🔶 We've spent 3 years making the most comprehensive yet fun curriculum, laser focused on helping you learn how to create great animations. By the end of our Ultimate Animation Course, you'll also have a kickass demo-reel to show off. 👉 Check all of the awesome stuff you'll get: toanimate.ca/?
I agree 100% with you. It's so easy to transfer skills from a software to anotherr that it's not only easy to go to another software after you leaen how to animate well in one software, but also there's no need to find only learning resources in blender of you want to aninate only in this software. After you learn the blender set of tools, you will be able to learn from resources of animstion based on Maya aswell, or even 2D animation. The art of animstion is one thing and the tools that bring this art to reality is another thing, one takes time to learn and develop, the other is as fast as a week.
Valid points. Animation is a skill. Blender is a tool. It's easy to learn a new skill. It's only the workflow that's different for each piece of software. However, it's still possible to transfer animation skills from one piece of software to another. You just have to create another workflow for the new tools.
There are things I like better about Blender and things I like better about Maya. Overall, I think I prefer Blender, but I have less practice with it so it's hard to be sure. Also, it's worth mentioning that most of the job postings I'm seeing these days are software agnostic. They don't really care how you get the modeling/animation gets done just so long as it gets done.
Love blender and your animation course is honestly just as good as some famous online schools. I know you focus more on animation but i was wondering if you have plans on making a rigging course too? There are some resourses out there but most focus on using automatic rigging tools and very few teach you how to build a rig from scratch.
Thank you for the kind words! We actually started work on a comprehensive rigging course this year due to high demand. Quality courses take time and so we'll likely launch it at the end of this year or hopefully by early next year.
I really want to get into Blender and I appreciate that you’re doing videos on the animation side. It seems every other Blender vid is about how to sculpt a cube into a donut (I’m exaggerating). Three issues I have with blender that keep me from having fun while learning it are the controls (navigating the 3d space) and managing assets in way a way that I can add and remove them in way that’s quick and organized. Which brings me to my 3rd issue, I imagine that’s possible, but I feel as if I have to go find, try out, maybe buy, set up , troubleshoot to get to work, multiple add ons before I can get to do what I enjoy about it. Keep in mind I’m coming from a place where I don’t know what I’m talking about, I just feel that way and it makes me revert back to software like reallusion where I don’t have to worry about that part. I wish I could just turn on a video and it walk me through, step by step, setting up the blender environment for character/scene building from already made assets so I can just jump in and start building a scene. Lol sorry that was long winded
Haha well you just described our Blender Basics course. It starts with navigation, making its way to workspace setup, hotkey cheat sheet for animation and going through all of Blender's animation tools & how to use them. The course uses no add-ons, and frankly you need less add-ons than Maya to animate with Blender. You can learn more about it here: www.toanimate.ca/blender-basics
99% of existing studios that are already using Maya etc, won't switch to Blender, simply because their engines are running and it'd take far too much time and resources to switch. But the adoption of Blender will happen, it'll just be by smaller and new studios.
Very true, large number of current studios will can't switch but it seems that majority of new studios are using Blender. The previous company I worked at, I got them to switch from Maya to Blender, but that was a smaller company of 40 or so people.
Not exactly... It's not the cost that really matters in the end, it's the risk involved with switching a major part of your processes. The smaller the risk the more who will switch. This will naturally reduce by continued development and more people/companies using it
@@artdesign-e1s No I really don't. You've been spewing hateful and disrespectful comments on every video using a throwaway troll account. Unless you put your name and face to your words, they mean nothing.
its the same thing i have gone through finding character animation content in Blender. i find Maya via character animation has so much that you can learn from and i choose to learn Maya to character animation then later on i will transfer the knowledge to blender.
It's not a bad idea, transferring between programs (from a technical stand point), doesn't take long at all. My ex-coworker who had never touched Blender before, was animating in it on the second day of taking our Blender Basics course. So it's very possible to get proficient in the new program within a week of learning.
