Blender animation progress: How I fixed the Blender audio issue I was having in Ubuntu

A look at the making of the music video I'm animating in Blender Grease Pencil and how I fixed the audio issue I was having.

Turns out it was specifically a problem in the Linux/Ubuntu version of Blender

I've been animating a music video for my band Lorenzo's Music in Blender because I wanted to learn how to use it.

In a previous video, I was having a super annoying problem with the sound. It kept crapping out on me.

Here's what would happen...

I would scroll through animating the mouth with the audio and the sound would disappear and the only way to get it back would be to shut down Blender and start it up again to get it back. But it would continue to happen after a few minutes. Super annoying!

I got a lot of good suggestions from people that saw the previous video I posted about it. But nothing that worked.

Then one person mentioned that I should check the sound preferences in the settings.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary there at first glance. But after trying a few things it turned out that is exactly where the problem was.

What finally fixed it?

I think this is a Linux-specific issue with Blender because in Ubuntu by default it uses pulse audio as the default audio device. I know from experience that pulse audio can sometimes have problems playing nice with programs.

And I had Blender set to use pulse audio because, well... that's the default sound system.

But I figured why not look and see what some of the other audio device choices are in there.

screenshot of settings menu in blender software

I switched it to the one called OpenAL which is an open-source audio device that was built into Blender.

And it worked!

It's been smooth, when I do the sound scrubbing frame by frame it's actually even better than it was before. I've had no problems with it so far.

In the video, I also talk about one of my favorite things I found in Grease Pencil for 2D animation

There's something that Blender has in it that I love. Using the sculpt option to squash and stretch the drawings.

animated gif illustration of person in software

Sculpt tool squash and stretch in Blender Grease Pencil

I don't even have to draw the squash and stretch parts when I'm animating. All I have to do is switch to the sculpt mode setting. Then I use the push module from the toolbar and I make the radius really big.

All I have to do is drag it over the element in the drawing and squash the drawing. Then move to another frame and pull it back into place. I love that feature!

By the way

I recently found one of the first animations I ever made on an old hard drive and recorded a video about it 🤣

Check it out! Looking back at my first animated cartoon

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