I wanted to learn how to generate some interesting animations using 3D shape meshes, I decided to go through Skillshare and find a tutorial that I could follow (Landed on Smeaf Sculpts 3D)
This was a great tutorial for me as it wasn't super basic but not overwhelmingly complicated either. It helped me to get to grips with the Node Editor functionality within Blender. I started out by messing around with different nodes to add meshes to each vertex/edge of my first shape, these could be any shapes but I used cubes.
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Next I created a spiral spline which I added nodes to in order to convert it to mesh and thicken up the circumference. I added a cap to complete the mesh and attached nodes to control the rotation of the shape through the movement of timeline frames. I had to adjust the number of frames to 360 for a smooth looping animation. This means every frame there would be 1 degree of rotational motion applied.
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After following the next steps of the tutorial, the mesh was split into rings of cubes which could be adjusted through the nodes.
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...Many many nodes later I had a working animation of cubes that would follow a spiral shape, I multiplied/duplicated the initial spiral node and varied the rotation, scale and other variables in order to create a more complex simulation. I also went into the shading space and plugged in a Colour Ramp which made the edges really stand out. I picked colours that I wanted and then created a basic infinity background using a mesh plane.
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I lit the animation using basic 3point lighting and adjusted the hue of the background to contrast with my shapes. I added motion blur, dropped the background colour for added drama and set up my render settings. (Cycles GPU Compute PNG Sequence).
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My computer took nearly three days to render 185 frames of my total 360 frame animation so I decided to stop it there and export the PNGs I'd rendered so far.
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Finally I took my PNG sequence into Davinci Resolve to export as a MP4 file, I also exported a 1000x1000pxl GIF file in Media Encoder to trial for display on social media.
I decided to adjust the node 'formula' for a different result, I changed one of the instance mesh types from a cube to a cone, and made changes to colour pallets and my initial spiral shapes/scale/other properties. This drastically changed the output mesh animation!
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My Top notes for this project were:
Play around with the node variations, saving multiple copies/outcomes as you go.
Tick Motion Blur in the camera render settings to get a really cool finish on the animation.
Alter the Render properties for your PC- Mine were too high/intense for my poor graphics card so adjust where possible! I ended up trying 200 samples rather than 250, GPU Compute for max power and try an Eevee render first to check you are happy before rendering a huge Cycles animation.
Organise Nodes into CTRL+J boxes with labels (N key).
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