Juicy Blender Tute 106 - Basic Keyframe Animation 2


This time we will create an object (cube) and make it move
for a bit then stop for a bit, then move back to where it
came from.

You may think this a bit boring but afterwards you will see
it will teach you many of the important aspects of keyframing
in blender.

I am presuming you have done all previous tutes,
especially tute 104, keyframe animation basics.

Here we go..

Firstly, press CTRL X to restart blender clean.
Then go to the RENDERBUTTONS area F10 and
set end time to 30 .

Then create a cube just like in tute104,
SPACE then ADD then MESH then CUBE .
make it this size..



Press TAB to exit editmode.
Now we want the cube to move from the left to the right so..

In the front viewport NUMPAD 1 Move GKey the cube to the
left of the screen.
Make sure you hold down CTRL while you move it so it doesn't
move up and down!
Just left and right. It makes the tute easier.






When your happy with where it is press the IKey and add
a key.


Now move to frame 10 and move GKey the cube to the right
of the screen.






(For a complete listing of keys for time see tute104)

Insert another Loc key with IKey then Loc.



Go back to frame 1 then press ALT A to play back the anim.
You will see the cube start slowly then move to the right
and stop slowly. This is called a slow in and slow out.
Press ESC to stop the playback



To see this in blender I want you to press the SCREEN
button at the top of the window and choose SCREEN001 .



What this does is show us a 3dwindow on the left and
a IPO curve window on the right.



Those IPO curves look S C A R Y don't they!! Well they're
not really. Lets get comfortable here.

Firstly with the 3DWindow active (mouse over it) press
NUMPAD 1 to activate the front view again and feel
at home.

With the IPOCurve view active (mouse over it)
press the HOME key. This will zoom the view
to the extents of the curves.



Those curves represent the cubes location in the 3d
world. You can see the little dots. They are where
the keyframes are.



The lines joining the dots are the path the cube takes
to get between the dots.



I want you to go to frame 30 now.
Do this just like normal with the arrow keys.

What we want to do is make the cube come back to rest at
frame 30 to the same spot it was at in frame 1.

Now we could just move the cube back to where we think it was
but that would be a bit rough and in a looping animation you
would see the jump between frame 1 and 30.

" So how do we overcome this ?" you ask. " Easy " I say.
Just like copying and pasting words in a wordprocessor, you
can copy and paste keyframes in blender.

I want you to select the curve that has the bend in it
( right mouse click) and press TAB .
Pressing TAB on an IPOCurve is like pressing TAB on a mesh.
It allows you to enter EDITMODE. EDITMODE on an IPOCurve
Is just like EDITMODE on a mesh.

Select ( right mouse click ) the keyframe 1
and you will see some handles and it changes colour.



Hold CTRL and middle mouse button to zoom out a bit
so you can see frame 30.



Press SHIFT D to duplicate the keyframe. Before you
move you mouse, hold down CTRL to make the keyframe
snap and move it over to frame 30.
LeftClick mouse to accept.



What you have done is to duplicate (copy) frame
1 and place the copy in frame 30.
Press TAB to exit editmode
Activate the 3dWindow / frontview (move mouse over it )
and press ALT A to view the anim.



Should look something like this.
Press ESC to stop anim.


That is the end of part one of this tute. Your brain is maybe
frazzled and might need a rest. To continue on go to
Juicy Blender Tute 106 - Basic Keyframe Animation 3