A New Animation System

The Animation & Rigging module will show their work of the past year on the Animation 2025 project, and present the exciting features and improvements coming to Blender 4.0 and beyond.
"A New Animation System" by dr. Sybren A. Stüvel --
Learn more about Blender Conference 2023 at conference.blender.org/2023/
#BCON23 #b3d

[@phili_eph]

i love blender

[@chicao.do.blender]

Me too

[@MichaelHickman3D]

Animation and texture paitning are the two things I wanted to see get pushed forward! Glad to see these major improvements in the future!

[@VentelHD]

I would use Blender for texture painting only if one thing would be patched, which is very laggy painting. Even with OP PC and 2k textures, sometimes, just clicking with a brush, can freeze up to a minute.

[@janklingner2694]

no! no priority! just use substance or armorpaint or quixel mixer. Professional Blender Production primarily needs better animation functions and workflows. Maya is industry lead bc of better animation pipelines and tools

[@FireF1y644]

Animation and sculpting

[@Alumx]

I'm so excited for the future of animation tool 😁😁 THE RIGGING NODES !!

[@AkshayKumarX]

As with all Blender updates, this is huge and an amazing gift to the community. These refinements are the culmination of years of planning and developing and the sheer hard work that went into it all by such a great development team. Recently, trendy things like AI tools have been on the rise recently, getting promoted by several Blender youtubers. But after a close examination, most turned out to be a bare bones software that take control away from the user rather than helping things. Their focus is more on gaining a market share by investing into marketing and paid promotions. And to top it all off, almost every software is subscription based.

[@futurestoryteller]

My favorite thing about watching Blender conference videos is the KZbin algorithm becoming absolutely convinced that I am the world's biggest fan of powerpoint presentations.

[@JoshuaMerrill042]

This is going to be a huge improvement to animating in Blender 🖤🖤 Thank you!

[@kingghidorah8106]

Hello fluff

[@erivelton8851]

Thankyou for adding that "base point" snap, it is GOLD. Blender is the best, greetings from Brazil!

[@Sithlordx]

NLA strip shuffle is much needed changed loved it 😍

[@tonibuenavida]

really amazing! thanks to all the team involved! 🥰

[@matejivi]

Nice! Cant wait to see animation layers implemented. Great work!

[@funnyberries4017]

It's the one thing I miss most from maya

[@Drika111]

Blender is amazing! I liked everything what they already put together and what they are planning to do *This improves will really make animating in it easier and more fun. I can't wait 🌟

[@antonioya]

Great talk. What you have done so far is great. I'm looking forward to trying the new features of 4.0.

[@patrickmuller3248]

27:26 - as a Maya animator I can only say: THANK YOU! :D

[@vieleanimations]

you are welcome :)

[@VortexArtLab]

Thank you, Blender! Amaizing and much needed innovations!

[@UglyHouseStudios]

THANK YOU!!

[@planet_machine]

These are some great changes! Glad to see Blender animation is getting a few updates

[@pratiksolanki]

Love the updates .. that animation layer system is awesome … good luck guys

[@JosephHeck]

Super excited about all these advances!

[@herbertskasonde4941]

I am glad to see Nathan....

[@Jeanlenysole]

Animation snippets in pose library - FINALLY! This is so important for animators :)

[@Katy133]

This is awesome, I was smiling so hard throughout! I really hope Blender adds an animation snippets library in the future soon (mentioned 37:07 of the video). It would really speed up the current workaround for animators.

[@3dtweettv]

I am very excited because finally, Blender will bring so awaited animation layer. I am very happy about that. Thanks a lot

[@conrad6071]

say goodbye to fixed number of layers, this time, forever

[@RainSoxx]

Please improve/add better viewport motion paths, real-time, interactive, with handles to change the path within the viewport etc. That would be fantastic.

[@bjaanderson]

That would be incredible!

[@sagaevan9641]

Love everything here!

[@TheRealLifeSonicTheHedgehog]

YES INNOVATION

[@heckensteiner4713]

I've learned to work with a lot of Blender's animation limitations since switching from Maya. But I would certainly welcome some of the tools from Maya's graph editor! Also Animaide is incredible. Mice to see it getting some official recognition!

