Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Animation
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[edit] Note About Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Animation
I created this little note section to both warn learning users, and to give information to those who would make this wikibook better. The animation section in this book leaves a lot to be desired. It needs to go slower, and be more thorough. It is not finished (hence the accurately drawn "status images"). Here are a few things that need to be mentioned:
- What a key is
- How to manipulate keys after they are drawn
- How to delete keys (both IPO and Lattice)
I recommend that new users, those who are going through this tutorial to learn blender, read the animation section in the blender documentation first. It is written for an older blender version, but it is more informative than this tutorial, and most of the information in there is still accurate. Here is a link: http://www.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/p6390.html
[edit] Basic Animation Introduction
Animating, in principle, isn't that hard. Good animation is a very different story. These steps show you how to make a simple keyframe animation:
- It is a good idea to switch into the animation screen using the screen selection drop-down on the main menu or by pressing CTRL + Left Arrow.
- Go to the starting frame, using the arrow keys on your keyboard (Shift+Left Arrow goes to Start Frame, Shift+Right Arrow goes to End Frame, the Up and Down arrows Skip 10 Frames, the Right and Left arrows skip 1 Frame)
- Go into the correct mode. To animate solid objects, go into Object Mode. To animate bones, go into Pose Mode (in this case, you don't have any right now).
- Place the object or bone at the desired starting location and/or rotation.
- Press the i-key on your keyboard while the mouse is in the 3D view and you will see a menu of the different properties which you may animate. Choose the most appropriate one, based on the properties you wish to change in the next keyframe. For example, if you wish to change the location, rotation and size of the object, select LocRotSize (now called LocRotScale). You have now made the first keyframe, which is a frame of animation which you have personally set up.
- Now go to the frame of the next keyframe you wish to define, and put everything in the place you want for that frame. Remember, if you have a frame rate setting of 25 frames per second (fps) then if you want to make the next keyframe one second later in the animation, you need to go to frame 25 to make the keyframe. Then press the i-key again, and select the correct option again, depending on the changes you've made. (All in-between frames are automatically made to interpolate between the two neighboring keyframes).
- Repeat the previous step for each keyframe of the animation.
- If you want more control over the transition between the keyframes, use the IPO-window (if you followed step 1, it should already be open on the right of the screen). Select the object you have keyframed and the IPO-window will display its animation curves (one curve for each of the properties you selected). You can select and edit the curves using the normal Blender controls. Use the curve menu for more options, such as making the curves actually curve instead of being straight lines.
For more information, see this YouTube Tutorial or The Blender Userguide
