Blender 2.7 Tutorial #14 : Intro to Animation Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Blender (English) - Professional Skills

hello and welcome our four team of new
series how to use blender 2.7 in this
video we're talking about the art of
animation which is of course the art of
making things move over a sequence of
time now it's important to know that
people go to animation school for a long
time to learn how to make objects and
characters move in a realistic and
believable way everything from let's say
a ball bouncing to making objects look
like they're moving in the wind or
following with gravity all the way up
until making characters look like they
are acting like they have motivation and
in control motions it takes a long time
to practice and learn how to do well but
luckily actually creating that motion
blender is very easy let's go ahead and
get started by clicking on the splash
screen and earlier in this video series
when I set up blender I actually got rid
of one of the windows that we need in
blender to the other interface that we
need for animation we're going to make
it again so I'm gonna grab this little
cross hatched area and divide this
window in two by dragging it down on it
with my mouse and we're going to make
this very narrow little window into a
timeline window so what I'm gonna do is
click on this little change window
button I'm going to change it to a
timeline so what a timeline is if you
ever use any video editing software or
any other animation software you'll
notice a timeline is it's a visual
representation of movement or keyframes
over a sequence of time so right now our
timeline is 250 frames long and by
default in blender if you look under the
camera tab in your properties window
the default frame rate is 24 FPS which
means frames per second which is the
standard traditional film frame rate in
movie theaters and an old film cameras
if you want to change it you can 29.97
is the frame rate of North American and
TSE TV but 24 frames per second looks
really good for animation we need one
more window in our user interface so I'm
going to grab this little cross hatched
area again and
i down on it and this next window above
the timeline is going to be a dope sheet
now a dope sheet is a term used in
traditional animation it's very similar
to a timeline but a dope sheet kind of
gives you a bigger view a bigger kind of
scope of what's going on in your whole
animation just like the timeline it
shows you a sequence of frames but by
default it shows you a much longer
sequence all the way up until frame 1500
and by default blenders timeline is only
250 frames long there are a few
technical differences as well we'll get
into that but we should have to to start
animation right now I'm on frame 1 of my
animation how do I know that well this
green bar same with anything with this
one is what actually says 1 but down
here at the bottom of our timeline we
can see that we're at frame 1 this is
the current frame indicator if I grab
this green bar in either of the windows
you can see that it slides along so we
can go to different points in time to
actually make animation happen what we
have to do is turn on this red record
button which means automatic keyframe
insertion so let's go ahead and go to
our front orthographic view in our 3d
viewport and I'm gonna turn the
animation button on but now we have to
decide where an object is going to be
but more importantly what time that
location is going to be so I'm going to
go back to frame 1 and I know in my head
that I want the cube to be wait about
here at frame 1 so I have to go to frame
1 and then with the red record button
turned on I'll tap G and move the cube
there and as soon as I tap to let it go
you're going to see a few things happen
in my dope sheet and my timeline so I'm
going to click what happened is that we
made a keyframe because this automatic
key frame insertion button is turned on
whenever we move or rotate or scale any
object in a 3 viewport around it makes a
keyframe it tells that object to be at
that location or at that rotation or at
that scale at this point in time but we
need to
keyframes to make animation so I'm gonna
go one frame later and then go to frame
24 and I can actually type down here in
my current frame indicator a number and
press Enter
so now we're at frame 24 I'm actually
going to zoom in on the dope sheet so it
kind of resembles the same length as the
timeline right about there and we're
gonna move the cube the other side again
I have this record button turned on so
when I let go it's going to make a
keyframe here and here as well these are
really the same thing and please don't
get confused that you actually see for
here this cube you can collapse it
that's the name of this cube go figure
it only has two keyframes and this top
bar is a summary of all the keyframes of
all the objects in the scene so we have
two keyframes so we have animation let's
go back using our VCR buttons down here
and let's press go back the beginning
and now we'll press play and it plays
the animation now what it actually did