[@BusinessWolf1]

Dope, I think the next update should be focused on texturing. Substance painter is really not that complex of a program, yet it has everyone by the balls.

[@iamawatcher9201]

Blender spending 2-3 years just to have basic animation features that Maya had 10 years ago.

[@1zymn1]

There are only two things that are absolute: Blender updates and taxes

[@gherat]

They just copy everything that Maya has. Animbot and Studio Library

[@mixchief]

​@@gherat Does Maya have rig nodes?

[@gherat]

@@mixchief Yes

[@mixchief]

​@@gherat Just a couple of questions. A. Does Maya have a complete 2D-animation system that can be integrated as a first-class citizen in the 3D production environment? I.e. objects which contain animated 2D sequences that's treated the same way as 3D objects. Enabling you to, for instance, wrap your 2D animation (objects) around 3D objects with a shrinkwrap modifier in order accomplish things like, let's say, pumping blood veins on a clenched fist. Then jump back and re-tweak things in the 2D animation and so forth. Mix and match. B. Does Maya have the ability to keyframe and animate sculpted shape transformations, in order to accomplish something like stop-mo or claymation? C. Does Maya have procedural construction that come close to Geometry Nodes (something that's probably only surpassed by Houdini)? D. Does Maya have a realtime Compositor? E. Does Maya have a realtime render engine? F. Does Maya start up in 3-5 seconds? G. Is Maya a 300 MB download that doesn't require a registered account somewhere? I. Can Maya be executed as a portable program from a tiny USB stick, anywhere? J. Is Maya backed financially by major players in numerous industries? K. Do Maya's development benefit significantly from contributions by its community? L. Is Maya's development open so you know what's in the works at any point in time? M. Do Maya get the same amount of frequent updates as Blender? N. Is there an annual conference to celebrate its continuous progression? O. Is Maya's reason for existing anything other than the fact studios' been investing in its pipeline since way back in stone age? P. Is there any chance Maya's acclaimed advantages in terms of animation features will be matched and surpassed in a matter of quarters/years? Q. Is Mayas modeling features ever going to catch up with Blender or is that a futile race? R. How about third party tools. Do Maya users enjoy the same wealth and diversity - customized tools for just about anything you'd want to do? S. How about quickly finding learning material for every single part of the UI including methods, down the bits and bobs under the hood? T. Are Maya developers still recommending their users to wipe their precious preferences - as a precaution, should they be corrupted - just as they did some 20 years ago? U. Did Maya stop serving errors and warnings as soon as you do simple mundane tasks, on fresh installs? V. Has Maya stopped forcing you to OCD about deleting the useless construction history unless you're asking for unconditional crashes? (A laborious ritual that traditionally always defeated the benefits having a construction history in the first place.) W. Do Maya have a unified UI where everything looks like it belongs to the same program?

[@kordaling]

YESSSSS finally some animation improvements

[@USBEN.]

Critical improvements indeed. I would love to be able to animate using motion paths directly as it saves soo much time to be just able to modify a curve, somebody made an addon for that long ago but abandoned it.

[@ShaefferStudios.Animation]

rig nodes... my head hurts with just basic geometry nodes. oh boy this is gonna take some adjusting too but they do look awesome!

[@nathanielrupsis2285]

LETS GOOOOO!!!!!!!

[@lidestudios5094]

I still can't believe this is a free software, I love blender so much it's the best

[@artcadev]

With the new simplify Auto-Keying option, what would be awesome once an animation its been worked on, we should have an option so it deletes curves that aren't been used or keying, this can also help when debugging baking and generally speaking making the animation lighter and cleaner. Ty!

[@janborr]

Wow I'm specifically looking forward for the rigging nodes!

