Bouncing Cheese in Blender

I've been looking all over the internet to find my friend an animation course in Blender. But sadly I could not find a suitable one, so my only option was to make one myself. I decided to create a bouncing cheese animation as I thought it would be easy to follow but hard enough to challenge them. In the end I decided to use it as my first Instructable as I thought it would be a fun challenge for myself.

• Computer
• Blender (3d animation software) - download it at blender.org/download

S – scales an object

S+Z – scales along z axis

S+Y – scales along y axis

S+X – scales along X axis

TAB – switches into edit mode

E – extrudes an objects face

E+Z –extrudes along the z axis

E+Y –extrudes along the y axis

E+X –extrudes along the x axis

G – grab/move

SHIFT+D – duplicates

CONTROL/COMMAND+B – bevels

In object mode go to: Add, Mesh, Plane

Tab into edit mode and scale your plane along the x axis.

Extrude along the z axis and scale down one of the sides on the y axis.(I've also beveled one of my edges but that is not necessary).

I've hidden my cheese (although this is not necessary) with the H key (alt+H to show). I tabed back into object mode and then added a cube and scaled it down along the z axis

I then added a bevel modifier by going into the tab with a spanner and selecting bevel from the drop down.

I then unhid the cheese (ALT+H) and clicked the shading tab at the top. Then click on the beach ball drop down and select the one that is there.

Feel free to copy my shading setup. It basically creates the illusion of holes on the cheese.

Now back in the layout tab, select the cheese, check the blue slider is at 1 and insert a keyframe (Press the i key and then select location rotation scale).

Move your cheese up on the z axis, move the slider to 30 and insert a new keyframe.

Now select the first keyframe and move it (G key), to frame 60 in the corner of that bit of Blender, set the end to 59.

Now move the keyframe where the cheese is up in the air to frame one.

Right click in the keyframe area, hover over interpolation mode and select bounce.

Click on the camera icon, these are the settings I recommend you use, (use a lower render value for less powerful computers, e.g. laptops)

Click on the printer icon, click the folder and select a place to put your animation, then change the file format from PNG to FFmpeg Video, and under encoding change the container to MPEG-4.

Add in a plane and scale it up.

TAB into edit mode, extrude 2 of the edges up along the z axis, bevel the inside edges and select the background, right click and shade it smooth.

Now with the background selected, click the beach ball tab and click the plus icon, then select a colour, I picked a purple as I felt it contrasted nicely with the yellow cheese (turn the roughness up to 1 and the metallic to 0).

Now back in the shading tab, on the drop down on the left, change object to world. Then add in an environment texture and connect it to the surface of the world output.

Now click open and select a HDRI (I searched for HDRI's and clicked on the first result and downloaded one of them).

I then went back to layout mode and selected everything (A key), then rotated it all along the z axis by 45 degrees (R+Z+45) Then I clicked 3 on the numpad to go to side view and added in a camera. After that I positioned it along the z and x axis's to get the cheese in shot (numpad 0 to go to camera view).

Ensuring that the keyframe slider was at 0, I went to the top left and clicked render and then render animation. After I was done rendering, I located the file and played it back, I used a file converter to turn it into a GIF.

That's it, well done on completing the course, you stuck all the way through. (I have attached my finished MP4).