First Semester, A.Y.

2022-2023
College of Information & Technology Education

3D DESIGNING
IT10/IT10L

Module 11
(Animation Basics)
 Chapter 10- Animation Basics
Basic Key-framing and Auto Key-framing
Now that we know how to make stuff and make it look good, it’s time to figure out how
to move it around in your scene. If you're familiar with older versions of Blender, this is a
HUGE change from the past! What used to be called the Action Editor and IPO
(Interpolation) windows are now called the Dope Sheet and Graph Editor windows.
Basically, The Dope Sheet shows your animation keys as points that can be easily
copied or moved on a line. The Graph Editor shows your animations as graph curves,
where different things can be done with them. This is a big area with lots of things we
can do and talk about. Many of the features available will become understandable
with practice and by getting beyond the basics. This is a highly developed area in
Blender where new features will more than likely be available before this document
can ever be printed. For this reason, we will deal with the basics. The first thing we need
to do is go back and re-read the section on Rendering and Animation Basics (pages vi
- viii). Selecting a preset format will
set your frame rate correctly.

After you set up your scene and set the Frames/Second (FPS) in the
render button area, consider what you want your “actors” to do
and how long they should take to do it. One of the problems that
beginner animators experience is making the motions occur in an
appropriate time. Remember to look at your frames/second (FPS)
when animating and relate it to time. For example, if you want
something to take 3 seconds to get from point “A” to point”B” and
you are running at 25 fps, you need to complete the animation in a
total of 75 frames.

Moving Through Time:

In the picture below, you will find some controls at the bottom
of the screen in the Timeline window. If the Timeline window
isn't visible by default, you can select the Default or
Animation screen in the top toolbar. There are several other
ready-made screen layouts that we'll discuss in later chapters.
Timeline Current frame: Playback Controls: Synchronization:
window This is your current frame. Can be controlled with Just like any player, Used to match
type the Arrow Keys- Left/Right will change one frame moves through playback- sound
at a time. You can also drag this line with mouse. time. & video.

Current Frame

Alternate Playback: Start and End Frames: Key-framing:

If this is selected, you can set the play- Sets the movie length, unless the Control for
back start and end frames here Alternate Playback button is press. inserting/removing key
different then the actual scene frames. The it will just display working frames. frames/types.

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Chapter 10- Animation Basics
Moving, Rotating and Scaling:

These are the 3 basic modifiers to use on an object in

animation. When you create key-frames in Blender with
these modifiers, Blender will figure out all the in between
locations on the other frames. To insert a key on an
object, go to the frame where you wish to place the key,
move, rotate or scale the object, then press the “I” key
to “Insert Key”. Make sure your cursor is in the 3D window
when you push the “I” key. The menu to the right pops
up. You have 3 main options for now- Location, Rotation
and Scaling and combinations of these. Select the key
option of what you’ve done to the object. Now,
advance to the next frame where you want to put a key (i.e. frame 25 if you want a
movement to occur after 1 second), move, rotate or size the object, then press “I” to
insert another key. Remember, you can change frames quickly with the arrow keys.

Continue placing keys along your timeline to create your animation. For the most part,
location and size keys work flawlessly, but care needs to be given to rotation keys. If you
try to rotate an object too far in one set of keys, the object may not rotate in the exact
direction you want it to. It may rotate oddly. Try small angular steps while animating
rotation keys. There are ways to control this better and tools to simplify this process that
will be discussed later.
RoboDude Says:
If an object doesn’t seem like it rotates properly with
animation keys, try pressing Ctrl-A to reset the object’s
Automatic Key-Framing: scale and rotation.

Typing “I” to insert keys is the traditional way of entering key frames, but it can become
annoying when you have a lot of items to insert key frames for (for example, bones in a
skeleton). This is where automatic key framing becomes a useful feature. To turn on
automatic key framing, press the small red circle button in the playback buttons on the
time line window and select the type of keys to record. This will “record” any motion you
do on a given frame and insert the
necessary key frames needed.
Don't forget to set a key on your
initial frame. Auto key framing
won't do that unless you change
something on that frame.

