Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
or around frame 43. Move Suzanne across the view to the right. Go forward a couple more frames. Rotate
her 90 degrees counterclockwise. Forward 20 frames. Move her up. Autokeying is great, eh?
That's the last time we'll go step-by-step for animation. As you can see, it's a bit tedious. Plus, nobody
likes to be told what to do all the time.
Play your animation with Alt-A. Suzanne should descend, turn, cross the screen, turn again, then move
upward. If the animation resets to the beginning before she completes the motion, recall that this anima-
tion is a few frames longer than the original. If you're working on the same file as before, your animation
playback range on the Timeline view is probably still set to 1-61. Figure out where the animation should
really end by looking at the yellow key lines in the timeline. Change the animation
End
value to match
this new number (probably 66 or 67).
The F-curve for
z
axis rotation now looks like
Figure 3.22
. It's pretty much exactly what we wanted it
to look like earlier when we redrew the existing curve. The lesson from this is that you can always come
back later, bust your butt, and fix something that didn't work out like you thought it would. However,
it's significantly better to just think about it for an extra couple of seconds, then do it right the first time.
We'll revisit these mechanics in Chapter 11, Character Animation, but be aware that these are only just
that: mechanics. There is a lot of art to animation. It's a curious combination of technical skill, observation,
acting, and puppetry. Don't think that knowing how to set a keyframe will make you an animator.
Object Relationships and Management
Shifting gears a bit from basic animation, there are a few fundamentals of working with objects left to
introduce. The first two can assist you with project organization. Depending on what you're doing, your
scene might contain hundreds (or thousands) of objects. Some objects might even have several versions—
high resolution for close-ups, low resolution for distant shots—and you will need some way to manage all
of this.
Layers
If you are familiar with layers from many graphics production applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, page
layout applications), leave that knowledge at the door. In Blender, layers are simply a tool for organizing
objects. Think of layers as the King Kong of grouping functionality. Really, they should be called some-
thing like Master Groups, which would much better define what they do. However, we're stuck with the
terminology in the application, so we'll muddle through.
For example, let's say that you're blocking in a big outdoor animation. You don't have final models yet—
just fooling around. There is a terrain, a cabin, a stand-in character, and several hundred trees.
Figure 3.24
shows what this could look like. You want to work on character positioning and keyframe the low-reso-
lution person moving across the terrain. Those trees keep getting in the way, though. If only there were
some way to turn them off and on at will.
The cluster of 20 buttons on the 3D view header is the layer controller. Objects can be assigned to any
layer (or even to several layers at once) and can be shown and hidden with a click. The buttons on the
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