@@BrianKouhi thank you 🙏🏾 for the advice I love Blender and I will too make animation tutorials in future using Blender for the internet 🛜 plus courses
@@FreakazoidRobots oh wow I feel these principles cut across in these 3d programs I am learning to be a animator not good animating in one app but in any that they company uses
@@BrianKouhi i have been going through your site courses i have loved this..do i have to pay full price to access the lessons or in installments and also do u do mentorship critics
Blender is clearly interesting to use and comparable to Maya, but animation wise I'm a lot more comfortable with Maya, it's more a personal preference than a logical one, also probably because I started with Maya
I've been animating professionally in Maya for 14 years and a couple of months ago I decided to learn Blender and now, although I still like Maya and think it's a great tool, today I prefer Blender for animation. I still use, and enjoy, Maya for professional works, but for personal projects I'm using Blender.
One of my biggest complaints with Maya, is how often it crashes. It crashes every single day I use it, on tasks that are menial and in which you would think wouldnt be very expensive to run. I rarely ever have issues with blender crashing, even on big taxing jobs. I grew up using blender and have been using it since the early 2000s. Its actually what got me interested in game dev, back when it had a game engine built in. But I am required to use Maya for certain projects because its "industry standard." I will say Maya was easier to learn, but Blender is free and in my opinion, with experience using both in a professional setting, Blender is my go to. Sure Maya is better at doing certain operations, but I think Blender is just as capable if not more so, than Maya all around.
maya has Atools that basically older version of animbot and it's free. the tool I like is quick select group. we can make groups of controller like hands, legs, etc so we can animate faster. also advanced skeleton is better than auto rig pro, especially for face rig and driver setup
Interest points. You can actually do the same with Blender's Asset Browser (built in), it's a pose library. In terms of rigging, our technical director who riggs our Blender characters is now teaching rigging in Maya at one of the top 2 colleges in Canada. He's constantly complaining about how behind Maya's rigging system is compared to Blender. So I think it comes down to how well you know the tools the software offers.
@@BrianKouhi thank you for remind me that pose library has selected bones option. actually I use both blender and maya. blender for simple rig/animation (mostly for game animation) and maya for complex rig. this is just my personal preference. I still hoping they make built in animation layer and retime feature for blender
The animation industry has come to a slow right now due to a lot of reasons, none of which being AI. The economy & high interest rates make it very hard & risky to get funding for projects. The strikes last year had huge effects that we're seeing now. The industry also moves in cycles and we have come down from a high back in 2020-2021, so per usual, the industry will pick back up in the coming year or two and we'll have another boom. Too much intricacy and intention goes into creating animations. I don't see AI taking over animation (anytime soon at least), but I can see AI being used as a tool to help make the process faster. You'll still need animators to use the tool and create their artistic vision.
One of those things that I find really difficult to find with Blender are custom Character riggers, I know Rigify is used by Blender users, but what if you need custom characters with different controls, I've been looking for an actual Blender rigger for weeks who understands rigging and not just using an auto-rigging script and can't make any changes. Is that a service you guys provide?
We're currently working on a comprehensive rigging course, but quality lessons take time, and so it'll be done by either end of this year or hopefully no later than first quarter of next year.
I learned custom Blender rigging from Pierrick Picaut's "Art of Effective Rigging" course, and the older 2.5-7 Blender Cloud "Humane Rigging" course by Nathan Vegdahl. You could ask them. There's also Armin Halac who wrote a book on Blender rigging recently "A Complete Guide to Character Rigging for Games Using Blender".
Also there aren't as many free and good rigs easy to find in blender from my search (still looking for a flour sack rig, a tailed ball rig and a simple body mechanic rig)
This is very true. Exactly why we'll be launching an animator focused store where every asset is a high quality Blender rig :) I always struggle finding good rigs for Blender, so I'm solving my own problem 😅
I have a flour sack rig you might like (ua-cam.com/video/UyZF_RNlfTc/v-deo.html) and the "Animation Fundamentals" course on Blender Cloud comes with a tailed ball and body mechanics rig among others (course is paid but the rigs are free).