Key Frames: Auto Key Frame Button: Auto Key Types: Delete Key Button:
At any frame where you Eliminates the need to Select the type of keys you Press this button to
insert a key, a yellow line press “I” to insert keys. want to automatically record. delete a key at
will display in the timeline. By setting this, even pressing “I” that frame.
will automatically add them.

RoboDude Says:
Don't forget to turn off automatic key framing when not needed! You may end up animating
things accidentally when you don't want to!

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 Chapter 10- Animation Basics
Viewing Your Animation:

There is a simple way to view your animation without having to render out a movie.
Take the current frame number to the place where you want to start viewing the
animation. Place your cursor in the 3D window you wish to view your animation and
press the “Alt” and “A” keys together. The animation will play. Blender will attempt to
display the movie at the correct frames-per-second, but may be unable to do so due
to scene complexity, computer speed, or image settings (solid or wireframe -Z key).

You can also see your animation by pressing the “play” button in
the Timeline window. You can also play backwards.

Movement may not be exactly how you planned it. Blender automatically defaults to
trying to create a smooth flow through the keys you’ve place. This can be changed
and will be discussed later.

Working with the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet

Animation is difficult to do without some basic knowledge of
the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet. As mentioned earlier,
these used to be called the IPO (interpolation) and Action
Editor windows. The best way to access these windows is to
change your screen layout from “Default” to “Animation”.
You will see the 2 windows on the left and it may help to
make those windows larger. All objects that have animation
keys on them will be
displayed in the windows and their data displayed
to the right as diamonds (Dope Sheet) and curves
(Graph Editor). You can zoom in/out and pan in this
window with the center mouse wheel. Like actual
objects, the curves can be edited in an edit and
Dope Sheet object mode. Older versions of Blender would only
Window show you the curves of a selected object, but 2.6
can display all objects in the scene. At first glance,
it can be rather confusing! To simplify your view,
you can check/uncheck objects to hide/show their
curves. By opening a triangle under an object, you
can select
individual
curves for
that object
and edit
Graph Editor them.
Window

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Chapter 10- Animation Basics
More About the Dope Sheet:

The Dope Sheet shows your

animation keys as small
diamonds along the time line.
This can be very useful when you
want to copy keys to other points
along the time line or select
multiple keys and scale them to
slow down an animation. You
can select keys the same way
you select other objects in
Blender- by using the RMB while holding “Shift”; the “B” key to box select, or just RMB a
single key. You will notice that when you select a key in the Dope Sheet, the same key is
selected in the Graph Editor. You will see many of the same options that are available
in the Graph Editor, discussed below.

More About the Graph Editor:

In older versions of Blender, you could animate many things, but not everything. The
newer versions boast that everything can be animated and so far from what I've seen,
this appears to be true. Everything can also be displayed in the Graph Editor, but trying
to look at everything at one time is confusing. Below is a short description on how to
control the Graph Editor window:

Menus for viewing Filters- By pressing the

and options for Filters button, you can Proportional
curves and keys. chose which keys to look editing for curves.
at to avoid confusion. Creates a
Isolate the window (i.e. transforms, materials, Snapping, pivot background image
to just viewing of textures, world, etc.) and copy/paste of a curve- useful
selected object commands. when working on
(very useful). an objects and
need to see the
curves for another
RoboDude Says: object.
The Graph Editor and Dope Sheet views can be confusing! With
practice, it becomes easier to view and maneuver in them.

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 Chapter 10- Animation Basics
As mentioned before, when you create an animation for an object, Blender
automatically tries to “smooth” the path of animation through your key points. You
have ways of controlling the results of the path. One way is to click on the path(s) you
want to modify in the Graph Editor window and, with the cursor in the Editor window,
type “T” for type. You can also access these “Interpolation Modes” by going to the
“Key” menu and select “Interpolation Mode”. You have 3 main options (and others):

Constant- Gives a square waveform, like turning it on and off. No smooth flow.
Linear- Takes a straight path from point “A” to point “B”. Solves problems of
animations swinging way out of where you want it to go, but jerky motion
at key points
Bezier- The default type which tries to make the motion through the points
smooth.
There are other smoothing options available in interpolation mode to experiment with
that can change the shape of the curve and effect.

