Hello everyone, it's Jen from Olde Tinkerer Studio
In this tutorial, we will be learning the very basics of animation in Blender 2.83
So, let’s get on with the tutorial
Animation is making an object move or change shape over time
Objects can be animated in many ways
Moving as a whole object - changing their position, orientation, or size in time
Deforming them - animating their vertices or control points
Inherited animation - causing the object to move based on the movement of another object (e.g. its parent, hook, armature, etc.)
In this tutorial, we will cover the first two, but the basics given here are vital for understanding the rest of the tutorials
Animation is typically achieved with the use of keyframes
Properties have different colors and menu items for different states
Let’s add a Cylinder
If we look under the Object Properties, we notice that the Location, Rotation, and Scale are all gray
– meaning that there is no animation
If we insert a keyframe,
notice how the property fields turn yellow – indicating there is a keyframe on the current frametle
If we move to a different frame,
the property fields turn green – indicating that there is a keyframe on a different frame
Let’s move the Cylinder and add a keyframe
If we move the Cylinder on this same frame,
notice how the Z Location property field turns orange – indicating that the value has been changed
If you see a purple color for a property field, this indicates that it is controlled by a driver
We will be looking at drivers in a future video
There are three main editors in Blender that deal with animation (excluding the Drivers editor)
The Timeline editor is used for manipulating keyframes and scrubbing the playhead
The main Timeline region displays the animation frames over time
The Timeline gives the user a broad overview of a scene’s animation, by showing the current frame,
the keyframes of the active object, the start and end frames of your animation sequence, as well as markers set by the user
By default, the Frame Range is set to start at frame 1 and end at frame 250
You can change the frame range in the top right of the Timeline header, or in the Output Properties
The Keyframes are the diamond shapes
You can click to select one at a time, or select several by holding Shift,
or by dragging a box around the keyframes
You can then move single keys by dragging them,
and you can move multiple keys by pressing G and scale them with S
The Playhead is the vertical line with the current frame number at the top
The Playhead can be set or moved to a new position
by pressing or holding the left-mouse-button andb scrubbing area at the top of the timeline
The Playhead can be moved in single-frame increments
Subtitleby pressing Left or Right, or you can jump to the beginning or end frame by pressing Shift-Left or Shift-Right
The Scrollbar is along the bottom
The Timeline includes Transport Controls, to play, pause, and skip through an animation sequence
It also includes tools for manipulating Keyframes, Keying Sets, and Markers
The Timeline can be panned by holding middle-mouse-button, then dragging the area left or right
You can zoom the Timeline by using Ctrl-middle-mouse-button, the mouse Wheel, or pressing NumpadMinus and NumpadPlus
The Dope Sheet gives the animator a birds-eye-view of the keyframes inside the scene
The Dope Sheet is inspired by classical hand-drawn animation process,
in which animators will make use of a chart, showing exactly when each drawing,
sound and camera move will occur, and for how long
You can pan the view vertically (values) or horizontally (time) by holding down the middle-mouse-button and dragging
You can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel
You can scale the view vertically or horizontally by holding down the CTRL key plus the middle-mouse-button and dragging
Object Channels contain the keyframes for all visible action channels
Gray keyframes indicate a keyframe that is not selected
Yellow keyframes indicate a selected keyframe
The gray bar between two keyframes indicate that the keyframes are identical
You can select and move keyframes in the Dope Sheet just like you can in the Timeline
The Graph Editor allows users to adjust animation curves over time for any animatable property
The curve view allows you to view and edit F-curves
An F-curve has several key parts
The curve defines the value (Y axis) of the property over time (X axis)
Keyframes are user-defined values on certain frames
and are represented by little black squares which become orange if selected
Each keyframe has a handle that helps determine the values of the curve between keyframes
These handles are represented by extruding lines with circular ends
and can be selected and modified to change the shape of the curve
You can select and move keyframes in the Graph Editor just like you can in the Timeline
If you are interested in learning more about 3D art and animation,
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Thanks for watching
Have a good day