We use frames to do animation in Blender. Each frame has the image of the object in a new position, and these can be played in sequence at a certain speed to get the animation effect. Animation of an object involves shifting the object’s position, rotating it, or changing its size or a combination of the three possibilities. We will have to insert the respective keys for each of these actions in the frames.In Blender, you just have to specify the initial and final positions of the object, and it will automatically generate the intermediate steps. Before the animation, you will have to decide upon the number of frames, and the frame rate (a default frame rate of 25 fps is good enough). Now let’s animate the hammer.

1. Press Esc to come back to the Blender window with the hammer in it. Press till you come to Normal mode, that is, when the whole hammer is pink in color and you can’t see the vertices.

2. Press Shift+Left arrow key to come to the first frame. The frame number is displayed in the lower section of the Blender window.

3. Select the hammer by right-clicking on it.

4. Press ‘i’ to insert an animation key. From the menu that appears select ‘Rot’ to insert a rotation key. (You can choose ‘Loc’ to change location in animation or choose ‘Size’ to change size. For the time being we will just choose rotation.)

5. We will use 100 frames in our animation. Thus, the final position of the hammer will be in the 100th frame. We will insert an intermediate position in the 50th frame. To go to the 50th frame, press the right arrow key 50 times. The frame number is shown in the same box in the lower section of the Blender window. A simpler way to reach the 50th frame is to click on the box while holding the Shift key down, and manually entering ‘50’ in it.

6. Step 6

   In this frame, position the hammer as shown in the figure by rotating it (use the ‘r’ key).

7. Press ‘i’ to insert another rotation key in this frame and select ‘Rot’ from the menu that appears.

8. Now we can go to the final frame, where the hammer’s final position is shown. For this press right arrow key 50 (more) times, or enter 100 in the frame number display box.

9. Rotate the hammer back to its initial position. Insert a rotation key, by pressing ‘i’ and selecting ‘Rot’ from the menu.

10. Your animation is now ready. Go back to the first frame using Shift+Left aRROW keys. Press Alt+a to see the animated (but not rendered) sequence. Press Esc to stop the animation at any point.

11. To render the animated sequence, you have to choose the total number of frames in the Display Buttons window. Press F10 and set the `End’ field to 100 ( default value is 250 frames).

12. The animation can be stored in various formats, including AVI raw, AVI jpg, individual JPEG and Targa images. We will render the image as AVI raw. Select AVI raw from the menu on the bottom  right corner.

13. To render the image click on the Anim button. All the frames of the sequence will be rendered, and the AVI movie will by default be stored in the directory ‘/render’. You can change this by typing in the new folder in the space where ‘/render’ appears on the interface. You can also choose a background image by clicking the ‘Backbuf’ button and entering the JPEG image path. For the time being, we won’t enter a background image.

14. To playback the generated AVI movie, click on the Play button below the Anim button.

15. To Save your Blender animation (not the AVI file), press Esc to come back to the main Blender window. Press F2 and give a name in the window that appears to save the animation as a BLEND file. That’s it, you now have an AVI movie and can watch it using any AVI player like xanim or aktion.

Since the AVI movie is large in size, you could create an MPEG of your animation. The BLEND file created on saving with F2 is very small in size, around 37 kB for our animation, compared to the size of the AVI movie which is about 23 MB. So, if you want to share your animation, you can pass on the BLEND file to anyone having Blender, who could load the file using the F1 key and animate it.

We have explored a very small fraction of the features in Blender, which has many more visual and animation effects that you can explore by reading the various tutorials and samples available at the websites given above. Blender also has a 3D game rendering engine that helps you create wonderful games. Some games are available for download at the Blender sites. All in all, Blender is a wholesome 3D rendering tool for Linux users and you can create wonders with it. You’ll find the above example, called ‘pcqhammer.blend’ in the PCQuest CD, so do try it out. Also try out the sample blend files we’ve provided on the CD. Happy Blending.

Mahendra M  and Kartik N are final-year students of RV College of Engineering, Bangalore