Instructables Robot Animation

Hi everyone. Today, I will show you how to create a simple birthday animation featuring your favorite character quickly and easily.

All you need for this is Blender — pretty cool, right? Knowing the basics helps, but even if you’re a complete beginner, you’ll be fine! I’ll be sharing my custom-made birthday kitchen file with you, which includes cakes, banners, balloons, and much more. You can use it to animate your favorite character. I’ll also provide a custom-rigged Instructables Robot character that I recommend using. However, if you’d like to switch things up with a different character, I suggest checking out Mixamo — it offers a bunch of free, rigged characters that you can use.

( https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yD8Dnbea7hqpZzB8SH76uzp0aZoJHvi6?usp=sharing ) - download these before u begin

Before we start, I recommend turning off this little arrow in your Scene Collection. For the first step, import your rigged character into the scene. In Layout mode, select your character — make sure to click on both the character’s mesh and armature by holding Shift — then move it to your desired location. For easier movement, just press G while doing this

Next, select only your armature and switch to Pose Mode. In Pose Mode, click on any bone you want to move. Make sure your Timeline panel is open, and don’t forget to turn on Auto Keying! Select the bone you want to move and adjust it — for example, I rotated the head bone. When you do this, a keyframe should automatically be added. Next, in your Timeline panel, move a few seconds forward and move the same bone again (I rotated the head bone in the opposite direction this time). Now you’ve created a simple head-moving animation! You can repeat this process with as many bones and keyframes as you like. Press the spacebar to play the animation and see your keyframes in action!

To animate the camera, start by adding a camera to your scene. Then press Ctrl + 0 to set it as your active camera. In the View tab, make sure ‘Lock Camera to View’ is enabled — this lets the camera move with your mouse when you press Ctrl + 0. Next, with your Timeline set to frame 1, position your camera at the starting point. A keyframe will automatically be added. Then, move a few seconds ahead on the Timeline and reposition your camera again — this adds another keyframe. You can repeat this process as many times as you want, creating multiple movements and keyframes. (For this demonstration, I created a simple zoom.) Finally, press the spacebar to play the animation and watch your camera motion in action!

In the Editor panel, go to the Render settings and copy the settings I’m using. You can increase the max samples if you want a more detailed animation — just keep in mind that it will take longer to render. Next, in the Output tab, adjust the resolution to your preference and set the frame range. ‘Frame Start’ is where your animation begins, and ‘Frame End’ is where it ends, so make sure these match the length of your animation. In the same section, scroll down and click the folder icon to choose where you want to save your rendered file. Also, make sure your output format is set to a video format — I used FFmpeg.

Once you’ve finished adjusting all the settings, click Render at the top of your screen and select Render Animation. When it’s done, your animation will be ready! You can find the rendered video in the output folder you selected earlier. From there, you can either do extra editing using any video editing software you like or simply keep the animation as it is.

That’s it! I know this tutorial might sound a bit wordy, but trust me — once you try it yourself in Blender, it’s super easy! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. As a bonus, here’s a quick timelapse of me creating the party room and the robot. Enjoy, and thank you!