Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Lamp animation options
- Lamp RGB values. The color of light can be animated to change.
- Energy. The intensity of light can vary.
- Spotlight size. The angle of the beam can be animated to change.
- Texture. Texture can be applied to a lamp and animated.
World animation options
-
Zenith RGB. Color of the zenith (top) can be animated. This is great for
sunsets or sunrises.
-
Horizon RGB. Color of the horizon (bottom) can be animated.
-
Mist. Fog can be animated for interesting effects.
-
Stars. Stars can be made to move.
-
Texture offset and size: Texture applied to a world can be made to move.
The list above contains only some of the features that can be animated in Blender. To give
you an idea how this is possible, we will take a closer look at the following two examples.
9.9.1 Example 1: Color
Let's start with the color of an object. Open up a new scene in Blender (the default scene
with the cube object will do). Go to the properties window and click on the “Material” but-
ton. When you open the default scene in Blender, the cube object in the scene is selected.
Make sure it is selected before clicking on the “Material” button—after all, we are concerned
with the material of the cube object.
The properties window with the “Material” button activated shows a whole bunch of
tabs for controlling how the surface of the object displays in the 3D window. To begin, note
the “Preview” tab showing a dull gray sphere and below that the “Diffuse” tab with a button
showing the same dull gray color.
Look at the timeline window across the bottom of the screen. The green line shows at
frame 1 of a 250-frame animation (there is a scale ranging from 0 to 250 along the bottom
of the window above the header). We are again going to insert key frames on the timeline
so that we can make the color of our cube object change from gray to red over 50 frames
of the animation. You could change the starting color of the cube by clicking on the diffuse
color button with the LMB to display a color picker, and click anywhere in the colored circle
to change the color, but let's just leave things alone for the time being and stick with dull
old gray.
Instead of clicking with the LMB on the diffuse color button, click with the RMB and
in the menu that displays click on “Insert Keyframes.” You have inserted a key frame at
frame 1 on the timeline. Change to frame 50 (scrub the green line in the timeline win-
dow). Now click with the LMB on the diffuse color button and in the color picker that
displays, click on the red part of the colored circle. This changes the color of the cube to
red. Click on the diffuse color button again, this time with the RMB and then click on
“Insert Keyframes” to insert a key frame at frame 50. Now when you scrub the timeline,
you will see the color of the cube change from gray to red over the 50 frames. Hitting Alt
+ the A key will play this animation. If you open the graphical editor window, you will see
the graphical representation of this animation.
 
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