How to Animate EVERYTHING with Absolute Shapes Keys

Breakdown and tutorial of how I animated Patrick and Aku on blender using only absolute shape keys and without using any rig.

Timestamps
0:00 Intro animation
0:21 Differences between relative shape keys and absolute shape keys
0:44 Straight-ahead animation
1:15 Pose-to-pose animation
1:29 Advantages of absolute shape keys
2:31 Tips and consideration

#blender #blendertutorial #b3d

[mvegaarance]

I think this style of animation is super expressive and dramatic. I would love to see more AAA movies taking this approach.

[neonbarnowl]

The Blender community is so creative 😍 love the art style and animation!

[PutineluAlin]

This is a game changer for people who like to animate traditionally.
I really have to think to start using grease pencil and you're way to forget the rig.

[tapiarte]

Feels very natural, it's like modeling every frame

[MattBixler]

this is so cool, i love how many different solutions there are to any given problem. the process is almost like going way back to the 90s and doing vertex animation. this would be so useful for small objects that only need to animate once or twice in a piece.

[cintrond]

This is how I did my very first animation. It was in some old game engine and I didn't know about bones yet so I animated a run cycle, hit, and death animation for my character by pushing verts 😅

[Liam-vbxo]

a very interesting approach. Would it be possible to show a sped up version of the entire process from start to finished animation? I think it would be quite interesting to see.

[Lance_G]

Would "Absolutely" love to see a full process video with a more tutorial based approach, this is an incredible technique!

[chicketydee]

Thank you so much for this! A friend and I were discussing the exciting idea of using shape keys as the source of animation frames, but we were facing some puzzling aspects. Then you essentially posted a video that for me could have been called "Hey you, do this to get what you want!" I've passed your video on to my friend and I am sure he's going to love it as much as I. I was not even aware of the option of using absolute shape keys so this is a real revelation.

[natfig]

I’ve always had this style of animation in my mind, I always wondered if it’s possible and if it’s used but this proved it to me

[Redmoa]

Looks hella hard but can't deny the results. Very cool style.

[thehyperstar]

Your animation looks fantastic. What I love is that the movement is very faithful to the original shows, not just a stop-motion look.

[flylite]

I never would've considered this level of fidelity on shape keys alone even possible. You have an incredible style and beautiful animations! Excellent work!

[domolutz]

This is an interesting approach. It works well for shots like the ones you used but if I think about very dynamic shots it would be a real struggle... additionally there's no adjusting arcs like this. The biggest + of CG animation is in my opinion it's flexibility to adjust animation at any point. Changing arcs, retime, layered animation... all these things get lost with an approach like this.

[FindPlay]

You can achieve the same effect even with Relative Shapekeys but it takes a few more clicks. The advantage of that is that you can combine Relative and "Absolute" Shapekeys on one Mesh:

If you want to go from Key1 to Key2 you can simply change the "Relative To" property of Key2 from Basis to Key1
Then if you want to have a thing similar to the Evaluation Time that Absolute Shapekeys have, you can use a driver on Key1 and Key2 values
(however keep in mind that this way, editing shapekey that comes before others (in this case it's Key1 because Key2 is based on it) will also edit Key2 shapekey; in case you don't want that it can be solved probably by multiple ways but the one that comes into my mind right now is duplicating the object and after making changes to the original, joining it back as shape and changing the new shapekey's "Relative To" value again)

From the 2 min. of googling I just did, there seems to be addon named "BsMax" that helps you with setting this Relative/Absolute shapekeys combination. If you want a showcase of how to set it up once installed, YouTube video named "Blender BsMax Multi Target Shape Key" shows it clearly.

[TheLizardSK]

This is great! I was looking for a way to animate like this for a long time. Thanks for the tutorial!

[PotatoMcFry]

Seems like using absolute shape keys for the face and a rig for the limbs would be a nice middle ground. Cool video.

[spicytuna]

That was one of the most informative, short form pieces of content I've seen! I've seen relative shape keys a ton, but not absolute. Definitely going to be adding this to the workflow. Thank you!

[NoTheRobot]

This is so creative, holy smokes 😮 The CG equivalent to claymation is here!!

[mvo]

This is such a great idea!😍I have experimented a couple times with using a "Displace" modifier to create simulated claymation boil, but it was always just an idea; I never had anything to apply it to. This is the perfect animation workflow to play with that again.