Christmas Animation using Shape Keys in Blender

[@KaizenTutorials]

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you enjoy this fun little animation tutorial, all in the Christmas spirit. How are you going to spend your Christmas this year? Just like last year things are quite different in the world due to Covid. I hope you and all your loved ones are healthy and happy. Enjoy the holidays!

[@rstreno]

Excellent tutorial. I particularly liked the approach with the displacement and adaptive subdivision. Very clever!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you Rob! Glad you like it🙌🏻

[@knightofthelivingdrones2646]

I am glad I found your channel! New concepts that I haven't seen, explained in an easy to understand sequence. Building on those concepts to make a simple and easy to understand animation. Very well done. Time for me to watch more of your videos.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot! That’s very nice of you. Glad you enjoy the vids 🙌🏻🙏🏻

[@MJ12GRAVITON]

So Creative! Merry Christmas

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you, merry Christmas 🎄

[@UmutUfukUtku]

thanks for this.

[@KaizenTutorials]

You’re welcome!

[@toapyandfriends]

I love how you have the Christmas music in the background I'm going to do that on all my tutorials if I ever make one... And that cutscene after you make say a word from our sponsor just goes with the Christmas music so perfect I'm a subscriber as a result

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot! Glad you like it. Welcome to the club 💪

[@toapyandfriends]

👊😀'you too my friend!

[@indiansrk9997]

1:25 two things will never ends 1. Universe 2. Blender Shortcuts

[@KaizenTutorials]

🙌🙌

[@mizuki2958]

wow amazing could u do a tutorial on a animated environment like moving grass and trees and flowers

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! I will definitely take it into consideration. Merry X-mas 🎄

[@p3tro]

what sample size did you guys render at? :3 so excited

[@KaizenTutorials]

The default scene (basefile) you can get for free has all the render settings setup for you! But I believe it was something like 128 samples only, just with denoising! Merry Christmas 🎄

[@toapyandfriends]

Can you make an updated tutorial the teachers how right when the tree is fully realized in the animation that maybe ornaments and presents get applied somehow...like animated in... It's so awesome I learned so much but I don't know how to do that part yet

[@KaizenTutorials]

Maybe I'll do an update or something similar coming holiday season! 😄

[@iguesslikethat]

@@KaizenTutorials Still up for it? Please? Day #1 of asking For another tutorial

[@KaizenTutorials]

Maaaaaybe 🤘🏻🤞🏻

[@iguesslikethat]

@@KaizenTutorials 🤞

[@ashk7596]

Hey Kaizen, I got through the tutorial but I am getting a small problem. When I try to render the file, Blender doesn't render past frame 29 and seems to crash. I've tried different versions of Blender and messing with the render settings but nothing works. Do you have any type of other troubleshoot or solution to fix this? Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

[@ashk7596]

*Update, Turns out the Adaptive Subdivision was screwing with my GPU's memory, disabling that made the render just fine!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! Glad you got it solved! This was exactly what I was going to say. So good job on getting the solution! Merry Christmas

[@arniferak578]

Umm the chapters are messed up, not according to the video 😅 but it was an awesome tutorial ❤

[@KaizenTutorials]

Sorry for that! I added the chapters from the previous tutorial. They're fixed now! Thanks a lot for pointing that out 🙌 and awesome to hear you like the video!

[@jeremvfx]

amazing tutorial ! i think i will add some light dropping on the tree and some snow maybe

[@KaizenTutorials]

Sounds great! Good luck.

[@cgworm6111]

thats really creative and looks amazing !

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks alot! Merry Christmas 🎄

[@BreakingggBad]

I love your tutorial but i just want a shout out

[@awesomemovies4501]

Bro..I created the shape keys for one model..but doesn't imported when i import the model after export...it shows blank only..

[@KaizenTutorials]

I’m not sure what you mean! Do you want to import a model with shape keys?

[@awesomemovies4501]

@@KaizenTutorials yes bro

[@KaizenTutorials]

I’m not sure that’s possible. You might be able to append it, but I think you would need to bake the animation to be able to import it. So you would be best of by recreating the shape key animation after importing the model!

[@awesomemovies4501]

@@KaizenTutorials tq bro

[@anderspetersen438]

Yo, great tutorial! - is it possible for the wood chips to stay above the ground plane instead of clipping through?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Well it’s sadly not an easy fix since particles don’t respect added modifiers such as a rigid body or something. You can’t set the particle collission shape either… so the only fix I can think of is adding another groundplane which is ‘invisble’ and slightly above the visible one. Then use this higher plane as the collision object so the particles appear to be above ground.

[@anderspetersen438]

Ah, I see, thx for the elaboration :D

[@KaizenTutorials]

No worries! Merry X-mas 🎄

[@harringtonday5319]

Thank you for another brilliant fun and precise tutorial!! - Merry Christmas🎄😀🙏

[@KaizenTutorials]

You are welcome! Glad you like it. Happy holidays 🎄

[@MuhammadKashif-wp2hh]

Thanku

[@KaizenTutorials]

u welcome

[@abhirutmeherishi5738]

how to bake the shape keys I want to export a paper roll animation to unity?

[@KaizenTutorials]

I'm not 100% sure, as I haven't tested this, but I believe you can just export it as an FBX and make sure you export with all options enabled and then just import the FBX in Unity! Hope this helps, good luck!

[@dog2182]

what music is used at the start? will try out this tutorial soon. Thank you!

[@KaizenTutorials]

You definitely can! It’s music available in the Audio Library. Which is accessible by going to KZbin Studio and looking on the left side. The specific song in this case is called ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas (Instrumental Jazz)’ by E’s Jammy Jams!

