juicy blender Tute105(A) - 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..
the great divide


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 doesnt
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
Loc 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 ECS 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 105(B) - keyframe animation 2