Hey! The animation skills are 100% transferable. You'll just have to learn Maya's animation tools and you'll be good to go. For reference, an ex-coworker of mine who was an animator had 0 experience with Blender. He started taking our Blender Basics course and on the second day of learning he was animating characters in Blender. So it is totally possible to learn new software in a week.
Rigging in Blender still a pain in the ass especially if you want to get high quality rigs with excellent deformation especially for the face which is the most difficult and important part in any 3d Character. blender has limited tools & hard accessibility to them, constraints in one place, shapekeys in another..etc with lack of node based workflow, to avoid dependencies cycles they're working on these stuff but probably would take few years before we see any real results that can be tested. Also animation wise , the tools are messy & illogical due to blender trying to be an all in one app. the graph editor & the dope sheet are hard to use most of the time. With the biggest down side performance when rigging and animating for more complex shots, however it's getting better with time, maybe 5 to 10 years from now, Blender could be in a much better position to compete with Maya as Autodesk is not doing much to improve it either, they did few pushes..back then with better tools and performance and now stopped , they're probably feeling comfortable sicne Maya still holds a big place for rigging & animation in the industry.
We can't offer that at this time, but Teachable has started rolling out "Buy now pay later" options for some countries. They might add your country to the list at some point.
@@BrianKouhi i got an email from your team from teachable email a couple of days ago. About asking why i added the course to card and didnot purchased yet. I will definitely check the website and see if that's possible. When does that "395$ for everything" sale ends anyway?
@@BrianKouhi I just became interested in watching the development of blender. But I have not yet seen truly dynamic and exciting animated battle or fighting action scenes made in blender. Everyone says it’s possible, but in practice it’s impossible to find examples.
If you have no aspirations to have a character animation career ,in professional studio environments, then Blender is a great alternative to Maya. However you will need Auto rig pro, Faceit and the animation layers addon ,at a minimum, for Blender to be somewhat comparable to Maya for character. And if you do client work with Blender and they ask for dynamic cloth and hair simulation on the characters than you are in deep trouble. Also Maya’s cached rig evaluation makes handling multiple animated Character for easier than Blender.
I definitely agree that majority of bigger studios use Maya currently, but I wouldn't say "no aspiration to have a character animation career". 2 out of the previous 3 companies I worked at used Blender for animation. One of which had 400 employees, the other over 50. Our co-founder Vladmir also just finished a contract with B-water studios who I believe have over 100 employees. These were all character animation positions. A ton of new studios are using Blender, so for the best chance of landing a job students should learn both software.
@@BrianKouhi Most people have a hard time learning two 3DCC’s at the same time particularly apps so heavily biased toward their own key board shortcuts for tool navigation such as Maya and Blender. I became a Blender animator only after 2.8 was released four years ago. I have only recent been able to get Maya in Dec 2023. I love Blender, but just a few weeks in Maya makes certain that if I had access to Maya 4 years ago I would have never bothered learning Blender.
🔶 We've spent 3 years making the most comprehensive yet fun curriculum, laser focused on helping you learn how to create great animations. By the end of our Ultimate Animation Course, you'll also have a kickass demo-reel to show off.
👉 Check all of the awesome stuff you'll get: toanimate.ca/?
Spring wasnt rendered in eevee it was cycles.
but Charge was rendered in eevee.
Ah thanks for the clarification!
I agree 100% with you. It's so easy to transfer skills from a software to anotherr that it's not only easy to go to another software after you leaen how to animate well in one software, but also there's no need to find only learning resources in blender of you want to aninate only in this software. After you learn the blender set of tools, you will be able to learn from resources of animstion based on Maya aswell, or even 2D animation. The art of animstion is one thing and the tools that bring this art to reality is another thing, one takes time to learn and develop, the other is as fast as a week.
Very true!
Valid points. Animation is a skill. Blender is a tool. It's easy to learn a new skill. It's only the workflow that's different for each piece of software. However, it's still possible to transfer animation skills from one piece of software to another. You just have to create another workflow for the new tools.
