3D cartoon from scratch

Hello, dear Habr

For the first time I was going to write to you, because there is something to tell and, finally, a little time appeared. The leitmotif today will be such a topic as learning 3D-animation.
The point of no return disappeared three years ago. Then a small group of dreamers, who spent five years in the hobby mode engaged in animation, decided to make this their profession. It is now almost three years for us, and a good dozen people produce 3D-animation: children's TV shows and advertising for computer games. And then, knowing little how to make cartoons, six people gathered.
The fact that we have never done 3D-animation before, and the fact that no one is left of the original line-up is a separate story. And today's - about how, from scratch, was created in Kazan animation studio, fully working on free software.

For clarity, a small cutting of our work:

Pipeline

The main tool was the Blender program. Then, just a month ago, the Cycles render appeared in it, which we foolishly rushed to use in projects. It is now stable and practically omnipotent, and then it flew out on every second renderer. But not only that 90% of studio people have never seen Blender, so we went further, and installed Ubuntu as the operating system, which was first seen by 100% of colleagues. Having fun, how could. What can I say.

Autodesk Conspiracy

Why in Russia animation studios do not use Blender?
Of course, there is no worldwide conspiracy. And Russian animation studios at the start are guided by the opinion of the specialists who create them. These key people already understand very well how they can build a workflow and how to optimize it in the future. The experience of such a user often goes beyond the first decade and it is clear that this is not the experience of using Blender, which in those times was much weaker than Max and Maya.
Our studio was free of such a load of knowledge, so we frantically turned on Linux, Blender, GIMP, InkScape and their ilk and sat down to figure it out.
The second serious reason to use Max or Maya is elementary in that there is someone to work for them. The fashion for these programs and the illusion of ubiquity attracts hordes of self-taught people.
In Kazan, we then found as many as two students who agreed to help us in our spare time from the institute. The third person who knew Blender was your humble servant. Then the training looked very simple. We knew about what to do to get a cartoon, and I ran and prompted the buttons.
')

Newbies training

As you might guess, a lot of sweat and blood was spilled. The turnover was also the wildest. But we were trained with the speed of downloading information to the USB flash drive. Unfortunately, it was a work for wear. Constant nerves, life without a studio, but, moreover, low performance due to an infinite number of errors.
As soon as we managed to pass this stage, we began to write a tutorial. If before that a new employee had been kolupal for three months, sorting out his duties on his section of the conveyor, now with a teacher (!) He had been learning the whole studio work for two months and was aware of his place in it.
All anything, but the key figure in this process was the teacher and now he worked for wear. It could not last long and, naturally, did not continue.
This training system also crumbled. Fortunately for the studio, by this time we figured out how to work and the new man at the studio was already trained by the studio. Distracted colleagues from work, was mistaken, received cuffs, in general, he studied. And then the picture took shape.
Learning from scratch in the company of dinosaurs is a difficult and dangerous task. The specialist does many things on the machine, he has no idea that you may not know the alphabet. We are far from bison, but the very first stupid question is from a beginner, and the irritation sensor began to go off-scale: "How can you not know this ???" And there is no place for the beginner to know.
It was then that the decision was made to write an intensive training course “3D-cartoon from scratch” and include everything you need: basic knowledge, basic tools, methods for speeding up work, describing common mistakes and ways to avoid them. And not just book knowledge, but as much as possible applied, everyday. And the work began to boil.
This course is now ready and even laid out in free access on YouTube - goo.gl/LBzAQL But the way it was created is a great story.

How to create a video course

To say that I am a lazy person is to say nothing. I do not do anything that my life does not depend on. In general, the question of motivation got tough, but it was decided very simply. I organized courses on Blender in Kazan. A group of 10 people gathered and there was nowhere to retreat. But this seemed to me a little. I organized a contact in public - vk.com/blender_kzn , where I promised to post this course for free. And the paths to retreat or delays were finally cut off.
And away we go. There were two lessons per week in Kazan: on Monday and Friday. This meant that from Tuesday to Thursday I mounted the recording of the occupation of Monday, and prepared for the occupation on Friday, and on the weekend I mounted Friday and prepared Monday. Somehow I did not think that it would take all my time at all.
And on the Internet are videos for 10 minutes, and classes lasted for two hours. To mount such material adequately would be impossible, so I went to the trick. Classes were prepared not just in the form of text, but in the form of a recorded and already cleaned voice. And the lesson in Kazan was as follows: there were two or three parts, during which I turned on the recorded audio tracks, and at that time he himself turned the program with the mouse, which the students actually saw, and the program wrote for recording from the monitor. And between the blocks I examined the questions of Kazan students. It was a real sport with elements of self-torture.
But in the end, both the Kazan students and public subscribers, who had nearly a thousand people in three months, were satisfied. The task of the course was to create its first 3D cartoon. And although there were about 20 works, the course certainly helped many: some still make their cartoons, others are sawing the games, still others just come to learn strictly certain knowledge. The course BlenderTUT is free on YouTube - goo.gl/LBzAQL and our newcomers to the studio are already passing it.
So the story has reached today.

What's next?

To be honest, it was not possible to include everything that I wanted into the course. I would be happy, but students in Kazan simply did not keep up with what was happening and had to reduce the concentration of the new in the lessons. As a result, a couple of points flew out of the stated plan. But, even worse, I woke up to the taste of this business. I would really like to write an advanced course on the Blender program. He would have helped me and hundreds of beginners and followers of the "trideshnik". I understand perfectly well that many issues of this course are already beyond my competence, so I enlisted the support of my colleagues. And they will definitely help if the course starts in production.
There is only one small "BUT". From the experience of the first course, I understand how much time it takes. The new course will take 4 months of full time work and I decided on my first crowdfunding project. I hope no one regards it as an advertisement, because the benefits of this course are tens of times higher than its value. Therefore, I will leave here a link to my new course " Blender Level Up " - goo.gl/NkuIPk and I hope that disinterested habrazhiteli will look at it through their fingers, and those interested will follow the link and vote with a ruble.

Verdict

Creating an animation studio from scratch, and even using free software, is almost impossible. There is no debugged pipeline or a person who will debug it with this software. There are no ready-made specialists for this software either ... but ... we are doing it. I will write about it in the future here, on Habré. Perhaps there will be enthusiastic heads with whom we will find a common language. We are also happy to accept new employees, we are now expanding and there are already people who have moved to Kazan to work with us on the Navigator campus .
Many thanks to all for your attention. See you again!
And, of course, write in the comments if you want to offer your participation or, on the contrary, you want to learn something from us and ask for advice. I would be happy to write about it.