Animation Basics
There is a good animation tutorial online here: http://cgcookie.com/blender/lessons/4-animation/
Concepts to know:
- Timeline (bottom panel of Blender UI)
- 'Scrub' through time
- Start/End frames
- Current time
- Framerate - set in Render Properties (Camera icon in 'Properties' panel)
- Be able to calculate seconds of animation
- Playback controls
- Grease-pencil: Hold 'd' and LMB to write in the 3DView
- 'Key-framing'
- Record function - grabs keyframes whenever you active a transform
- Example: Move box to create keyframe at 0, scrub to frame 250, move box, play animation
- 'Transform' panel changes color to indicate presence of keyframes
- Animation Editor
- From the 'Info' panel (Menu bar) select 'Animation' from the Layout Droplist
- DopeSheet (Top-Left in 'Animation' layout)
- Shows individual keyframes
- Summary - shows keyframes for entire scene
- FooAction - shows a particular action for object Foo. There can be multiple actions, such as personal animation (walk-cycle) plus gross animation, such as motion across the set
- LocRotScale - show keyframes for basic transforms
- LMB: scrubs through animation
- To move keyframes: RMB to select, LMB to place (Or use 'g' to grab and LMB to place)
- Keyframes are hierarchical - select top of chain to move multiple
- Lock keyframes to prevent editing
- Graph Editor (Middle-Left in 'Animation' layout)
- Allow control of transition into/out of keyframes
- The shape of the curves match the actual path of an object in one axis
- e.g. A bouncing ball should follow a parabolic arc
- To edit a key:
- RMB to select, LMB to place (Esc to cancel)
- Grab center of key handle to move key
- Grab end of key handle to rotate key
- Click Key->Handle Type->Free to split the handle in two (Note - you will want this for creating a bouncing object in your lab)
- Rendering a movie from Blender
- Use the Camera icon in the Properties panel to find the Render controls
- Under 'Dimensions' at the top of the Properties panel:
- Set your image Resolution (in pixels) - I recommend 640x480 for testing
- Set your Frame Range (first and last frame numbers) - use 72 frames (3 sec.) for testing
- Set your Frame Rate - use 24 fps for testing
- Under 'Output' at the bottom of the Properties panel:
- Set output directory
- Select file format 'H.264' (This is an AVI)
- Select 'RGB' for color
- Click 'Animation' at the top of the Properties panel. This will render each frame of you animation using the Blender Render, then combine the images into an AVI.