Second Animation: A delayed solid cube

Now it is time to use some masks. We want to create two areas in which the animation plays back with 1 frame time difference. This creates a very interesting glass-like visual effect.

Start by creating a black and white image like the one below. You can use a paint program or do it in Blender. The easiest way to do this in Blender is to create a white material with an emit value of 1 or a shadeless white material on some bevelled Curve Circles. In this way, you do not need to set up any lamps. Save the image as mask.tga.

Switch to the sequence editor and move the meta strip that we made before out of the way (we will reposition it later). Add the animation of the solid cube (SHIFT-A>>Movie). Next, add the mask image. By default a still image will get a length of 50 frames in the sequence editor. Change it to match the length of the cube animation by RMB and GKEY to dragging out the arrows on the side of the image strip with the right mouse button.

Now select both strips (hold down SHIFT), press SHIFT-A and add a SUB (subtract) effect:

In the preview window you will now see the effect; the areas where the mask is white have been removed from the picture:

This effect is ready now; select all three strips and convert them into a META strip by pressing MKEY.

Now repeat the previous steps, except that you don't use the SUB effect but the MUL (multiply) effect. This time you will only see the original image where the mask image is white. Turn the three strips of this effect into a meta strip again.

For the final step I have to combine the two effects together. Move one of the meta strips above the other one and give it a time offset of one frame. Select both strips and add an ADD effect:

In the preview window you can now see the result of the combination of the animation and the mask.

When you are ready, select the two meta strips and the ADD effect and convert them into a new meta strip. (That's right! You can have meta strips in meta strips!)

Tip: Getting into a Meta Strip

To edit the contents of a meta strip, select it and press TAB. The meta strip will 'explode' to show its components and the background will turn yellowish/green to indicate that you are working inside a meta strip. Press TAB again to return to normal editing.

Third Animation: a tunnel

We want a third 'effect'to further enrich our animation; a 3D 'tunnel' to be used as a background effect. This is really simple to create. First save your current work - you will need it later!

Start a new scene (CTRL-X) and delete the default plane. Switch to front view (NUM1). Add a 20-vertex circle about 10 units under the z=0 line (the pink line in your screen):

While still in Edit Mode, switch to side view (NUM3) and snap the cursor to the origin by locating it roughly at the x,y,z=0 point and pressing SHIFT-S. Select Curs>>Grid.

We want to turn the circle into a circular tube, or torus. For this, we will use the Spin function. Go to the Editing Context (F9) and enter a value of 180 in the Degr NumButton and enter '10' in the Steps NumButton in the Mesh Tools Panel. Pressing Spin will now rotate the selected vertices around the cursor at 180 degrees and in 10 steps:

Leave Edit Mode (TAB). With the default settings, Blender will always rotate and scale around the object's center which is displayed as a tiny dot. This dot is yellow when the object is unselected and pink when it is selected. With the cursor still in the origin, press the Center Cursor button in the Edit Buttons window to move the object center to the current cursor location. Now press RKEY and rotate the tube 180 degrees around the cursor.

Now it's time to move the camera into the tunnel. Open another 3D window and switch it to the camera view (NUM0). Position the camera in the side view window to match the figure below:

The camera view should look like this:

Tip: Missing edges

If not all of the edges of the tunnel are showing, you can force Blender to draw them by selecting All Edges Tog Button in the Mesh Tools 1 Panel of the Editing Context (F9).

To save ourselves some trouble, I want to render this as a looping animation. I can then add as many copies of it as I like to the final video compilation.

There are two things to keep in mind when creating looping animations. First, make sure that there is no 'jump' in your animation when it loops. For this, you have to be careful when creating the KeyFrames and when setting the animation length. Create two KeyFrames: one with the current rotation of the tube on frame 1, and one with a rotation of 90 degrees (hold down CTRL while rotating) on frame 51. In your animation frame 51 is now the same as frame 1, so when rendering you will need to leave out frame 51 and render from 1 to 50.

Please note that the number 90 degrees is not chosen carelessly, but because the tunnel is periodic with period 18, hence you must rotate it by a multiple of 18, and 90 is it, to guarantee that frame 51 is exactly the same than frame 1.

Second, to get a linear motion you need to remove the ease-in and ease-out of the rotation. These can be seen in the IPO Window of the tube after inserting the rotation KeyFrames. The IPO smoothly starts and end, much like a cosine function. We want it to be straight. To do so select the rotation curve, enter editmode (TAB) and select all vertices (AKEY) and press VKEY ('Vector') to change the curve into a linear one:

To create a more dramatic effect, select the camera while in camera view mode. The camera itself is displayed as the solid square. Press RKEY and rotate it a bit. If you now play back your animation it should loop seamlessly.

For the final touch, add a blue WireFrame material to the tube and add a small lamp on the location of the camera. By tweaking the lamp's Dist value (attenuation distance) you can make the end of the tube disappear in the dark without having to work with mist.

