Move and Dissolve animation
By Vincent Stoessel

 

This will teach you to do a very simple keyframe animation. You

      will animate a cube from left to right as it fades away. Like

      this:

 

Eventually the cube will fade way completely like this:

 





The first thing you want to do is go to the camera view  by hitting

      the 0 key on the numberpad. I setup my user  defaults to have a simple

      plane and lamp in place.  You can make changes to blender and save the

      defaults by  pressing ctrl-u. Here's a tip for telling up from down;

       the 1 key on the number pad will give  you a front view, the 7 key

      will give a top view and 3 will  give you a side view.  Here is what

      blender looks like when I start up.


      Anyway, hit the space bar and add a plane  and a lamp if you don't

      already have one. What I like  to next is turn on some sky. Check out

      these sky settings.



Anyway, hit the space bar and add a plane  and a lamp if you don't

      already have one. What I like  to next is turn on some sky. Check out

      these sky settings.



Once the cube appears it will be in editmode which  means you can

      edit the meshes individual vertices.  But that's another tutorial, so

      hit TAB to get out of edit  mode.Now drag the cube a little to the

      left.  Click on the example below <


OK make sure that you are in frame one. You can move through

       frames by using the directional keys on the keyboard.  Make sure

      the frame counter says one. with your cursor in the  3D window type the

      letter "i" as in insert. You will  get a pop-up with different tracking

      options. Do locrot.  which is location and rotation. This will insert

       a keyframe with those parameters into the animation system.  Next,

      increment the frame count to somewhere near 73.  Drag the cube to

      right of the view like below.<


     Okay, at frame 73 hit the "i" key again and do "locrot"  again. Now

      blender will create all the necessary result  frames between 1 and 73

      automagically. Very cool.  Do a quick render to maker sure everything

      is ok.  Next you will want to go to the renderwindow and set  the

      animation start/end buttons to 1 and 73 respectivly.  By default 250

      frames get animated but this is only a 73  frame animation. Next select

      the ham-x image format.This  is a nice lightweight format for producing

      test animations.  hit the animate button. if you get an error, make

      sure  that you assingned a valid directory for the output  the

      animation files. after all the frames are rendered,  hit the play

      button and watch your work. You can also  get a preview in the 3D

      window by hitting ALT-A while the  cursor is in that window.

      Shift-ALT-a animates all the  the visible windows.  Now your like,

      "cool, I make something move!"  Now let's make something dissappear.

Move back to frame one in the 3D window.  Give that cube some

      color. Below are the settings i used.  Once you've found a color you

      like with the cursor over  the material buttons, hit the "i" key again.

      Now you have a  different pop-up asking what material properties

       you want to track. Just choose alpha for this

lesson.

Increment to frame 73 again.  Select the Ztrans button. Also slide

      the alpha setting  to 0.00. The sample should now clear like mine

      below.  Over the materials window, hit "i" again. Are you sensing a

       pattern yet? Again select "alpha". Next go to the  renderwindow and

      once again hit animate.  After the rendering process, you should be

      plaing an  animation where the colored box moves from left to right

       and fades away as it moves. <


     That's it. To make a high quality  animations or stills use the

      oversampling buttons (OSA).  I hope this has been helpful.