Animation path of a cube with 3 keys placed at Animation path of a cube with 3 keys placed at
shown locations with Bezier path type selected. shown locations with Linear path type selected.
Path is smooth, but curves way out. Path is straight, but jerky at key points.

There is another way to keep the bezier type, but control the flow.
It requires you to go into the track in edit mode (unlocked) and
adjust verticies on the graph individually. First, select the track you
wish to modify (Loc, Rot, Size- X, Y, or Z) and make sure the track is
unlocked (Tab key). When you do that, each key will be displayed
as 3 points. By grabbing (“G” key) an end of the “3-point spline”,
you can move and size it to get a different flow through that
point. This technique requires some skill and practice. Key points
can also be moved to different locations using this method
(change a key from one frame to another.)

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Chapter 10- Animation Basics
RoboDude Asks: I messed up my animation. How do I start over?
If you ever need to start over with an animation, you can erase all the animation tracks in
the Graph Editor window and start over. To select all tracks, hit the“A” key once or twice,
then the “Delete” key. Be careful that you only have the keys for the selected object!

Modifying Curves in the Graph Editor:

What else can you do in the Graph Editor? There are some simple features that will
allow you to set a constant motion or rotation, mirror a curve, apply noise, and set
something to cycle through an animation like walking. These are all features that, with a
little practice, will save you a lot of work.

Let's first look at an example of making something spin at a constant speed. You first
need to set 2 key frames at frame 1 and
something like frame 30. Rotate the
object 90 degrees between the 2 keys. If
you are running at 30 frames-per-
second, this would give you a full
revolution in 4 seconds, but right now,
your animation would stop after 1
second and only spin 90 degrees. In the
Graph Editor window, find the rotation
track that shows the rotation curve and
select it. In my case, it is the Z Rotation
curve. By going into the “Channel” menu and selecting
“Extrapolation Mode” you can choose “Linear Extrapolation”. The
curve will extend infinitely. To change the speed, move the key on
frame 30. To stop it from spinning at a later frame, move to that
frame (say, frame 100) and hit “I” to insert a key-frame on the graph.
You can now go back into the “Extrapolation Mode” menu and
choose “Constant Extrapolation”. The curve will level out after that
frame.
Under the “Key” menu, you will find some other useful tools to
shape your animations. There is a useful “Mirror” option that can
flip a curve. This would be useful for objects such as gears and
wheels where you need to match the animation of an object,
but need to turn in the opposite
direction. You will also see a new
option in the Key menu called
“Add F-Curve Modifier”. The classic
“Cycles” option can be found
there (useful for repetitive motion
like swinging) along with other
useful modifies such as “Noise”
which will give a “jitter” effect to
something's motion.

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 Chapter 10- Animation Basics
The previous section dealt with basic object animation. Deforming meshes, following
paths, creating bone structures (armatures) and creating child-parent relationships will
be discussed later. Animation can be a frustrating thing to perfect. Practice!

Animating Materials, Lamps and World Settings (and more)

Earlier we mentioned that everything can be animated in Blender and those animation
tracks can be viewed in the Graph Editor. If you can change a number or a color in a
box, it can be animated- even in Cycles! Let's spend some time looking at some of
these things. The process below works in the Node Editor window as well.
For my example, I'm changing the material
settings on a cube. At frame 1, I'm setting a
key frame on the Diffuse Color and Intensity
and Specular Hardness. In order to put a key
frame on any data block, simply place your
cursor over the block and hit “I”. You will
notice the block will turn yellow, indicating
that a key frame is present on that setting at
that frame number. The block will remain
green for all other frames, indicating that the
setting is animated. This will even work for
Above: No Material Keys. check mark boxes.
Top Right: Keys applied
to Diffuse Color and
To see the animated effects, you will need to
Intensity and Specular place your cursor in the buttons window and
Hardness. Key frames press “Alt-A”. The numbers will scroll showing
displayed in yellow. the setting has been animated. You may not
Right: Animated features be able to see the final effects until a movie
are displayed in green is rendered out. This process will work for any
on non- key frames. window setting.

