have a low PC or laptop or weak PC or laptop, you can also do this by selecting all of them, holding and after you're done, press X and self dissolve edges. Let's add one more reference. Press num seven on the numpad to call the then press plus a image preference, and then select the second reference. Let's also scale it to match with our product. Next, I select our product. Go to the edit mode, hide the division for more convenience and select these vertices. The shift plus d to duplicate. And then select P selection to make them a separate object. Go back to the object mode and sit to select the reference and vertices we duplicated and at s to focus on those two. Let's go into edit mode dx rode these vertices and then scale them. And to make our job easier, let's look at here to add a center edge to the side. And then we need to select all vertices on the left side. Okay. And then delete them. I know the sounds weird because now we're missing how they can. But when we add the mirror modifier, everything will be in a place. Just make sure you only select the axis in that modifier. Now when we do something on the right side, it will repeat it on the left side. So let's move the vertices according to the reference. Inside the vertices, and extrude them along the axis. And let's scale them too. Oh, yeah, we also need to check the clipping in the mirror modifier and now move the tices to the center from this side and from the side. All right. Now we just need to move the vortices according to the reference. Okay, and when everything is ready, I strut and scale it again. As you can see, the process is not very complicated and quite simple. Again, move the vertices according to the reference, and here extrude this edge and select these two edges, and then also extrude them and move along the x axis. To fill this hole, select the edges around and press F and the same here. Let's also add a loop cut here and just move it according to the reference. Let's extrude and scale it again. We need to connect these edges by selecting them on this side and on this pressing F and on this side too. Let's save our file by pressing control plus S. And then we put our subdivision modifier, we'll see this terrible result. Okay. To fix this, simply take the mineral modifier and place it over a subdivision, and earthen should work fine again. Let's make it more realistic by adding loop cuts around the edges. Pick and hide the subdivision modifier for convenience and add the lopcuts in those places where we need sharp edges. All right, looking great. But there's one more thing we need to create to plet our can. You need to create the opener. So go to the edit mode. Select that phase Duplicated press P, selection and make it a separate object. Now let's move it or even hide it for convenience. And here we again simply move the edges and extrude them according to the reference as we did before. But here we need to extrude it up along the z axis. And to add thickness, select then by pressing A and then extrude ethene along the axis. And also, we need to add loop cuts around the edges for more realism. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we've almost created the can. The last thing we need to do is get our thing into place. To land this part exactly on our plane. We need to open this menu and click on this square picture and move this part on the z axis, and we hold control. Click on that plane. Let's apply Mmdifi store objects. Now, let's select all objects and combine them into a full by pressing control plus j. Here we go. O is created. Okay. 5. Physics: Now, let's hide everything and select our can, and we need to scale it. Let's create a hole to which our can will fall. Flick num seven, then select this phase, and press to invert. Then click right Mouth button and click and subdivide. In this menu, we can increase the number of cuts. Let's make it four or five. And then press right Mouth button again and go to the loop tools and choose circle. Let's extrude it on the axis, and to get rid of these phases, press x and choose phases. Let's also shed it out to smooth and for more realism, we can add a bovele modifier. And decrease the amount. And to smooth it even more, let's add another modifier called weighted normals. Now, let's learn how to create physics in blender. First, take our can above our room. Then go to the physics top and add a rigid body. The only thing we need to change here is the shape to the mesh. For the room, we also need to add a rigid body, but this time, change the type to passive. And also change the shape to mesh. And also, let's press Control plus A, while clicking on the can and apply the scale. And if we press space bar, we will see the magic. Let's look at it from the camera view. Assing in C is not perfect. So let's change the margin in the room's rigid body. And I can also decrease the margin. Let's play it again, and it's boss into match. So let's change the mass of the can. And as you can see, it's not solving the problem, and the reason for that might be because the origin of the can is not in the center of the object. So let's go to the first frame. Then go to the edit mode and it is holding alt, select the middle edges of the can. Then press Shift plus S and choose the courser to select it, and then click right mouth button and set orgiin to free Cursor. Let's see if there's any