[@RenderRealmstudio]

Well this is exciting

[@chensounthai5104]

so Cool amazing new feature coming

[@metachanneleducation]

Hello. In my opinion, the user's motion capture poses the largest challenge when using Blender to execute animations. For instance, we downloaded the BVH animation files (motion capture files) from Bandai Namco, Mixamo, POSER, and the CMU database, among other places. For an object to be animated in Blender, retargeting is a highly involved procedure. Take a drum stick, for instance, which is intended for drumming. I have attempted the technique in Blender hundreds of times; it is quite difficult and complex. Retargeting the character in motion (a drummer, for instance) and animating the drum equipment have the same complexity. It is incredibly difficult for us to animate individuals and items in Blender because of their hard and intricate rigging technique. In this context, Blender ought to have the ability to strike a compromise. For instance, retargeting the animation to make it easier to utilise and facilitate user adoption of a BVH mocap file. My KZbin channel profile contains some illustrations of intricate animations that I was able to deconstruct using Blender. For complicated animations like lipsynch and a singer's facial expression during a song, I had to use Motion Builder and/or MAYA for complex animations such as lipsynch animation and a singer's facial expression while singing a song. It's time for Blender to change complicated animation schemes to be easier and more user friendly by increasing the options in the animation pose library to be able to adopt the BVH file (for retargetting). This including locomotion animations that are sequential and sequeces in nature (a series of different animations in a row) This is just an input.

[@Gorion103]

Props for adience for mentioning gamedev stuff.

[@Jyk9111ynkmf]

Very hopeful

[@Animegold2856]

Im convinced Blender is one of the best software developers and inovators of all Time😎😇

[@romanNood1es]

Pose picker? Yes please!😊

[@minerkey682]

really *really* looking forward to this! I've started to get familiar with the NLA editor and I've come to realize that the system is a bit of a nightmare, especially with not being able to have multiple armatures/models use one action and instead having to separately control and manage them. I have an animation towards the end involving 4 different armatures and, if I want to animate or tweak them, I have to go back to the beginning of the timeline and make each armature use their corresponding actions for that animation... its kinda clunky and I wish I could do the equivalent of hitting 'edit' where it allows me to just edit the animation right then-and-there

[@marcelowiek]

The thing I want it most on Blender is to have a speed graph editor just like After Effects have for animations, this will be VITAL for animation!

[@barchuk422]

i really need smart auto keying. if a parameter has keyframes and i change it i want a new keyframe ONLY ON THAT PARAMETER gosh i really need this in my life. i do hundreds of keyframes in seconds but i never succeed to do any complex animation because of the lack of auto keyframing

[@Arjjacks]

In the preferences in the animation section, there's a panel for auto keyframing where you can turn on Only Insert Available. This will confine Blender to only adding keys to values that have existing keyframes already. If you want to be even more restrictive, you can turn Only Insert Needed as well. This will actually forbid you from adding keyframes manually if there's no change in the parameter's value. Only if the value changes will it be keyed. I don't use that one but the first is invaluable.

[@vieleanimations]

Yes that is on the list of things we will add

[@u1over]

Yeah, exporting settings and optimization for specific game engines is something i pray for. Exporting rigs and animations always hurts. Moreover if there is any possible way of rescaling rigged objects without rerigging it, that would be cool.

[@AutodidactAnimotions]

parent your rigged object to an empty and rescale the empty.

[@u1over]

@@AutodidactAnimotions thanks!

[@VarlamDWMA]

Hell YeaaaaaHhhh !!!

[@clubedeanimacao3d]

I think would be interesting being possible to add animations to the pose library to instead just poses. Its more intuitive than savin as an action and going to the NLA for this.

[@MetalGearMk3]

This looks great, reminds me of Maya.

[@michaelsmusicinstruments9980]

🧡Bcon23

[@teresefalk3506]

Just as a answear on "keying sets" only time I have used it was a faster alternative to assign constraints keyable valyes to the keying set. That way I could set keyframes on multiple constraints by one button press.

[@crankyfox]

God please yes. Please fix animation and softbody sim

[@MarcoAnimator_com]

In my opinion they are developers talking about developing things, the key is the second question at the end. They must speak with animators about animators issues and better performances. Writing a pose in the pose library or even an animation has to be a reallity.

Don't worry, we have weekly meetings with various animators & riggers.

[@waelsahly30]

nice

[@Arturhorn]

Did I miss it or there was no mention of motion paths? They still don't update realtime while using graph editor and it's great pain of mine :(

[@VentelHD]

Animation layers addon build-in within Blender. That's what I'm talking about!