Blender cured my depression: it's untouchable
😂😂
🤣🤣🤣
There are things I like better about Blender and things I like better about Maya. Overall, I think I prefer Blender, but I have less practice with it so it's hard to be sure. Also, it's worth mentioning that most of the job postings I'm seeing these days are software agnostic. They don't really care how you get the modeling/animation gets done just so long as it gets done.
Love blender and your animation course is honestly just as good as some famous online schools.
I know you focus more on animation but i was wondering if you have plans on making a rigging course too? There are some resourses out there but most focus on using automatic rigging tools and very few teach you how to build a rig from scratch.
Thank you for the kind words!
We actually started work on a comprehensive rigging course this year due to high demand.
Quality courses take time and so we'll likely launch it at the end of this year or hopefully by early next year.
I really want to get into Blender and I appreciate that you’re doing videos on the animation side. It seems every other Blender vid is about how to sculpt a cube into a donut (I’m exaggerating). Three issues I have with blender that keep me from having fun while learning it are the controls (navigating the 3d space) and managing assets in way a way that I can add and remove them in way that’s quick and organized. Which brings me to my 3rd issue, I imagine that’s possible, but I feel as if I have to go find, try out, maybe buy, set up , troubleshoot to get to work, multiple add ons before I can get to do what I enjoy about it.
Keep in mind I’m coming from a place where I don’t know what I’m talking about, I just feel that way and it makes me revert back to software like reallusion where I don’t have to worry about that part. I wish I could just turn on a video and it walk me through, step by step, setting up the blender environment for character/scene building from already made assets so I can just jump in and start building a scene.
Lol sorry that was long winded
Haha well you just described our Blender Basics course. It starts with navigation, making its way to workspace setup, hotkey cheat sheet for animation and going through all of Blender's animation tools & how to use them. The course uses no add-ons, and frankly you need less add-ons than Maya to animate with Blender.
You can learn more about it here: www.toanimate.ca/blender-basics
99% of existing studios that are already using Maya etc, won't switch to Blender, simply because their engines are running and it'd take far too much time and resources to switch. But the adoption of Blender will happen, it'll just be by smaller and new studios.
Very true, large number of current studios will can't switch but it seems that majority of new studios are using Blender.
The previous company I worked at, I got them to switch from Maya to Blender, but that was a smaller company of 40 or so people.
Not exactly... It's not the cost that really matters in the end, it's the risk involved with switching a major part of your processes.
The smaller the risk the more who will switch.
This will naturally reduce by continued development and more people/companies using it
@@artdesign-e1s Can you expand on why you think it's not good enough?
@@artdesign-e1s No I really don't. You've been spewing hateful and disrespectful comments on every video using a throwaway troll account.
Unless you put your name and face to your words, they mean nothing.
@@BrianKouhi their just an autodesk bot
its the same thing i have gone through finding character animation content in Blender.
i find Maya via character animation has so much that you can learn from and i choose to learn Maya to character animation then later on i will transfer the knowledge to blender.
It's not a bad idea, transferring between programs (from a technical stand point), doesn't take long at all.
My ex-coworker who had never touched Blender before, was animating in it on the second day of taking our Blender Basics course. So it's very possible to get proficient in the new program within a week of learning.
@@BrianKouhi
I had this experience in reverse going from Blender to Maya. It makes a big difference just knowing all the basic concepts.
@@BrianKouhi thank you 🙏🏾 for the advice
I love Blender and I will too make animation tutorials in future using Blender for the internet 🛜 plus courses
@@FreakazoidRobots oh wow I feel these principles cut across in these 3d programs
I am learning to be a animator not good animating in one app but in any that they company uses
@@BrianKouhi i have been going through your site courses i have loved this..do i have to pay full price to access the lessons or in installments and also do u do mentorship critics
Blender is clearly interesting to use and comparable to Maya, but animation wise I'm a lot more comfortable with Maya, it's more a personal preference than a logical one, also probably because I started with Maya
I've been animating professionally in Maya for 14 years and a couple of months ago I decided to learn Blender and now, although I still like Maya and think it's a great tool, today I prefer Blender for animation. I still use, and enjoy, Maya for professional works, but for personal projects I'm using Blender.