Notice the Graph Editor to the right. You

can open the Material graphs for the cube
and see all the settings you applied,
provided you have set the buttons at the
bottom of the window to display material
keys. These keys can be edited the same
way discussed on the previous pages.

These techniques are useful for animating items such as changing spot lamp size,
intensity and color, rolling fog and clouds in the World settings, and waves in the Texture
settings.

RoboDude Says:
Remember that you can always undo a bad animation key by using “Ctrl”-Z !

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Adding Motion to Your Scene
Open your “Landscape Scene” file and go to your scene buttons.
It’s time to animate our “dark and stormy night”. We will start by
making the correct setting to do a movie. First, review the “7 Easy
Steps to Create an MPEG Movie” found on page 8-4. Follow those
steps and name the output movie file as “Stormy Night.mp4”. Also
set the End frame to 200. Our movie will be 200 frames long, or 6.6
seconds at 30 fps. You will also want to make sure Ray Tracing is
turned OFF. Ray Tracing will slow down your renders and is not
necessary for this scene. Change your screen layout from Default
to Animation. Remember, this is found at the top of your screen.

The first thing we plan to

animate is the camera. We
will do a short, simple
movement of the camera
coming closer to the shore.
In the top view, select the
Camera. Make sure the
camera is at a good
location and does
not render any edges
of your planes. At
frame 1, hit “I” to
insert a Location key.
Now use your arrow
keys to move to frame 200. Move the
camera closer to shore, hit “I” to insert
another location key.

The motion doesn’t need to be much. We don’t want the boat moving too fast! Go
back to frame 1 and hit Alt-A to see your animation. You should see the camera
animated. Press Esc to stop playing the animation. Save your file.

Now we’re going to animate the spotlight rotating in

the lighthouse. In the top view, select the spotlight. At
frame 1, press “I” to insert a Rot (rotation) key. It
doesn’t matter at what angle the spotlight is starting
at in the animation.

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 Adding Motion to Your Scene
Go to frame 30 (one second) and rotate the
spotlight 45 degrees. To do this, type “R” to rotate,
then type 45 on the keyboard. Press “Enter” or LMB
click. The lamp will have rotated exactly 45 degrees.
If you want the lamp to spin the opposite direction,
type “-” after the 45. Press “I” to insert another
Rotation key. Use your left arrow key to go back to
frame 1. You should see the lamp spin back to it’s
original position. Switch to the Animation screen.

In order to keep the lamp spinning

consistently the entire animation, Curve showing
we could attempt to continue rotation change
along the time line, inserting keys over 30 frames.
every 45 degrees and 30 frames,
but that would get boring very fast.
Instead, we will use an Extend
mode in the Curve Editor window.
Isolate view to
Enlarge the Curve Editor window selected object
Turn off these tracks
large enough to work with and turn
off the animation tracks for the
camera to simplify your view. You
could also press the small arrow button at the bottom of the window to isolate viewing
to only the selected object as well. Expand the tracks displaying the rotation keys for
the Spotlight. Isolate the track that shows change over time by clicking on it,
representing the animation of the lamp over the 30 frames. It will probably be the “Z
Euler Rotation (Spot)”, the blue curve.
With the curve selected, go to the
“Channel” menu, “Extrapolation
Mode”, and “Linear Extrapolation”.
The curve should now extend infinitely
in both directions. Test your animation
by pressing the “Play” button in the
Timeline, or hitting “Ctrl-A”. The lamp
should spin the entire animation.