When you are satisfied with the result, render your animation and save it as 'tunnel.avi'.

Continued on page 3...

45 Comments

  1. I am stuck again. Something is really unclear in your tutorial. You say, "Go to frame 21 (press UPARROW twice) and move the cube closer to the camera." What do you mean by closer? In view? Or nearer to the camera? Also, my camera view screen has a main box and then only one dotted line box within. If I put the cube outside this dotted line, it still shows up in the render. Also, when I play the animation, I would expect on frame 21 for the cube to jump to center screen. It doesn't. Instead, it just stays to one side. Oh, and my frames have the cube from left to right, but when I run the animation, the cube is sticking into the right side of the view and there is no movement or anything. I am so confused and discouraged! Please help like you always do!

    ~AS

  2. Hey, what happened to the tutorial? It's gone!?! Now what shall I do? If only there were many other people like you who do such good tutorials.

    ~AS

  3. Oops, sorry about that - I goofed something up. I'll get back to you on your question(s) later! (Gotta catch a train to work now first ;-)

    Bart

  4. Hi AS,

    just follow the screenshots and you'll be fine; with closer I meant 'in full view', just like the screenshot.

    The dotted line is not the edge of the render, but what is called the 'overscan' region. When rendering to television, the area outside the dotted line may or may not be shown, depending on the television set. To be safe (and when working for TV ;-) always make sure the most important details are inside the dotted rectangle.

    Finally, if the cube doesn't move then you've probably forgotten to insert keyframes for the right frames.

    Cheers,

    Bart

  5. B@rt, it's still not working! I added the LocRots and everything. Let me describe my EXACT problem. When I run the animation, here is what I see. First, it renders a starting frame. The mouse cursor thing indicates frame 1. In this first frame, the cube is sticking out of the RIGHT side of the image which is weird since my animation starts with it on the left. When it gets to frame 21, nothing changes. All is still the same. And then, when I try to close the render window it won't close and I have to force quit and lose all my work. I'm not sure what's wrong. Maybe LocRots are different in 2.4.1? Could you try this tutorial?

    ~AS

    PS: You haven't gotten back to me on my question in the dolphin tutorial. I'm sure you're very busy, though, and it's great that you do so much. No rush on that.

  6. Hi AS,

    just checked, the LocRot keys are fine in 2.41. Please send me your .blend file (to [email protected]) and I'll take a look at it. The problems that you're experiencing with the Dolphin tutorial are also very strange; please send me that file as well.

    Cheers,

    Bart

  7. Hi Bart,
    Just tried your tutorial on cube animation. I thought it was clear enough. But I do have 1 problem, nothing to do with you. A question realy.
    What kind of system do you sugest I have to be able to run these programs. I just inharited a computer from my Bro N Law. It's a pre hyper threading 1.5 Gz. p4. Only 128 mb ram. Don't seem enough to me, so i'm thinking about investing in another. Any sugestions.

  8. 1.5Ghz is fine, but you should get much more memory like 512MB or 1GB. Also, buy a good videocard. It doesn't have to be top of the bill; a geForce 2 works fine.

    Cheers,

    Bart

  9. First, thank you for this tutorial and your time, thank you.
    I think this is an excellent tutorial.
    I am having trouble understanding how to animate the tunnel.
    Frame 1 I uderstand, but I don't understand how the rest of it works.
    I don't know what to do on frame 51 and I'm realy lost on setting the IPO.
    My loop jumps.
    I'm using Blender2.41

    Thank you for your time and help
    John

  10. Hello again,
    In the Blender Sequence Editor tutorial how do you make the jumping logo? How do I add vertices directly in the IPO window? I don't understand what to do at this point.

    This looks like it should be easy to make but I can't see it.

    Thank you for your time,

    John

  11. Hi John,

    please go a bit slow on the comments here :) To add points to the IPO curve, select it, enter edit mode and CTRL Leftclick in the IPO window.

    Cheers,

    Bart

    PS: I've cleared some of your previous comments

  12. Hello Bart,
    Thank you for the IPO tip good fun.

    Again thank you for your time and sorry about all the comments.

    If you can tell me how do I make the particle bars animation using Blender 2.41? Some of the settings, like the Effects tab are hiden.

    PS: I started using Blender in January 2006 I have some good ideas i.e.: stories,characters,cartoons and the like. I was looking to use Macromedia Flash to launch a series on the internet but I can't afford to buy Macromedia Flash.
    Do you think I can use Blender instead of Macromedia Flash?

    Thank you again,

    John

  13. Anyone know how to make "shadeless white material on some bevelled Curve Circles"? I tried it in GIMP, but kept getting undesireable results. I finally put some shadeless white material on some bezier circles and saved the rendered image but it saved as "mask.tga.jpg". At that point, I gave up and went to bed. I guess it's not that important overall, but I really want to do this tutorial completely. It looks very good so far and has been easy to follow.

