Blender 3D Animation 3

Tranformation Shortcut key
G key: Grab (Move)

R key: Rotation

S key: Scale

In additon, we can constrain the transformation to an axis. (e.g press R key and then press Z, the selected object will rotate only in the Z-axis.)

The coordinates used to be make that transformation are the global coordinates, but we can use the local coordinates of an object. Press the key correspnding to the axis twice. (e.g press G key, and press X key twice, the transfomation of the object will take place in the object's local coordinates.) Global coordinates are related to the scene coordinates, and they don't change. Because the local coordinates are related to the object, they change with the object.

Camera

An Active camera is needed for rendering process. By scaling the camera, it will not change the size of the lens, we can only move and rotate it. Press numeric 0 to see the scene from the camera's perspective. In Blender, every object can be turned into a camera. Just selecte the object and press CTRL+0(numeric) and it will become a camera. To de-activate the object from being a camera, just select this object, and press ALT+0(numeric).

Render Basics

All set up for render can be accessed in the Scene Panel(Press F10). The above image shows two menus that hold the main options to set up the render. Render menu, has the options to set the scale of the generated image. We can choose scales between 100% and 25 % of the original size. Format menu, options to set the resolution of the render, and a file format in which px to save our renders.

(E.g) Set up a render to be 640x480 in resolution and choose PNG, as the file format to save the image. If scale is set to 100%, image will have the full resolution. Set it to 50% for a test render, this is a great wat of producing small renders, just to test settings for lights and materials.

Press F12 for Render to proceed, after the render is finished, press F3 to save the file. (make sure there is at least one active light)


Render Preview
Before starting a render, we can also choose to preview how it's going to look in the 3D view. Render Preview(SHIFT+P)
To change the size of the preview, just click on the border of the menu and drag your mouse.

Types of Objects
Meta: Object that works like some kind of clay in which we mold some primitives shapes such as spheres and cubes together and create very organic shapes such as Mountains.


Mesh Primitives

To creat mesh objects, press Spacebar or SHIFT+A choose Add Mesh.

Plane: Option to create things like walls, roofs, floor, etc. Simple plane with 4 vertices.

Circle: Polygon option, two parameters to look into: Vertices and Radius. Vertices sets the number of sides for the circle and the second sets the distance between the centre, and the border of the circle. If a square is needed, create a circle with 4 vertices, or for a hexagon, with six vertices.

UVsphere: Create a sphere with square faces. Three parameters to be set. Segments, Rings and Radius. Segments and Rings set the amount of subdivision for the sphere. Higher values results to more perfect spheres BUT higher values demand more from the computer and could eventually crash it.

Icosphere: A sphere that is made up of triangular faces. No parameters and only subdivision option.

Cylinder: Creates a cylinder as well as a prism. There's an option call Cap Ends which will have the two faces of the object to cap its upper and lower extremities.

Grid: works much like a plane, but Grid has more subdivisions than a plane does. To set-up a Grid, we must provide the subdivision level for X and Y axis (X-res and Y-res)

Monkey: It's name is Suzanne who is the Blender mascot.


Mesh Editing
To subdivide a Mesh object and create more complex shapes, we must apply some editing to these objects. Go to Mesh Tools, located in the Editing Panel. More options can is located in Mesh menu (in the Header of the 3D view window)