The lamp speed should be fine, but if you wish to speed it up or

slow it down, you could
select the rotation keys
at frame 30 in the Dope
Sheet and move them
to a different location. The curve will adjust.

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Adding Motion to Your Scene
Now it’s time to animate the
water. We want to create some
rolling waves, not too fast or slow.
This is a little trial-and-error. I’ve
tried to take some guess work out
of the process. To begin, select the
Water Plane Water Plane and go to your
Texture buttons and find the Offset
settings in the Mapping panel. We
will animate the Offset Z number.
Because we used a 3D texture and not an image to create
the water effect, it can be animated to give the illusion of
motion. Remember that we added 2 textures to the water.
Right now, we are only animating the 1st texture.

At frame 1, place your cursor over the Offset Z number and

press the “I” key to inset a key frame. The Offset blocks will
turn yellow, indicating that a key has been placed on them.

Now advance to frame 50 and change the

Offset Z number to 0.1. This will cause the
water to “roll” up slightly. Again, with your
cursor over the Offset Z button, press “I” to
insert a key frame. This will cause the texture offset to roll from
frame 1 to 50. Since we can’t really hit Alt-A to see the animated texture in the window,
we have to wait until we animate a movie to see the speed and effect. If you place
your cursor in the properties window area and hit “Alt-A” you will see the number
changing in the Offset Z block.

It's now time to extend the curve for the

texture setting just like we did for the spinning
lamp. First, go over to your Graph Editor
window and find the material tracks for the
plane. Remember that you can isolate your
view to just the plane with the arrow button.
Select the “Z Offset “ curve, go to the
“Channel” menu, “Extrapolation Mode”, and
“Linear Extrapolation”. Don't worry if you do
not see much of a curve due to the small
change we placed on the setting.

We also want to animate the Ocean Modifier we used on the water plane as well. To
do this, go to the Modifier properties panel while the
water plane is selected. We will be applying an
animation to the Time setting in the panel.

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 Adding Motion to Your Scene & Challenge
In the Modifier panel, find the Time setting. Make sure you
are currently on frame 1 and press “I” while over the time
setting. Move to frame 200, change the Time setting to 5.00
and press “I” again. At the bottom of the panel, change the
End Frame under “Bake Ocean” to 200 (the length of our
movie). Press the “Bake Ocean” button for Blender to
calculate the animation of the waves. You will see a
progress bar at the top of the
screen to let you know when it is
finished.

To make the animation run smoothly, go to the Graph Editor

window and find the Time (Ocean) curve. Select it, press “T”
to change the type to Linear to make the animation even.

That’s it for animation for now. We have animated the camera moving, the lamp
spinning and the waves rolling. Later, we will add some rain using particles. You can
always change your resolution percentage size to animate faster and check your wave
effects. Check your movie setting and press Animate in the Scene buttons. Sit back and
wait for your movie to animate.
** Call the instructor when finished**

Challenge Task: Logo or Sculpture Animation

Remember the Logo challenge
activity in chapter 3? It is now time
to create an animation of that
scene. Think about other professional
logo animations seen in movies and
advertising. What can you animate?
Try moving the camera and objects,
materials, and even the sky. Create
reflective materials and other
effects. If you did not create a logo,
try animating the sculpture you
created earlier in chapter 3.

** Call the instructor when finished**

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 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License.

© 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2017 fifth edition by James Chronister. This document may be reproduced in
whole or in part without permission from the author. Feel free to use this manual for any and all
educational applications. I enjoy emails from other educators, so please let me know how you’re using
the book. You may not bundle this tutorial with any software or documentation that is intended for
commercial applications (marketing for a profit) without expressed written approval from the author.
Inquiries and comments can be directed to [email protected]. This document, and other
information, can be found at http://www.cdschools.org/blenderbasics . At this site, look under
“Academics” in “Technology Education”.

Information regarding the Blender program and development can be found at www.blender.org. Blender
users can also find information on how to use the program at www.blenderartists.org. Daily Blender
news and tutorial links can be found at www.blendernation.com.

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