Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Engage Thrusters
1. Make sure that you are at frame 1 of the animaion (value of the ield to the
right-hand side of the End seing of the Timeline) and ind the Transform
properies of the object (Properies Sidebar).
2. Then right-click on one of the butons of the Locaion values and select
Insert
Keyframes
.
3. Now let's change the frame to 51. Move the empty object along its local Y axis by
around 12 units (
G
key once,
Y
key twice, then type "12") and insert another set of
keyframes at this posiion in ime. To test the irst keyframe, click on the play buton
in the
Timeline
window; the aircrat must be moving forward in a straight direcion,
perfectly aligned with its nose.
We now need to give some curvature to the path that the aircraft is describing. For
this, there is a very handy tool that will help us.
4. Go to the
Object
tab in the
Properties Editor
and find the
Motion Paths
panel, set
Start
to
1
,
End
to
51
and
Step
to
3
, then click on
Calculate Paths
. Now we have a
nice visual representaion of the path for the
fighterParent
object, to add the
desired curvature to the trajectory.
5. Let's go to the
Graph Editor
and ind the curves for the X Locaion and Y Locaion
channels (select the channel to highlight its curve on the right-hand side). Once
found, select the rightmost handler of the first keyframe for each curve and move
it to the right and then down; it is recommended to move them one by one.
6. Now it's ime to perform some trial and error changes: Go to the
Motion Paths
panel, click on the
Clear Paths
buton, and then on
Calculate Paths
to let Blender
show us the new shape of the trajectory. Then edit the handlers some more for the
curves and redraw the paths using the
Motion Paths
controls. We must do this unil
the shape of the trajectory suits our needs (it should look concave, seen from the
camera); remember not to give it a strong curvature, since that doesn't make sense
for an aircraft flying so fast.
Once we have got a good shape for the trajectory, we can see that the aircraft isn't
rotaing following the shape of the curve.
7. To solve that, let's go to frame 1 and make sure that the nose of the aircraft is
correctly aligned with the path (edit only the
local
X and Z rotaions, not the
local Y rotaion), and insert a set of keyframes on the
Rotation
property of the
fighterParent
object.
8.
Next, go to
frame 51
and rotate the object only on its local
Z Axis
(
R
key once,
Z
key
twice) unil it gets correctly aligned with the last part of the path, and insert another
set of keyframes for the
Rotation
property.
