Animate a melting effect in Blender
Using the Animall add-on, we can create a melting object animation with Blender in just a few steps
A step-by-step guide from Jacob Mougharbel on creating an animated melting effect
In this tutorial, we will discover how to animate a melting or dripping effect that can be applied to any object in Blender. We will first learn how to enable the ‘Animall’ plugin, which is a very important feature that enables us to add keyframes in Edit Mode, making the process quick and easy. Secondly, we will learn how to add objects to our scene in Object Mode, then melt our object using proportional editing and adding keyframes at the start and end point of the melting animation. We will make the drips smoother by learning how to use modifiers, specifically the Subdivision Surface modifier. The final step will be making seams on the object and learning how to UV unwrap it so we can apply a fun texture.
The amazing part of this tutorial is that it can be used in so many projects, such as logo animation, scene effects (like volcanos), or even for your characters. Just learn the basics and you’ll be able to apply the techniques to your own projects – the only limit is your imagination.
01 ENABLE ‘ANIMALL’ ADD-ON
Click Edit>preferences and select Add-ons. In the search bar type ‘Animall’ and check the box that’s next to the add-on named ‘Animation: Animall’.
02 ADD THE OBJECT
First, press ‘A’ to select everything, then ‘X’ to delete the selected items so we can have a clean workspace. Now press Shift+a and choose the Mesh option, then add a UV Sphere.
03 SET UP ANIMALL
Now we go from Object Mode to Edit Mode by pressing TAB or by switching from the upper-left corner. Head to your sidebar on the right and choose Animall. Uncheck everything except for Points.
04 ADD THE FIRST KEYFRAME
Go to your UV Sphere and pick any vert (point) you want, as long as it’s from the bottom, and press Insert to add your first keyframe. It should show a yellow keyframe on your timeline.
05 PROPORTIONAL EDITING
Do not let go of your vert; we’re going to use that to deform/melt our mesh. Click on Proportional Editing at the top and select Random.
06 CREATE THE DRIPS
Press ‘G’ then ‘Z’ to move your vert vertically. You can adjust the amount or variety of drips by scrolling with the middle mouse button. Please note that it’s normal for the drips to look sharp at this stage as we have yet to add any of the modifiers.
07 ADD THE LAST KEYFRAME
When you’re happy with your drip amount, press play and determine the length of your animation. Once this is done, press Insert again to add the keyframe. Please note that animation does not work in Edit Mode; so, to preview the animation we need to go back to Object Mode again by pressing TAB or changing it from the upper-left corner. Afterwards, press play and your animation should begin.
08 ADJUST ANIMATION SPEED
Since we used Animall, we can edit the speed of our animation in Object Mode by dragging the last keyframe to the left if we want to make it faster and right if we want to make it slower. In this case, we’re going to speed it up by dragging it to the left until we’re happy with it.
09 ADD THE SUBDIVISION SURFACE MODIFIER
In order to give the mesh a real ‘melted’ look, we need to go to our modifiers tab and add the Subdivision Surface modifier. Add a level of 4 to both Viewport and Render inputs and it should look like it’s actually melting.
10 MARK SEAMS
Head to Edit Mode, then select Edge Select Mode. Go to the top view of your sphere by pressing the ‘Z’ button on your top-right Gizmo. Then double-click the right and left edges in order to select the whole loop that’s in the middle of the sphere. After you’ve selected the loop, right-click it and select Mark Seam.
11 UV WRAPPING
Now we need to go to the UV Editing tab, by default it should be in Edit Mode. After we’ve marked our seam, we need to press A to select everything, then hit U and click Unwrap. Now we have our UV map and we’re ready for texturing.
12 ADD TEXTURE
We now need to head to Material Preview Mode. To add our texture, go to the Shader tab and click New to add a new material. By default Blender will give us a Principled BSDF texture; you can
change the metallic value as well as the roughness to your liking.
13 CREATE THE SMILEYFACE TEXTURE
To add our smiley texture, we need to be in our shading area (next to the Principled BSDF node) and press Shift+a to search ‘Image Texture’. This will allow us to use an image as a colour, in this case, we are going to use a smiley-face JPEG. Now connect it to the colour of the BSDF node.
14 ADJUST THE UV MAP
Now all that’s left is to adjust our UV map so our smiley face fits perfectly in our ball. Go to the UV Editing tab and select either the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ view (front or back) from our gizmo, then select the area we want the smiley on. In the left window we can adjust the size of the map by
selecting one of the halves and scaling it by pressing ‘S’ and/or rotating it by pressing ‘R’.
15 ADD THE BACKGROUND
There are many ways we can do this, but the simplest is to go to Preferences, then press Themes and click 3D Viewport. Scroll down until you reach Gradient Colors, then change Gradient High/off to the colour we want. I’m going for a dark blue in this case.
16 LIGHT AND EXPORT
Since we’re using Eevee in this project, we can simply use the lighting provided by Blender’s highquality default HDR in the shader view. You can choose any HDR that suits your taste. Then in the Output Properties tab, we’re going to select the dimensions for our export. I’m going for 1,080 x 1,080px.
17 RENDER
Now we can render the animation/still image. Simply pick the angle you prefer while in the shader view with the HDR, then click View. Select Viewport Render Image (if you want a still image) or Viewport Render Animation (for an animation). You can adjust when you want your animation to end or start by tweaking the frames in the bottom-right corner of the timeline. Make sure to hide your overlays. •