Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Animating a Walk Cycle

In this section, you’ll be guided step by step through the creation of a basic walking animation. Let’s make Jim come alive!

Tip

When you animate, it’s better if you have a powerful computer, but more important is that your scene is optimized to perform faster (hide objects you don’t need, reduce polygon count, etc.) so you can see your animation playing smoothly while you work. On the Scene tab of the Properties Editor, Blender has an interesting option, Simplify. If you enable Simplify, you’ll be able to select the maximum number of subdivisions that every object in the scene will have. In Jim’s case, the model is probably using between two and three levels of subdivision, which is fine for a final render, but the impact ...