Description

In this exercise, level 1 students will practice keyframe animation, parenting, animating the camera with a target, and manipulating curves in the graph editor.

Instructions

  1. Watch linked tutorials in Learning Resources from Blender Foundation and others to get acquainted with animation tools.
  2. Create a project folder on your computer and save a new .blend file called LASTNAME-animation.blend.
  3. Follow the video demonstrations to animate a camera, cube, and sphere.
    • The duration of the animation should be 120 frames.
    • Create a centered cube.
    • Create a sphere parented to the cube. The sphere should be 5 units away from the cube in the X or Y axis, and revolve concentrically around the cube. (HINT: Their pivot points should be the same location: 0,0,0)
    • Animate the sphere to rotate concentrically around the cube, twice(720 degrees).
    • Go into the Graph Editor and set interpolation mode to linear.
    • Your sphere should now loop seamlessly with linear motion. Press play in the timeline to see if it is looping seamlessly. The sphere should not be stopping at any point.
    • Animate the cube to move from 0 to positive 10 units in the z-axis from frame 1 to 60, and move back to the origin from frame 61 to 120. (The sphere will follow the cube as it moves up and down if it parented correctly)
    • Create a new perspective camera.
    • Create an ‘empty’ and use it at as a camera tracking constraint.
    • Parent the ‘empty’ to the cube so the camera aims at the cube as it moves up and down.
    • Select the camera and choose View ⟶ Camera ⟶ Set active object as camera and choose “Lock Camera to viewport .
  4. To create a video of the viewport’s animation, save the file and set the render settings output folder to the project folder. Under File Format, choose FFMpeg Video, change the encoding format to MPEG-4.
  5. Choose View ⟶ Viewport Render Animation to create the animation file.
  6. Compress the project folder once you’ve completed the tutorial and rename it LASTNAME-animation.zip.
  7. Upload the .zip file to the assignment dropbox.
  8. Double check that you’ve included all files and that your .zip file can be downloaded and opened.
Learning Objectives

  1. Practice keyframe animation of translation, rotation, and scale properties.
  2. Become familiarized with keyframe animation.
  3. Become familiarized with the purpose of pivot points and parent objects.
  4. Practice applying camera constraints.

Demonstration Videos

In this video demonstration, I show a basic keyframe animation workflow.

Introduction to Animation Tutorials: Vimeo Playlist

Introduction to Animation Tutorials: Youtube Playlist

Blender Tutorials

To get a deeper understanding of how Blender's rendering system works, have a look these tutorials

    12 Principles of Animation

    Blender Foundation 2.8 Videos (28-41)

    Parenting in Blender

    Adding a tracking constraint

    Rubric

    Criteria Description Assessment Weight
    Attention to Detail This criteria looks at if the assignment was submitted on time, if each step was completed to a high degree of accuracy, and if file naming conventions were followed. 5 pts
    Learning by doing (Completed all steps) This criteria assess whether you completed the assignment's given set of instructions. This indirectly infers how well you acquired foundational skills and theory. 5 pts