is it ended all the in-between frames
for us because this is keyframe
animation or keyframe based animation
which means we don't have to do every
single part in between blender is very
good at doing the in-betweens for us so
we don't have to but right now if I
press play it's going to loop through
the entire 250 frames of our timeline so
what I can do is I can change this end
value right now it's 250 we can change
it down to let's say 50 and press Enter
and likewise you can make the animation
longer if you need more time if your
animation has more keyframes on this of
course you can make it any length that
you like well I'll go ahead and press
play and so the animation ends and then
it loops back to the beginning once it
gets down to 50 and I'm going to zoom in
here by scrolling up on my mouse or
scrolling down depending on what kind of
mouse you have and there we go if you
watch this over and over and over again
you'll notice that the cube is not
moving at a constant rate you'll notice
that it actually speeds up at the
beginning and slows down at the end and
that's because of the interpolation of
these two frames interpolation basically
means the curvature if you look at the
movement on a graph of time versus
location which is actually what our
graph editor window does which we'll
look at in a minute
you'll see that the interpolation is not
linear it's curved in other words bezier
if you're familiar with any vector
drawing tools like Bezier curves that
that's what this is let's go ahead and
make our cube jump though so I'm gonna
go halfway in between to frame 12 and
I'm gonna make my cube go up in the air
and because we still have this red
record button turned on
it made a keyframe before we watch it
though I gotta warn you you need to turn
this red record button off unless you
actually need to do animation what
happens is a lot of beginners leave this
on and then they do things like adjust
the lights or add more lights or move
things around and they're seen not
intending to animate them but then
things start acting very strange when
you save and reopen the file things
might snap back to their old location
we're things just happen please always
make sure that you only have keyframes
on the object that you intend to have if
you don't want a keyframe on something
of course you can select keyframes in
the dope sheet that's one of the
technical benefits of having this dope
sheet on your screen and you can delete
with the X or Delete key on your
keyboard and you can get rid of
keyframes that way so let's go ahead and
watch this animation so we'll go back to
beginning and press play and we have our
jumping animation but you know what I
think I want a different speed let's say
I want this a jumping animation to
happen quicker that currently is or
maybe in slow motion well what I can do
is I can actually select key frames in
this dopesheet window and then move them
so I can you know have one selected by
right-clicking on it and I can tap G so
now the second part of this animation
takes a lot longer it's very slow I can
undo that but we can also scale an
animation as well if I select these key
frames with box select in other words I
tap B on my keyboard and select those
key frames I can scale them now what I'm
going to do is put my cursor my my
playhead in other words right over the
first frame and now I can tap S and that
will scale the animation we make it
bigger or make it smaller again
the S key to scale and I make this
longer takes more time and therefore is
a slower animation so now that breasts
play the cube moves a lot slower and
it's only actually going to frame fifty
which is only halfway through if i
likewise press pause and scale being an
animation down
let us how it's scaling towards the
playhead which is why it's good idea to
put your playhead right at the beginning
so you can scale towards it or towards
the end you can scale up that way as
well I'll scale towards the beginning
make my animation very quick let's say
right there and press play and it
happens a lot quicker so I hope you
understand that let's talk about
interpolation but before we do that
let's talk about inserting keyframes
manually I'm actually going to leak this
whole animation so with everything
selected with the a key I'll press X to
delete and click on delete if you do not
want to use this red record button let's
say you don't have a timeline up you
probably should but let's say that you
have the cube already in a starting
position and you just want to say hey I
want to keep this cube there but I want
to make a keyframe of the cube in this
location at this time what you can do is
if you want to do it the kind of sloppy
wet you can turn on the record button
and you can just kind of jiggle the cube
and we move it up and down it recognizes
that and makes a keyframe the better way
to do that though is to have the cube
selected and tap I on your keyboard
the I key brings up your insert keyframe
menu and you can select different kinds
of keyframes now the default kind when
you have your red record button turned
on is it inserts a keyframe for location