One of my biggest complaints with Maya, is how often it crashes. It crashes every single day I use it, on tasks that are menial and in which you would think wouldnt be very expensive to run. I rarely ever have issues with blender crashing, even on big taxing jobs. I grew up using blender and have been using it since the early 2000s. Its actually what got me interested in game dev, back when it had a game engine built in. But I am required to use Maya for certain projects because its "industry standard." I will say Maya was easier to learn, but Blender is free and in my opinion, with experience using both in a professional setting, Blender is my go to. Sure Maya is better at doing certain operations, but I think Blender is just as capable if not more so, than Maya all around.
I agree with everything you said :)
maya has Atools that basically older version of animbot and it's free. the tool I like is quick select group. we can make groups of controller like hands, legs, etc so we can animate faster.
also advanced skeleton is better than auto rig pro, especially for face rig and driver setup
Interest points. You can actually do the same with Blender's Asset Browser (built in), it's a pose library.
In terms of rigging, our technical director who riggs our Blender characters is now teaching rigging in Maya at one of the top 2 colleges in Canada. He's constantly complaining about how behind Maya's rigging system is compared to Blender.
So I think it comes down to how well you know the tools the software offers.
@@BrianKouhi thank you for remind me that pose library has selected bones option.
actually I use both blender and maya. blender for simple rig/animation (mostly for game animation) and maya for complex rig. this is just my personal preference.
I still hoping they make built in animation layer and retime feature for blender
@@BrianKouhi are you talking about Vlad? Is there a way to contact him (for a few curiosity questions)? Maybe instagram, email etc.?
This is a recommended animation course i am an experience blender user but now a new world opens to me.
great video man! keep up the good work
Appreciate it!
Sweet!
Hey! Quick question. What are your views on AI disrupting character animation! Is it worth getting into character animation in 2024 or as a career?
The animation industry has come to a slow right now due to a lot of reasons, none of which being AI.
The economy & high interest rates make it very hard & risky to get funding for projects. The strikes last year had huge effects that we're seeing now. The industry also moves in cycles and we have come down from a high back in 2020-2021, so per usual, the industry will pick back up in the coming year or two and we'll have another boom.
Too much intricacy and intention goes into creating animations. I don't see AI taking over animation (anytime soon at least), but I can see AI being used as a tool to help make the process faster. You'll still need animators to use the tool and create their artistic vision.
@@BrianKouhithanks.
One of those things that I find really difficult to find with Blender are custom Character riggers, I know Rigify is used by Blender users, but what if you need custom characters with different controls, I've been looking for an actual Blender rigger for weeks who understands rigging and not just using an auto-rigging script and can't make any changes. Is that a service you guys provide?
We're currently working on a comprehensive rigging course, but quality lessons take time, and so it'll be done by either end of this year or hopefully no later than first quarter of next year.
I learned custom Blender rigging from Pierrick Picaut's "Art of Effective Rigging" course, and the older 2.5-7 Blender Cloud "Humane Rigging" course by Nathan Vegdahl. You could ask them. There's also Armin Halac who wrote a book on Blender rigging recently "A Complete Guide to Character Rigging for Games Using Blender".
Also there aren't as many free and good rigs easy to find in blender from my search (still looking for a flour sack rig, a tailed ball rig and a simple body mechanic rig)
This is very true. Exactly why we'll be launching an animator focused store where every asset is a high quality Blender rig :)
I always struggle finding good rigs for Blender, so I'm solving my own problem 😅
I have a flour sack rig you might like (ua-cam.com/video/UyZF_RNlfTc/v-deo.html) and the "Animation Fundamentals" course on Blender Cloud comes with a tailed ball and body mechanics rig among others (course is paid but the rigs are free).
If I would like to learn animation for Maya as well, how well would the skills learned in TOAnimate (with Blender) translate ?
Hey!
