This is the tenth (and possibly final) tutorial in this series, where I'll introduce you to the fun of animation. Might be best to check the others out first!
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one -- introduction to animation
An animation is a series of rendered images which form a movie. The most common way to form one in 3D animation is through the process of ‘key framing’. This is like telling Blender you want to go from A to D and letting Blender fill in B and C for you. (The letters A and D are both separate ‘keys’ – changes you make to your objects and ‘set’. When these keys are played together they form the animation).
Animation in Blender is known as ‘Interpolation’ – or Ipo
Cameras can follow paths as the object moves which saves memory and rendering time.
Movies are saved in .AVI format.
two -- how to produce an animation
Go to the render screen and make sure that frames-per-second is set to 15. This button highlighted below shows which frame your animation is currently in. So this is currently in frame 1:
To change this value you can click on the arrows, shift-click in the box and change the value or press the up and down arrows keys to move ten frames at a time.
(It is important to work out how fast you want your character to do something. If you want a ball rolling across the floor in 2 seconds, and your frame rate is 15 frames per seconds, the ball is going to have to roll across the floor in 30 frames).
Hopefully, these 10 tutorials will have given you enough of a grounding in Blender to continue on your own ^_^... Enjoy!
There are 3 basic things an object can do in animation:
- Move
- Rotate
- Resize
Although you can also change the properties of an object, such as its texture or the intensity of light etc.
three -- creating a "key"
Say I want the pink ball below to slide down the table…
I would change the scene number from one… to say 10..
Then I would select the ball and use the g key to move it down the slope, After I positioned it alittle way down you press the i key to ‘set’ it. An option box will appear. It’s asking you for what change you’ve made. Since I’m moving the object it would be a change in location (Loc), so that’s what I would click.
One key has now been set. Now I’d do the same again, but move the ball out of the camera’s line of sight (note it's out of the dotted lines that represent the 'camera's viewpoint':
four -- view the animation without rendering it
Always worth doing - you don't want to spend ages waiting for a render to complete, only to find it was just slightly out of shot...
To view your animation before you've actually rendered it, put your frame number to the start of your animation and move your cursor over the 3D window…
Then press Alt – A
five -- rendering your animation
There are several things you have to set up in you render buttons screen before you press render. Follow the steps in order and you're fine ^_^:
1 - Select the start and end frame you want it to render. So since my animation is 20 frames long starting from frame 1 these are the settings I entered.
2 - Change the type of render to AVI codec, Indeovideo 5.1, 100% (another options box will appear).
3 - choose the size you want it to render to (for a quick check ‘preview’ is good – for a final render use PC)
4 - Then click render. When it’s finished rendering select play to see your animation.
six -- the IPO window
This lets you view your animation graphically.
You will then see this window:
This shows the location, size etc of your objects on a timeline. You can edit individual keys by selecting a track (one of the lines) and pressing tab. Each dot represents a ‘key’.
If you have changed other things – like materials – during your animation, you can see these by changing select this menu (which says "object" in the diagram above) and select "material".
six -- cycling
If you set up an animation which will keep repeating – like a wheel turning – you don’t have to repeat all the keys – you can do one cycle and let Blender keep doing that cycle.
To do this, create one cycle then locate the path in the Ipo window. Select the "curve" menu (next to the object menu) from the bottom of the window. Then select extended mode then either cyclic (eg walking) or extrapolation (eg a wheel turning).
seven -- animating materials or world settings
This is almost identical to animating objects. However, instead of working in the 3D screens, if you’re changing the material when moving the scenes forward, change (eg the colour) and press i while the cursor is in the button window.
Depending on what your changing the i menu will be different but it’s always easy to guess what means what:
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