Thats what I love about blender, you dont NEED the NLA to make animation, the animation workflow sort of goes in "layers".. You can do a simple animation in the timeline, or go deeper and play with the dope sheet editor, or go deeper with the graph editor, or go even deeper and play with NLA, etc. It all works beautifully together

Fantastic tutorial. By far the most comprehensive NLA tutorial on youtube.

One thing I always miss in the NLA editor is the option to combine animations together that use the same bones. I know there is the add and combine blending functions but it seems none of them works as I want it. For example, let's say you have a breathing animation for a character that uses the spine bones. But now you also want to have that character move to the side with his upper body while breathing. This might work with combine or add on a normal standing character, but if the pose is a pose in which the default rotation values of the spines aren't around 0 (for example an old man that walks on a stick while bending forward), you will get the wrong result no matter which blending mode you use. Combine will use the average value which weakens the whole animation while add will add both values which result in the bending forward pose being way too exaggerated. The only way I found to get the result I want is to copy the spine bones, parent them between the spine bones and use those copied bones for the breathing while the original bones will handle the turnaround movement. But I'm almost sure that such a situation can be handled with the NLA editor somehow. I'm just not sure how.

I think the fact that you implement these into finished projects really makes these tutorials some of the most valuable on youtube, each one is just so eye operning.

Hi Chris - great video. This helped clear up some of confusion I've had with the NLA editor. Now I just need to dive in and get comfortable with it😮

You are a killer Blender contributor and teacher amigo! Love your stuffs!

this is the most helpful animation tutorial ive seen. ive seen a bunch where they show you how to do individual animations but this seems way more practical and time efficient. thanks man your duh best!

Thanks! That was really helpful. Would love to see more tutorials with those pieces in blender that help bridge the gap from enthusiast to professional. Long time (+10yr) enthusiast here with aspirations of professionalism :)

Fantastic tutorial! Thanks so much for taking the time to share the NLA anim workflow. So many possibilities!

Really useful video. I'm just a blender enthusiast that's been concentrating more on arcvis and modelling. Just started animation and was having trouble with walk cycles and reuse. This pointed me in the right direction. Thank you.

Thank you, I'm just starting to learn animation in Blender and this was exactly what I needed to understand the NLA editor and workflow!

Packed full of info, sir. Thanks very much! I can see myself coming back to this many times as I venture into the NLA

Crisp and clear. Excellent tut, as always! Thanks!

For me, this cleared out a lot of confusion regarding how to play and blend multiple actions in a time sequence. Keep up with the excellent content :)

Excellent deeper dive into blender. Thanks 🙏. Your content is most definitely a cut above. The sci-fi orientation is a perfect fit for my own direction. Haven’t yet gotten to epic space battles but I’m getting there...it’s an incentive! (Noobie to blender but veteran to pencil & paper.) Awesome stuff & love your channel. ✌️☕️🎩🎩🎩

I learned so much and I'm not even halfway through thanks for the vid! Such a good timing as I already started working on a droid (not like your) Great vid

I was getting so frustrated how hard it is to manipulate a character on a single layer, but this makes it so much easier, thank you for this tutorial!

This is one if not the BEST blender tutorial i have ever seen! You helped me so much!

Really amazing!!! I was extremely lost on how this work that I would just animate with the timeline only but that will change now, thankyou!!

Great tutorial! Clears things up

one of the most underrated and misunderstood tools in Blender, if the foundation could polish it up and incorporate it into a character animation workflow then we could really get blender further out the door

This video was very helpful, thanks for making it!

This morning I knew almost nothing about the NLA aand I was faced with a daunting task of animating 2 characters dancing to music. I was afraid I was looking at failure dead on. After watching this video (I love all your videos btw) suddenly the animation because much simpler! Poses make Actions which are used and reused in the NLA. Combine that with a little creative camera work and viola! 8 hours later I have the animations done and the rendering is just getting started! Thank you CBailyFilm! You're a life saver.

Great series of tutorials, thank you!

Couldn’t be any more clear! Thanks brother

One of the best tutorials i've seen (on any subject) really well explained :)

The most instructive tutorial about animation I have ever encounter

I did find this super helpful & applying it on my current project. Thanks for this video it is excellent! Much love!

Amazing tutorial! Thank you :)

this cleared up so much for me thank you

Excellent presentation of NLA stack and application.

thank u , u literely changed my all animation procces , bless u

This video was SOOOOO HELPFUL!!! I had to watch it a few times but each time I learned a lot. Thank you so much!

This was so incredibly helpful. Thank you! :D

What a great tutorial. everything is so clear now! thanks.

ah helped to demystify actions and nla, thanks !

Thank you for your tutorials. You've been so helpful

This video was amazing. I learned a lot and it was very clear and concise!

woot! Feel like the is an under represented blender topic. Thank!

So informative, intuitive, and concise! Thank you so much

The best way to explain these things ! really appreciate it! 🙏

Thanks for making this, it's quite an unexplored feature for me. And I was looking for something exactly like this for animations

Such a useful video, thanks mate.

Thank you Chris. Very nice!

Very helpful feature and a very good explanation and demonstration. thank you.