changes to physics. Yes, the physics simulation looks much better. So now we can duplicate the can. First, let's return to the first frame and move our can a little bit closer to the room. Now let's go to the top view by pressing seven. Then with plus d or shift plus d, duplicate the can. And I will just move for the cans along the z axis like that, so I will fall in a spiral. And when we duplicate the jar, we don't need to apply the physics again because it will already be applied. Okay. And after we move all the cans, we can just slight them all and duplicate on the axis. Also, if you look from the camera view, you will notice that the cans will be visible from a ball. Let's move these edges up. And let's play it again. And as you can see, they can starting to fall on the ground, which is cool effect, and if you want, you can keep it, only for that, you need to add rigid body for the floor and change type to passive. But I didn't want it to be like that, so I will change it. But before I will change that, I will also add the amount of cans. And if we go to the scene and in rigid body world, we can change the speed of the animation. I will go for 0.53, and in cache, we'll be able to make the simulation. Now let's fix the s animation. Select our room and go to the edit mode, and we need to select all these edges. Then duplicate them. Then press control plus P and choose selection to separate this object. Then go to the des mode and s all these edges and press F. And we can also extrude it. And because of the bible modifier, we have here a little bit more space at the top. So let's move the top edges up. And also, let's add a new material for the window and name it glass. The transmission changed to one and roughness to zero. And by doing that, we will create a glass. Now we can start a test baking to go to the scene and pick on the bake. You like me to bake everything until the end just to see if there's any Prada. Okay. Let's see what we got. We can see that cans overlapping with each other. And to fix that, we need to change the margin and the rigid bodies. If we change it only and the rooms rigid body, nothing will happen. So we need to change the margin and the cans as well. So select all the cans. And change the margin, and then click the right mode button and the margin, and then click on Copy to selected, and our changes will apply to every selected can. And if you play it again, we can see that it's no longer overlapping. But the problem is that we increased the margin too much. So let's decrease the margin a little bit. I will decrease margin to 0.0 13 and also quick copies selected. And let's see what we got here. Okay. It seems great. So now let's make the final bake. But before we click on the bake button, I will also add Mreks before we click on the bake button, let's change the start frame to 14 and the end frame to 260. Now we can start the baking process. Okay. And here is the cut in the end. Now, this lesson has come to an end and in this lesson, we have learned how to use physics and blender to your advantage and also learned how to solve common problems that you may encounter while using a rigid body. And in the next lesson, we will learn how to add colors to the scene and apply HT and textures. That will create a effect. Okay. 6. Textures: In the previous lesson, we learned how to apply physics to objects, and created a cans animation with the help of that knowledge. Now we'll add a light and colors to our scene using textures and TR. Okay, let's start with the light. So go to the word properties and click on that yellow dot next to color. And here, choose the environment texture. Then click Open and choose the HT. I will leave the link for the HGRI in the description, but you can use your own TI if you want. Rotate the Dry. Let's go to the shading and here change from object to the old, and by pressing control plus T, we'll be able to rotate it on axis. Okay, let's break. And also, let's hide the class and see how it tool looks like. As we can see, now we need more light. So we need to just increase the strength in the materials. And we can also change the class material, select the object, go to the material settings, and by clicking here, we need to choose the class D. And optionally, we can decrease the strength of the HT or I. Now let's create the material for the room, choose that material, and here we can choose any color ones. I will go for purple right now and we can also increase roughness and the metallic. Text choose here the object again, and we can also hide the class for more convenience. And the last object we need to add a material to is. So we turn to the first frame, then select and press the slash to focus on it. Now go to the edit mode. And to apply the label, we need to add themes to it. So I holding Alt, select the edges where you want your label to start. Then click right mouth button and then choose Mark scene the same thing we need to do at the bottom. And also, we need to mark scene at the center of our C. Now we can add two materials to it. First one, will be label and the second one will be metallic. So let's rename them. For the metallic, increase the metallic and decrease the roughness. And to apply the metallic, select any of these faces and press L, and then press aside. For this part, also need to apply the metallic material and at the bottom as