How to Animate A Rubik's Cube - Blender Tutorial

Learn to animate a simple Rubik's Cube in Blender, a free 3D modelling and animation program. This tutorial covers all the basics for animating a Rubik's Cube to either randomize or solve it.

If you like this tutorial, feel free to thumbs up this video and leave some comments down below - don't be afraid to give criticism. If you would like to support me, please consider giving me a subscription. I'll be uploading more tutorials on a weekly basis.

[SVAFnemesis]

That "glitch" you mentioned as well as a lot of people were asking in the comment section is caused by Gimbal Lock. Google it and you will soon understand this important concept. Switch rotation mode to Quaternion will solve this problem.

[thecubeshack]

I am happy the rubikk's cube community and 3d community overlap. Just like me.

[nicolaspoitevin]

Just a detail : red is the opposite of orange, green the opposite of blue. Good tuto by the way. I ´ m currently following it.

[AppleToday]

This is what I was looking for, thanks!

[MinecraftsandboxXP]

This is awesome! Thank you for posting! You are amazing!

[RubiksEdits]

Hey, really like your teaching style! I think you should keep it like this for any future tutorials, it makes it really easy to follow :D

[johnjingleheimer-schmidt]

Great tutorial!
I do the keyframing in wireframe view so I can always see exactly which cubes are selected.

[ETatArea]

I came to this video because of the "cube glitch". Thank you comment section.

[Gordin]

Regarding the glitching cubes: I sometimes could bypass it by deleting the rotations for all axis except one in the node editor, but that only worked 50% of times. Since i had to animate a given rotation i couldn't just bypass it by rotating something else, so here is how i "fixed it":

Since only the final product matters, i rendered the whole thing inculding the glitches, then i deleted all keyframes of the single cubes that glitched that came AFTER the glitch. Then i parented the glitching cubes to one that worked fine (most likely only one column of a side glitches) and rendered (and ofc overwrote) the frames that contained the glitch. Kind of a dirty way to get the result you want, but the final product is perfect at least.

Long story summarized: Use Parenting for glitching cubes to overwrite the corrupted frames.

[oscarmunoz]

It was really useful for me, thanks you

[ChrisLerouxDesign]

Simone Morettini Well all of your cubes are selected in the screencap, why? That being said though, there's a similar glitch I mention in the video. Be sure to separate all of your cubes and select individual rows and columns. Make sure that your keyframes are properly created, and if you select a row and the cube goes funky, undo and select a new row/column.

[CaptureRapture]

Nice intro, one thing though, the tutorials bit only flashes up for about half a second before it swings to the right. Apart from that nice intro! Also good clear commentary, can't comment on it as I don't have blender but yer... awesome! :D

[obamagaming]

i did this but with a 5x5x5 cube it works but i had to figure out some stuff myself but it works great anyways

[CalebisOdd]

So is this tutorial not useable then? when I use this The cubes just flip or merge together to form the turn.

[huang_bo_lin]

how do you rotate a face so that it rotates in its axis. my problem is that the origin is at the centre of the whole cube, and when i rotate it 90 degrees, the face tend to rotate around the centre origin instead of the centre cube of the rotating face. Pls reply

[rcfanatic]

I cant get a whole layer to animate. I set the first keyframe of the whole cube then I select the center layer and rotate it 180 (I'm trying to animate the checkerboard pattern) and set the keyframe for the whole cube. then when i play the animation I either rotates all of the cube exept 2 cubies or it rotates like 2 cubies. IDK what im  doing wrong.

[CaptureRapture]

Really like the timeline at the bottom of the video. Very swish.

[marinzgela]

i have problem with animation, when i animate one side my cubes are rotating around themself... ?

[tieuhauvuong]

at 7:19, how can you do that? I see all of dope sheet of cubes disappear but don't know how to do that.

[epicYT]

Can someone Help me I Cant Select anything. only the Original Cube i can select but the others i cant. how do i fix?