VERY helpful! thank you!

Ive been Blendering around for 4 years now and the NLA editor is an area Ive been scared to enter, lets see if you cure my fear of it with this video.

Thank you, so helpful!

Very interesting! I had no idea this existed and WOW does it look like a powerful tool!

This has been really helpful, subscribed!

Cool stuff, thank you for sharing!

Wow this was brilliant!! 🙏🏽

Great tutorial, many thanks

Great tutorial. Thank you.

From the start to minut 8 i learned sooo much life change stuff , thanks here we Go to the Full vídeo ! 🖤🖤🖤

Bro it is awesome tutorial, thank you soo much.

Finally a good explanation of the once confusing editor :) Thanks a lot for an amazing tutorial!

Great video. Very helpful. Thanks!

Thanks CBailey!

Man, I spent so much time looking for a good tutorial, I think I finally found it!

A crucial tutorial. Thank you.

amazing tut,thank you

I discovered how to do all this in the Timeline bypassing the NLA editor entirely. Crazy stuff but it can be done regarding blending animations aka their keyframes. So I no-longer need to waste time creating actions. Dope tutorial though I will surely be using these techniques as well to layer my animations whenever I seek to create far more advanced transitions. What's tough is animating the camera as well after you apply them actions to get a more refined and finalized animated short film project. I done some camera marker animation edits in the past, but gotta get back into experimenting with it all.

Thank you a lot!

This is ridiculously helpful!!! Thank you so much!!!!!

I listened to the first 1 minute of this video then I instantly subscribed subconsciously.

pretty advanced topic, but really good explanation. thanks!

Great tutorial and very helpful 👍

Great, my animation skills will get way better thanks to this video

Super helpful!!

Thank you man

Extremely helpful good sir.

Most things in blender were new to me but NLA etc really surprised me lol thanks!

Love you man!

VERY INFORMATIVE for NLA editor... RECOMMEND.

Hi, this video is really helpful, let me understand what is Action, and what is NLA, Action is a animation clip, a shortly clip could be reuse it again, even across different object, it means use object A create a Action A, then Action A can be apply to object B, the object B animate itself follow the Action A. NLA editor like a video tracker editor, you can place and combine Action togather to create complex animation.

This seems to me to be the greatest authority on nla Blender, he knows a lot.

Thank you. so much. You solved my problem

This is awesome

thank you for the tutorial

thank you

That’s gold

Thanks man

This tutorial just saved me a lot of time. 😅👌

Very good tutorial!

thanks gr8 tutorial

awesome as usual indeed

really. the most demonstrative. though not being a youtuber i suppose him as one of the best

Thanks for the tutorial! Will you be making any additional character animated vids in the future? If so, could you cover in it a bit about the animation libraries and how to create, store and combine them with multiple characters in a scene/project? Cheers!

Thanks for this... !

Thank you for this tutorial, very usefull info! :)

This is a game changer. My timeline has been a absolute mess thus far. So nice that I can separate, label, and reuse my actions now. Hope to see more tutorials on NLA. If we have multiple objects with synchronized actions, is there a way to combine them into 1 NLA track? or do we have to keep editing each one separately? Also when would you use "Influence" to transition between tracks vs the Blend in/out?

Wooh, So you're saying that my character could have separate upper body and lower body animation and can do whatever he wants with his upper body while walking or running 🤯🤯, for me this is the best tutorial i've even seen man, keep up the good work, and btw Liked and Subscribed 😁

thank you very much, ı couldn't understand while listening to lectures in my language but thıs tutorial is perfect even for someone who dosent understand much English , thank you 🙏

Light bulb moment! Thanks :)

This video sums up everything about Blender animation features. It seems like the animation features need a better UX; Blender just needs to benchmark some of the video editing software like premier and visually integrate those blend in and out functions into the NLA strips

I have been messing around with NLA and action strips with mixamo, some stuff behaves strangely, but one thing I noticed from your vid is stretching the length of the action can be done without using the side panel. If you tab to edit the action, then go to the dope sheet and and work with the keyframes there, you can add keyframes beyond the length of the original action strip. Then when you hit tab to close the action it will change the length to match the last key frame you added. I bet this also will shorten it if you take keyframes out and make it shorter. One thing I dont get is assigning an action to a new object. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I have some mixamo dances saved as actions and sometimes I can use them with a new rig sometimes I cant. Another thing is if I do the add function on an action strip the character will blown up like a balloon sometimes. But I have committed the scale prior to rigging the character. So I dont know why it would be adding up scale info. But it also doesn’t look like scale as the character is distorted and not just bigger.

dood , I can't believe how the beginner tutorials do not point out that an action IS where the animation is stored. U'd think that would be in a first steps tutorial... yet it is not talked about at all !! This had me sooo confused as I wasn't aware that my animations were being attached to random objects. Once I learned this fundamental information I went back in the project and fixed everything up. It went from >> being confusing and weird with unexplainable odd occurrences to >> everything making sense + orderly + revealing new possibilities. I think it's more confusing to learn animation without learning the NLA.

Thank you for your straightforward guidance! This was very helpful. Is it possible to export the actions combined into a single fbx animation?

really helpfull