Juicy Blender Tute 105 - Basic Keyframe Animation


I want you to start with a clean blender.
Press CTRL X now. This will start blender clean.

What we are going to do is create a cube and make it move
around and rotate etc.

Press SPACE then ADD then MESH then CUBE .

Scale SKey it until it looks roughly this size .



Press TAB to exit editmode.

The way blender animates objects is with KEYFRAMES. These
are like little markers that define where an object is at a
certain frame.

For example if we created a keyframe at frame 1 then went to
frame 25, moved the cube and created another keyframe, the
cube would move between the two positions over 25 frames.

It would look like this (without the up/down mistake I made! :)
Gotta love that persistance o' vision!

Lets give that a go!



Create a KEYFRAME in blender by pressing the IKey . After
pressing it a menu appears with various keyframes we can
create.


We only want to record the location of the cube, so press
the LOC button. What this has done is to record that at
frame 1 the cube is at that location.

Now we want the cube to be on the left of the screen after
25 frames (one second in PAL TV standard). To do this press
the UPARROW twice which will take us to frame 21.
Then press the RIGHTARROW four(4) times to bring the time
to 25.


Move the cube GKey to where you want it to end up at the end
of the animation and press the IKey again.
And again press LOC This will record that at frame 25 the
cube is in the new position.

Press SHIFT LEFTARROW to rewind to the start of the
animation. Now press ALT A to play the animation back.
Pressing ESC will stop the playback and rewind to the
first frame.


You should have a nice animation of the cube moving from
where you created the first keyframe to where you created
the last.



You may experiment with this more by moving to other
frame numbers (say 10) and moving the cube again and
inserting keyframes where desired.



I also want to encourage you to rotate the cube and try
the LOCROT option after pressing Ikey . You will see
the cube spining as well as moving.



Try scaling SKey the cube and inserting SCALE keys.
When you feel a little comfortable with keyframes and
how they work try out the next tute,
106 Advanced Keyframing and Animation Curves

Here is a list of animation related keys.


UpArrow move 10 frames up.
DownArrow moves 10 frames down.
Right arrow moves 1 frame up.
Left arrow moves 1 frame down.
SHIFT LEFTARROW moves to the first frame.
SHIFT RIGHTARROW moves to the last frame.
ALT A plays the animation.
IKey inserts keyframes.
NUMPAD9 refreshes the animation system.