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Local TutorialCreating a Basic Animation in Blender Part 1

FreakFreak1088 Posts: 4,361Member
edited July 2007 in Tutorials #1
Creating a Basic Animation in Blender
Part 1
How to Move the Camera
By Dean A“FREAKA” Micetich

This is a tutorial on how to create a basic animation in Blender.
It will be in three parts. Part one is a simple exercise on how to move the camera.
The second part will be on how to move your mesh, around the scene.
The Final part will be on how to edit your animation.
I will start off how to move the camera 360 degrees around your mesh.

1. Create or open a file with a mesh you want your camera to go round.
2. Set up your lights and camera. (For this simple animation, have the whole mesh in view of the camera.)
3. Press SPACE on your keyboard to bring up the menu for creating objects. Select MESH and then CIRCLE. (Remember to have your mesh in the centre of the circle.)
4. Now press S to resize the circle so it comes out to your camera and LEFT CLICK or hit RETURN. Once this is done press TAB to come out of the edit mode.
5. Right click on the camera to select hit. Hold down SHIFT and select the newly created circle. Now press CTRL (control) and P to Parent the camera to the circle.

You are now ready to start animating.

6. Press F10 or click the icon to go into your Render menu. In the animation section change the number under END, to how many frames you want your animation to have. (Remember that in films as well as animation it is 22-24 frames per second to make a movement.) Once you have entered the number of frames you want press RETURN. (60 frames should be enough for this exercise.)
7. Now select your camera, (the circle should highlight as well as they are parented together.) make sure you are on Frame one. Now press I, and select ROT. (this creates a KEY FRAME)
8. Press N on your keyboard to bring up the TRANSFORM PROPERTIES. (at this point if you press R to rotate the circle you will see the number change in the Rotate in the Transform Properties. Once it gets to 180 degrees it will then start counting down in the minus.) To do a full 360 degrees turn, you will have to input the number under Rotate (you can do this under X, Y or Z depending on the direction you want the camera to go), in the Transform Properties.
9. Now change the frame to the last one in your animation. Press I and select ROT again to input another KEY FRAME.

You can now watch your un-rendered animation by press ALT and A. if you press 0 you can watch it form the camera point of view. (Once it gets to the end of the animation it will repeat itself.) Press ESC to stop the playback.
You will have notice that when the camera start to move it is slow, then speed up, and then become slow again as it reach the end of the 360 degrees turn. Here is how you fix that.

10. You are currently in the 3D view, you can either create a new window by clicking on the bottom bar and select split. To do the next step or you can click on the window menu on the left hand side of your screen, and change it to IPO EDITOR. (If you split the screen you will have two windows with the 3D View, change one of the Window to IPO EDITOR.)
11. You should now be in the IPO EDITOR. You should see a line that is curved. (In the main window.) Select this by right clicking on it. Then form the options below select CURVE to bring up its menu. Now select INTERPOLATION MODE and then LINEAR. You should now see the curved line become straight and at an angle.
12. Now go back to the 3D view. (If you have not opened a second window.) Press ALT A to view the animation. You will see that the camera now goes round your mesh at a steady speed. Press ESC to stop the playback.
13. Save the file you have just created. (It a good idea to do this now as with all programs it can crash. If this happened while you are rendering your animation, you will lose everything. So SAVE THE FILE.)

Now to save the animation you have just created.

14. Press F10 or click on the icon to go into the Render Menu again. One the left hand side you can choose where you will save your animation. (By default this will save into the C drive in a folder call TEMP.)
15. On the right hand side you have different option on what format to save your animation. Chose what suits you best. (I went for AVI CODEC. This will save the file as an AVI file.) However you can save your animation as a group of single pictures for each frame, if you choose a picture format. (JPEG, PNG or one of the others.) If you do chooses to save each frame of the animation in a none video format, you can still import then back into Blender and animate it. (I will explain how to do this in the next Tutorial.) But it easier to just use a video format.
16. Now click ANIM, your animation will now render, and save itself in the default location or in the area you have chosen.

That it. In the tutorial, I will explain to make your objects move, in your animation.


I have also add this as an attachment for easy reading, and printing out.
Post edited by Freak on

Posts

  • FreakFreak1088 Posts: 4,361Member
    Please note I will update the world doc, to include pictuers when I have a chance.
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