The animation skills are 100% transferable. You'll just have to learn Maya's animation tools and you'll be good to go.
For reference, an ex-coworker of mine who was an animator had 0 experience with Blender. He started taking our Blender Basics course and on the second day of learning he was animating characters in Blender.
So it is totally possible to learn new software in a week.
Rigging in Blender still a pain in the ass especially if you want to get high quality rigs with excellent deformation especially for the face which is the most difficult and important part in any 3d Character.
blender has limited tools & hard accessibility to them, constraints in one place, shapekeys in another..etc with lack of node based workflow, to avoid dependencies cycles they're working on these stuff but probably would take few years before we see any real results that can be tested.
Also animation wise , the tools are messy & illogical due to blender trying to be an all in one app. the graph editor & the dope sheet are hard to use most of the time.
With the biggest down side performance when rigging and animating for more complex shots, however it's getting better with time, maybe 5 to 10 years from now, Blender could be in a much better position to compete with Maya as Autodesk is not doing much to improve it either, they did few pushes..back then with better tools and performance and now stopped , they're probably feeling comfortable sicne Maya still holds a big place for rigging & animation in the industry.
I'm still waiting for monthly plan to your animation course 😁😁
We can't offer that at this time, but Teachable has started rolling out "Buy now pay later" options for some countries. They might add your country to the list at some point.
@@BrianKouhi i got an email from your team from teachable email a couple of days ago. About asking why i added the course to card and didnot purchased yet. I will definitely check the website and see if that's possible. When does that "395$ for everything" sale ends anyway?
@@HarryAli I'm afraid our prices are going up January 12th. Hopefully they offer the 'Buy now pay later' option in your area.
@@BrianKouhi yeah, i just checked and they dont offer that thing
Ah that's disappointing to hear...
Who can make blender animation fight scene with 4 or more characters?
Anyone who has studied animation and has a strong animation foundation and a good understanding of the 12 principles :)
@@BrianKouhi I just became interested in watching the development of blender. But I have not yet seen truly dynamic and exciting animated battle or fighting action scenes made in blender. Everyone says it’s possible, but in practice it’s impossible to find examples.
@@balafun_tv5 Watch Maya and the Three on Netflix. We made that entire series with Blender.
@@BrianKouhi woow❤️🔥
你好 我看了你做优质课程 我想付一下，请问看课程视频能翻译中文吗？
Hey, we have all our lessons subtitled to "Chinese (simplified)".
i am using custom shortcut in blender and equates it with maya
If you have no aspirations to have a character animation career ,in professional studio environments, then Blender is a great alternative to Maya.
However you will need Auto rig pro, Faceit and the animation layers addon ,at a minimum,
for Blender to be somewhat comparable to Maya for character.
And if you do client work with Blender and they ask for dynamic cloth and hair simulation on the characters than you are in deep trouble.
Also Maya’s cached rig evaluation makes handling multiple animated Character for easier than Blender.
I definitely agree that majority of bigger studios use Maya currently, but I wouldn't say "no aspiration to have a character animation career". 2 out of the previous 3 companies I worked at used Blender for animation. One of which had 400 employees, the other over 50. Our co-founder Vladmir also just finished a contract with B-water studios who I believe have over 100 employees. These were all character animation positions.
A ton of new studios are using Blender, so for the best chance of landing a job students should learn both software.
@@BrianKouhi Most people have a hard time learning two 3DCC’s at the same time
particularly apps so heavily biased toward their own key board shortcuts for tool navigation such as Maya and Blender.
I became a Blender animator only after 2.8 was released four years ago.
I have only recent been able to get Maya in Dec 2023.
I love Blender, but just a few weeks in Maya makes certain that if I had access to Maya 4 years ago I would have never bothered learning Blender.
Blender Import and Export Sucks in Game Pipeline, BTW using Blender on Daily basic in Mobile Game Industry
That I agree with that. I struggled with the exports too.
please a video on that how to import and edit pre-made animations in blender, then export back to Game engine @@BrianKouhi
74
80
Yes bc they can never take it away from you.