[@roberthintz4017]

Brilliant tutorial!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot!

[@consumidormaldito]

that is a good tutorial bro thanks

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Merry Christmas 🎄

[@ndnzb]

This is crazy good! Thank you!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Merry Christmas 🎄

[@brunoriyuoficial]

nice.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you, merry X-Mas! 🎄

[@Kendrixx-f1b]

whoa this was a good tutorial!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you!

[@MadManTnT]

That is great :D

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Merry Christmas 🎄

[@ulyanaguminska7980]

Hello) thanks for the cool video) I'm new to blender, so I'm constantly facing various problems) Tell me: why after editing the star in compositing, when I switch to another tab (shading, for example), the changes that were made in compositing are not displayed. What am I doing wrong?)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hey, thanks! Blender can be difficult when starting out. To answer your question; compositing is done AFTER rendering. So what you're seeing there is your render, with compositing added. So when you switch back to e.g. rendered view the compositing is no longer there. Basically shading gives you an overview of your materials (the result here is also how materials look in eevee), rendered view gives you the raw output blender will render out (be it eevee or cycles) and then after rendering a frame you'll see all your compositing being applied! They are working on realtime compositing though, I believe. So in the future you can just see it as you are expecting it to be now! :-) Happy blending!

[@ulyanaguminska7980]

@@KaizenTutorials Thank you very much for the detailed answer☺

[@acnimatorstudio7487]

Good!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks!

[@cocboss3329]

Wonderful

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you!

[@harshitbhavsar7080]

wow

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks!

[@fangelesl]

te amo

[@KaizenTutorials]

Gracias! Feliz Navidad 🎄

[@Equilion]

Wow! When I started the tutorial I was quite sure, that it would be an easy one to learn. Then you unpacked all those nodes and I got lost quickly. Nevertheless I'm going to try it myself, watching it over and over again. ;)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha sorry! Yeah it can be a bit difficult sometimes. But just rinse and repeat and eventually you’ll get a good grasp of the nodes 🙌🏻

[@Equilion]

@@KaizenTutorials Ok. ;) I did it. Unfortunatley I can't use the Subdivision Modifier on my system, because it's to weak. When I do that, I can't preview anything, but with a framerate of 1 or so. Even had to switch to Eevee to get something usable. So I left thet part out. Looks nice anyway. Added a text "Frohe Weihnachten" at the end and a nice short xmas background tune. Thanks for the tutorial! Maybe I try some short clips more with morphing to have something for the whole family and everyone gets his/her own animation. Will have to repeat your stuff many many times, until I can rember the steps and understand completely, what they are doing. ;)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Great! Yeah some scenes can become pretty heavy, quite fast. But glad you got it to work this way. EEVEE should work just fine! But very fun idea to make unique ones for everyone and adding text and other elements. Cool christmas card haha! And yeah definitely keep practicing, or even better do different tutorials. The broader your knowledge of Blender will become the easier it will be to do these things from memory :-) good luck and happy blending!

[@Equilion]

@@KaizenTutorials May I ask you, if you please can mention to reset scale, rotation and location with ctrl-a if needed!? Stumbled across some diffculties, because I didn't reset, but would have needed to :( Checking back in your video, the values had been reset. And one more question: Those rotation values don't work for me. I can't get Blender to rotate e.g. those 1080° it always takes the shorter value to complete the turn and then stops. Not sure, if I could make my question clear. Maybe it's some setting I have to enable/disable? Thanks in advance for "enlightening" me ;)

[@KaizenTutorials]

I didn’t mention it?! Sorry, I usually do mention applying stuff. But uhm, I’m not sure about your question. But I am sure that whatever it is it’s not do with a setting. The things I used in this video were not setting dependent (besides maybe node wrangler for the shading). Feel free to send me an email at [e-mail] with the issue and blend file and I can have a look for you.

[@Daniel-tx3hv]

Great work, it turned out great!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! Merry christmas 🎄

[@Daniel-tx3hv]

@@KaizenTutorials You too! 🙏

[@amoghagrawal1]

Thankyou for this tutorial and Merry Christmas 🎅🎄

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! You too my friend 🎄🙌🏻

[@amoghagrawal1]

:) This is my end result: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i5faiomcq76AsNE

[@KaizenTutorials]

Very cool! Like the additional sound effects aswell. Great job! 👍🏻🙏🏻🎄

[@amoghagrawal1]

Thanks, it's just a wood carving sound that I added to the background

[@KaizenTutorials]

I like it! 🙏🏻

[@markokovacevic3225]

This is amazing! Thanks for sharing! When I put the subdivision modifier at the bottom of the stack (under the particle system), the particle system doesn't work correctly. The shavings seem to shrink, and they just apear at the bottom of the tree . What am I doing wrong? Thanks again for your time, I've learned a lot!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! Hmm your issue sounds a bit weird to me but you could try baking the particle system, before moving the subdiv in the modifier stack. Maybe that should prevent weird stuff from happening!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Let me know if it worked!

[@hartbrad9]

@@KaizenTutorials Had the same issue, redid the particles and baked before reordering modifiers. Seemed to work! Killer stuff thanks!

[@markokovacevic3225]

@@KaizenTutorials Thank you so much for your help. Baking before did fix the problem! Thank you! One last questions, if you can help please, after I do the steps in the compositing, when I go back to "layout" mode and render from there, the glare effects don't show. What can I do to see it? Sorry, I'm relatively new with Blender, and absolutely new with the compositing. Thanks again for your help!

[@markokovacevic3225]

Never mind on the compositing part, seems to work now. Guess a bug or something. Blender needed restarting it seems. Thanks again for your time!