Here, we are going to describe 10 online 3D animation courses which you can learn staying at your place. These courses charge no cost which is an advantage for those who don’t have the ability to make an initial investment in order to learn something related to their passion. However, you might have to collect specific sort of software for beginning the learning sessions.

Digital-Tutors

From the website of the Digital-Tutors, you get the opportunity to train yourself about 3D animation with the help of step by step guided videos. On this site, there are no assignments or coursework for the students. The following guides of this site will assist the students to get them acquainted with the 3D animation courses.

  • Beginner’s Animation Tips in Maya
  • Animation in 3D Max
  • Animation tricks in Softimage
  • Quick starting in MODO

Free3dtutorials

With the help of this website named freetutorials.com, you get the opportunity to learn 3D animation course through written and/or video tutorials. These tutorials mainly cover the following tasks related to animation works.

  • Modeling
  • Sculpting
  • Rigging
  • Lighting
  • Digital painting
  • Texturing

However, these tutorials do not have the audio features. So, students have to practically learn the step by step guide through mirroring their mouse.

LearnersTV

Students from Biology, Physics and Chemistry can learn animation courses from this site. The courses students can get acquainted with are as follows:

  • Biology Animations Online
  • Chemistry Animations Online
  • Physics Animation Online

Turfs University : Lesson 07 – Animation

For the students, there is a great opportunity to download the video tutorials to iPad or, iPhone  via iTunesU app where they have to choose the topic called 3D Design-Blender. Additionally, these video tutorials can also be found on a specific video channel called Blender Video Tutorials-Neal Hirsig.

3ds Max

From the website of the 3dtotal.com, you can enjoy various types of animation courses like 3ds Max, Photoshop, Blender and many more. Although these courses are free for you, but you may have to have specific software to learn such openware course.

The Virtual Instructor

With this website, you can learn 3D animation course in an easier way with the help of a 3D animation Program named Blender 3D. The video tutorials which are available on this site are a source of great help for the beginners who are eager to learn 3D animation course.

Flash Animation

Students can get almost 16 free lessons about the animation course. Actually, for the beginners, this website is a perfect one because they start with the basics. They even help you learning about how to use the particular software for particular type of animation works.

Larry’s Toon Institute

This website is basically operated by an animator named Larry Lauria. Her works are really popular and are aired on radio and shown on T.V. here, you can find a list of tutorials to learn animated works like butterflies, bouncing balls etc.

Utah State University: Opencourse on Flash

This site basically covers most of the technical side of animation. It consists of the learning system called software used, best software for each type of program, system requirements, and many more.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Algorithms for Computer Animation

This course of MIT is designed technical based.  The course teaches how the algorithms are used and designed with the specific applications or software. From the left side of this site, you can download the total syllabus and course materials very easily.

Updated on 2nd May-2020

Introduction to 3D Modeling and Animation with Maya

This course is offered by California College of Arts on Kadenze. Course is divided into 5 sessions with 11 hours of work for each session. This course introduces students to the amazing world of 3d content creation with the help of Autodesk Maya. This course is free to audit. However, students enrolling for premium membership are entitled to receive certificate on successful completion of course.

Getting Started in 3d Animation

This course is available on one of the most popular websites for online courses, Udemy. It offers 4 hours of online video tutorials, which focuses mainly on how to create professional 3d characters animation with iClone.

Basic 3D Animation using Blender

This basic course on 3D animation is offered by IIT, Bombay on EdX. Course duration is 4 weeks considering efforts of 4-6 hours per week. This course is archived, at the time of writing this blog. However, students can still access course material free of cost. This course covers fundamentals of key-framing, timing, and animation principles with one of the most popular open source 3D animation software, Blender.

First Steps with Blender 2.8

Directly from horse’s mouth! This is official Youtube channel of Blender, which covers basics of Blender 2.8 in 43 videos. Similar playlist is available for Blender 2.7 as well on same Youtube channel.

Cinema 4D Fundamentals

A basic course on Cinema 4D fundamentals. Ideal resource for motion designers, illustrators and graphic designers for project-based learning. Impressive Collection of student’s homework displayed on website speaks a lot about the worth of this free course.