[@thedeathisneverfaraways4826]

THEY ARE FINALLY ADDING GHOSTING F YEAH

[@StephGV2]

* It would be nice if any action could be used as a pose, with multiple keyframes. I kind of expected poses to work like that when I added keyframes. * It would be nice if poses were accessible as nodes which could scrolled and mixed with a single value instead of with keyframes on every bone. * It would be nice if actions were available in single value form that could play a keyframe sequence. * This would allow very complex animation, with a single Fcurve. Or multiple overlapping single channels from multiple actions that can be blended. * How about we make sure that Rigify remembers constraints that the rigger added when we regenerate rigs. * And we now have to regenerate all of our rigs, because the Rigify converter doesn't automatically take all the old bone layers and generate bone collections. It looks like integrating bone and mesh data including shape keys in a single action is getting closer to reality. It's been frustrating not having this already. Also @36:40 is a good start. * This should work within the space now being used for Geometry Nodes. The "Node Editor" should be able to handle any node: shader, animation, bone animation, geometry nodes including shape keys. * Interchangeable math nodes and direct channel connections should work * Proximity node setup would be useful for rigging. You could use it to automatically generate constraints and turn them on and off. * That would make object handling a lot nicer for animators. * With integration with mesh data and Proximity sensors, it could be useful in autoskinning. * Shader node should be operating in this space as well. * It would sure be nice to be able to hook poses to shape keys. Even multiple shape keys. * A vector distance counter would be nice. Even in 2D, it would be helpful rigging wheels that match the ground speed in a U-turn. Space battles could be amazing.

[@oliveuk]

I would have loved to hear more about parallel evaluation but I guess the answer says it all :/

[@BlendingEdge]

You guys should eitehr give the people asking the question a MICROPHONE.. or you need to repeat the question.. otherwise the youtube audience just hears the answers to a bunch of mystery questiosn no one can hear.

[@1DInciner]

26:50 Just press "I" Not sure how it corellates with heavy alternation when you have to set different animation properties each time. Both ways should be supported.

[@janekkaczmarek9774]

i would be pleased to have overshoot possibility in shift+e tool. forgot the name.

[@PCgmesforever]

Awesome presentation and lots to be excited for!🎉 My question is, regarding rigging nodes, is rig generation , somewhat like what "rigging nodes" add-on by "Aquatic nightmare" offer, something that is planned in future? I was really intrigued by the workflow this add-on offered but it seems to be discontinued and not working on current blender version therefore I'm hopeful it will have some reincarnation in future.

[@kolupsy]

I think rigging nodes for generating deform bones ect is a really bad idea and I am very sure that this is not what they are trying to do here. I think it’s going to be similar to UE5 control rig where the nodes handle how the deform bones move and interact

[@Arjjacks]

@@kolupsy My understanding is that, in the same way that geometry nodes are meant to ultimately replace modifiers with premade node graphs with exposed parameters, rig nodes will replace constraints by the same token. There will probably still be a constraints tab, but adding a "constraint" will add the equivalent rig node graph with matching parameters instead.

[@user-pi2nj7lg6z]

I wanted to reach out and apologize if my message feels a bit sudden. I understand that everyone has a busy schedule, and I truly appreciate your time. If you have a moment, I'd love to have a quick chat with you. I value your insights and would appreciate the opportunity to connect. Thanks for considering, and I look forward to hearing from you.

[@sodiufas]

pls set deafault interpolation to linear!

[@RainSoxx]

You can already do that within Preferences > Animation > F-Curves

[@sodiufas]

@@RainSoxx omg, thank you!

[@TimDownsAnimation]

RIGGING NOOOOOOODDDEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!11111111!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@CGMCreativeuz]

Maya good bye Blender Welcome

[@xox8717]

Not quite yet.

[@durvids474]

Not if you want to be employed

[@Sakda_Sombatluan]

Wouldn't it be possible to manipulate animation layers right on the timeline?

[@captain98812]

On the other hand, did a few things for weightpaint because disaster

[@dynstinn]

The layered animation feature I s something I have heard maya artist talk about while using blender, I had a friend who used maya and I skied him to check out blender, now that it is coming to blender I will make sure to make him check it out one more time.