rotation and scale those are the three
things you can animate with so if I only
insert a location keyframe and then I go
let's say again to frame 24 and I move
right without the record button turned
on I move the cube it didn't insert a
keyframe because I don't have a regret
record button turned on but what I'll do
is I'll have to I and also insert just
another location keyframe the animation
will still play
by only record of the fact that you know
it's location moved if I scaled this
cube on just this keyframe it won't
scale to be small and then big because
this keyframes data only included its
location information so if you want to
animate location and size and rotation
over time you need to use look Road
scale so I go back to this keyframe and
insert a Lok
location location scale keyframe and now
I can scale the cube down let's make it
really tiny like that and I'm gonna go
to this keyframe over here and let's go
ahead and move it up now I made a
mistake there I actually did insert a
scale keyframe right here so it is going
to grow whoops what happened there I
gotta go scale put it on the ground and
tap I look row scale so now it should
know that this frame is that size and
let's scale it up on this frame and tap
I and insert a local scale keyframe in
fact let's move it up and cert that
keyframe again and now it should grow
from small to big there we go
I'm going to make my cube jump and do a
flip in midair so what I'm going to do
is go halfway in between move it up in
here maybe make it do a rotation and
there we go and I'm going to tap I to
actually insert that keyframe we'll use
a little crowed scale and so now it
actually does kind of a flip and then it
reverses back and that happened because
this keyframe this third key frame had
rotation data we rotated it basically
360 degrees from point A to point B and
then it rotated back to the way it was
sort of rotate back the other
direction for this one so what I could
do here if I want to rotate this cube
300 it were actually two times 360 I can
go to this keyframe and then in my
properties panel you can see under
transform and by the way that panel is
the N key the rotation at this keyframe
is basically 360 so I want to keep going
on make it spinning at constant rate
so I'm going to type in here and that's
the green axis set of spinning leveled
is why I'm going to type 2 and I think
you can do this a star 4 times that
shift 8 360 aha 720 I was alerted to get
in my head and so now I'll tap I to
insert that location rotation scale
keyframe and now we have a cube spinning
animation but last thing I want to do is
stop this cube from speeding up and
slowing down so I'm going to drag this
little crosshatch stereo I'll get rid of
that window and I'll divide the window
in two we're going to turn this side
window into a graph editor that's what I
was talking about earlier with Bezier
curves oh my gosh look at this because
we have the cube selected we can see all
the lines of direction again on the
bottom is keyframes over time and this
is distance traveled up and down so you
can see that on the x-axis this red line
the cube does the most movement it moves
from here on the X red axis over to here
over time but you can see because it's
sticking not moving a lot at the minutes
beginning section it's not moving a lot
distance wise especially in this first
little section here but it's moving a
lot more over time that means it's not
it's slow in that time and then it
speeds up over time when it gets steeper
so what I can do is I can right-click on
any of these little orange handles and I
can right click to drag them around and
easy
these aren't Bezier curves and I want to
change the interpolation of any or all
of these points and this does take some
practice
I'm not perfect at it by any means I
tend to just do my animation visually
what you can do is select a point and
then go down to key and change the
interpolation mode which is the T key
again key interpolation mode which is
just the T key as well and here are the
three types of an interpolation constant
linear and Bezier the only one I want to
talk about is linear by default all
keyframes are busying if I change this
keyframe to linear it goes from a
straight line or into a straight line
and therefore the cube will no longer
start slow and start speeding up it'll
just go at a constant rate which is what
you might want there we go the end frame
still does slow down towards it so what
I'm going to do is go to the this
keyframe and then change with the T key
my tribulation to linear it does not do
both sides sometimes I'm not entirely
sure my understanding of of
interpolation modes is not that great
but I can right click on this little
busy a handle and drag it and make it
both straight right there
click there we go so now if I play it
back hopefully it's a little bit more
linear over time there we go so let's
going to be it for this video thanks for
watching and again the warning is turn
this record button off if you're not
need to animate I'll see you next time
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