well. Okay, great. Also, I would like to fix the seams on the top, so I will just create seams here. Don't select these spaces and apply the label material for them. And in the end, these edges and clean seam. Now let's add a label texture. For that, we need to go to the edit mode and select all these faces. Then click and press rap. And for the material itself, let's select this node and press control plus T and choose any label you want from the description. And as we can see, it is not applied properly. And to fix that I need to click on that icon, and go to the UV editor. And if we come back to the edit mode, we'll see the UV map. Let's again press and drop. And now we can rotate it on the 90 decrees. And as we can see it upside down, so let's rotate it on 180 decrees. Now we can scale it T Okay. And by looking closer, we can notice that the label at the end looks the stores it. To fix that, we need to select all these edges. Then click right Mouse button and select strengthen. The same thing we need to do for these edges. Now we can fix the scale a little bit. And to fix the station completely, we need to select I just and click a line. And for the left side also. Okay. For the label material, we can also decrease the roughness and play with the metallic parameter. And here we go. In this lesson, we'll learn how to create the materials and how to apply the textures for the objects. In the next lesson, I will show you the secret that will make our look realistic. 7. Bonus: In the previous lesson, we learned how to create materials and apply textures to objects. And now I'll show you the secrete that professionals use to make their objects more realistic. Let's go. So let's go to the portico and create a particle system. Then we need to change it to hair. And check the advanced box. For the number of particles, we can decrease it to 260. And now we need to create a new object to the scene. Namely a U sphere. That will serve us as water drop. Let's scale it and shade it Smith. And for convenience, let's rename it. Now we can go back to the particle system and in render render as change to object. And here, change our drop. We can scale drop itself or in the particle system. Preferences, we can change the also change the scale randomness. And that's the particle system is created. But if we go to the Shader viewport, we can see that it has no material. So let's fix that. First slide or drop, and then apply the glass material to it. And here we go. Optionally, we can also work more with the parameters for the can, especially for the roughness. We can add an nice texture connect it to the roughness and also a cool ramp and place it between the noise texture and the roughness. And then click on the nice texture and press control plus t. And to see the changes apply, we can press Shift plus control and click on the cool R node Let's also connect it from object. And all that left two is to change the noise texture and the cool p parameters. And this is what my final result looks like. You can also play how you want, and let's also save the project. Here we go. This is the result that we cut. Also, I notice that when we play the animation, the particle system is not following the object. And to think that we need to apply for the subdivision modifier, and then click on the making that says real and also apply the modifier. Now we need to select all the drops and the can itself and press control plus G to join them. Now the problem will be solved. Now let's add the particle system to all of the cans. We can do it in two different ways. First way is to do it like this and add particle system one by one. Okay. Or we can select all the cans that without particles, and the last, we need to select the can with particle system. Then press control plus L and choose copy modifiers. And to apply the particle system to, we need to apply all the modifiers and then join objects with drops. Okay. And this, we need to do with all of the cans. I want to say that it might be an optional step if we had a BPC order to spend more time on that. I just want to show you the basics and how it works. So I will leave that choice for you. And if we go to the random report and play the animation, we can see the final result. The nimation that we've got at the end. Okay. 8. Render Settings: And the only thing that have to do is to change the render settings. We already change the engine to the cycle and device to GPU compute. All that we need to do is to change the max samples. I will advise you to choose 50-800, but I will change it to 260 for my final render. And in the film, I will check the box and transparent and in color management, I will change the log to medium high contrast. And here we can choose our file when we want to save our animation. And all that left to do is to press the render button. Okay. 9. Conclusion: Now, the Sorial has come to an end, and we have learned a lot of new and useful things and are ready to enter the volt of free D. In any case, this is the result that we got at the end, and I will be very glad to see different versions of your works and perhaps be inspired by your ideas. Don't forget to share your opinions and your works in the comments. And if you have any questions regarding the torial, I'm always ready to answer and help you with that. But unfortunately, that the ends and I see you in the next torial.