[@roivinikmossel2998]

what about rigging?

[@Martin16707]

When does this update come out?

[@nathanielrupsis2285]

It's a pretty big project, we're updating foundational elements of the animation system. So likely some experimental version of this will be available in 4.1, but the new system won't replace the old one until 5.0.

[@Martin16707]

@@nathanielrupsis2285 ohhh 😯 ok thank you very much for the response

[@Shinziga]

What would be great beside all fancy smancy new features, make the workflow and tools around game development BETTER!!!!!

[@blendertutorial4928]

can i react to this video with some commentery?;p

[@eobet]

Blender has a goal to be intuitive!? Finally after almost 30 years! 😂

[@davidrozier1126]

Where have you been since 2.8?

[@eobet]

@@davidrozier1126 2.8 was a singular moment in time, and they've been riding that shit for close to 5 years now.

[@davidrozier1126]

@@eobet Blender has been becoming more intuitive ever since 2.8. The Asset Browser in 3.0, updates to the Graph Editor to make it more intuitive, probably a whole bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, but either way, Blender's been becoming more intuitive, so this isn't new.

[@CommentPositionInformer]

@@eobet "singular moment in time" What, since then they've become *less* intuitive or something?

[@skibidiguy2345]

bro thinks his in the future

[@leswine1582]

hot...

[@sakerberg4512]

:D

[@wehavetowakeup2049]

7:25. It's so obvious that you chose the worst bone group colors to accentuate the reason for changing it. Give users the option to keep the aesthetic of full channel colors. There's half a dozen darker colors that make the channel pop, you can change the text color for more contrast, and it's visually easier to organize and group the CTRL channels versus your 4.0 solution of a tiny box with the bone color. Please give the ones who like it the option to use it. Preferences? Also, If you're going to get rid of Bone Groups, any chance you could let us assign a color to a Bone Collection so all the bones in that collection have that same color? Kinda like BONE GROUPS? Thanks for all your hard work.

[@art.generalist]

And there is still no object visibility parameter, like in c4d or 3ds max ...

[@memetheew]

But there is... You can keyframe render visibility for any object

[@art.generalist]

@@memetheew its like left hand touching right ear behind head

[@Uns248]

Blender is the best for roblox studio ❤❤❤

[@dalmar7977]

I want basic blender tools sir tell me In website

[@solrax6026]

Blender keeps chipping away at Maya. It this point maya will be obsolete like Mudbox if blender keeps on this path. Maya is just to expensive for what it does an Blender is just fun to use while maya its still a pain to use

[@durvids474]

Looks like someone hasn't really used Maya

[@solrax6026]

@@durvids474 i own maya. So yes I have. I can't deny somethings are better in blender then maya. Animation is still better in maya. All animation tools still better in maya

[@cristiangambadori220]

To me nodes for rigging seem pretty useless.

[@treywaka2444]

stop clapping!!

[@TheNei]

[@gherat]

Nice try copying Animbot and Studiolibrary and Maya’s animation layers. Aren’t you guys afraid of being sued?

[@durvids474]

In a couple of months all the blender fanboys will be proudly stating that blender invented those features!

[@solrax6026]

I get what you mean but sued is unlikely. These are all features and features that I use constantly. It would be nice to have these features in blender too.

[@CommentPositionInformer]

Animbot, Studiolibrary and Maya haven't sued eachother. Why the hell would they sue Blender, which doesn't even have monetization?!

[@xox8717]

What are you talking about ,these are universal features just like polygons , lights..etc and some features where in blender long before animbot for example, animation layers are found in any DCC including other softwares and so on..they can only be sued if they copy the same code which wouldn't happen sine these are professional developers working for a company not some amateurs who wouldn't care about legal issues.

[@gherat]

I don't mean literally sue them.. I just see Blender copy everything from Maya and the fanboys acting like Blender invented the wheel with every release, it's just so dumb @@xox8717

[@blackjew6827]

in 200 years blender will be 50% as good as any other program 10 years ago!

[@mralienboi]

nice