    Thanks for any help

  14. sokmunki

    In the Buttons Window Format panel sellect (Targa) in the menu button with the double arrows.
    This should let you save the file as "mask.tga"

    John

  15. Top Tutorials Bart.

    Tanks and keep it up!

    Het is wat druk aan het worden omdat blender populair aan het worden is en ook de mensen met het RTFM -probleem heeft bereikt.

    JayJBee
    "RTFM = Read The F@(&!#% Manual"

  16. So sorry I took so long about getting this to you! I was experiencing email trouble when you asked me to send them, and by the time I got it fixed I totally forgot to send you them.

    The first problem is from your blender sequence editor tutorial. This is the file after I am ready to do the first animation. Try animating it, though, and you will see that there are some odd things going on. I finally figured out what was wrong. For some reason the LocRot isnt storing the information! When I go back to frame 1 I see it did NOT save the changes I made to this frame with the LocRot. So now I am totally confused. I don't think it's necessary for me to send you the file anymore, just why isnt the LocRot working?

    Again, thanks for your devotion, I can't wait for your answer.

    Sincerely,
    Alexander

  17. Never mind! I just tried it again after several frustrated attmepts and it worked! I have NO idea what I was doing wrong, but it not only worked, but I was simply amazed at the incredible possibilities of this program! I was shocked that Blender was smart enough to "fill in the blanks" if you know what I mean. Outstanding method for animation!

    Love the Tutorial,
    Alexander

  18. I have had an issue with Blender for a while that constantly gets in my way and forces me to start over. I wonder if you have experienced this too. As soon as I start manipulating the camera or the lamps in the scene, immediately I am permanently in Object Mode and Edit Mode is no longer on the list of modes. Even the TAB key doesn't work. What am I to do?

    ~Alexander

  19. Okay; I have figured out my first problem, so forget that. Now something worse is occuring. Finally having completed the creation of the cube animation, I went along and saved it to hard drive using your method for both solid and wire cubes. But then, when I tried to load them into the sequence editor, I realized it had saved them as a series of .jpg files (one per frame of the animation) rather than a .avi file. Instead of getting one file called "cube_solid.avi" I get 61 files called "cube_solid.avi0001.jpg", "cube_solid.avi0002.jpg", "cube_solid.avi0003.jpg" and so on. Why is this happening? What can I do?

    Thanks for all your help,
    ~Alexander

  20. Nevermind, I figured it all out and completed the tutorial! Excellent tutorial, it has shown me so very much and now I am building off the 4 seconds worth of animation it gave me to create a full-length commercial for my company. Couldn't have done it without you B@rt! Thanks again! By the way, some suggestions for tutorials you could add to the collection here...Texturing Tutorial, Liquid Tutorial, Game Engine Tutorial, Skeleton Kinematics Tutorial. Just some ideas. I still have to plow through your other tutorials though so take your time! =)
    Great contributions to a growing community--I finally feel as if I have a grasp of Blender and it's all thanks to you. So thanks!

    ~Alexander

  21. Hmmm the Dude calles 'AS' seems to have a LOT of frusties !
    Perhaps watching the Greybeard VIDEO tutorials might help him find some peace of mind.
    They bit away a huge piece of my newbie-status !
    and THAT might give Bart some more peace of mind.

    also, any problems presented might be clearer if it is possible to add (links to) images of the problem encountered-- in these replies I mean.
    is it ?
    (you can even edit the screenshots in gimp or photoshop(or paint)to indicate which button doesn't do what you expect or whatever)
    What amazes me most about blender, is the overactive community helping out even people like my sister, who asked the art-director of the PS2-game'killzone' "can you explain to me how i can make movie ?"
    (sure: just press 'make movie')
    THNX ! Blender + community ! i haven't used 3dsmax in a year !(not planning to eiter !)
    QEDqubit

  22. i cant use the tutorial it looks good but unfortunitly dosent tell me were these "frames"are i dont know how to get to the timeline (-_-)

  23. Hey, great tutorial. I started it when I got the 2.0 guide, lost the book, and am happy to finally have a way to learn the IPO window and NLA Strips.

    I must ask, however, I am using version 2.42a and am having the damnedest time finding the EFFECTS tab for the last animation. I know I'm just looking in the wrong place as I'm well aware how significantly the buttons and menus have changed in the newer versions; I'm just too dense to find it now...help would be appreciated....

  24. Alright, found what I needed. I keep encountering an error and Blender shuts down when I try to render the entire thing, but it works in pieces, so I wonder if this has something to do with my memory....

  25. I have a problem...I am using 2.43 beta... I am doin the sequence tutorial And i got to the point where it wants me to add the two Meta strips together (the solid cubes and the masks). I am trying to make them meta but i cant...any suggestions?

  26. The section with adding a text logo and randomly animating it......... all a bit quick wasnt it?
    Im afraid I got a bit lost there.

    Keep the text as a text object??? or convert it to a mesh object????

    plus, in the scripts (OBJECT >> SCRIPTS) I see there is a randomise position rotaion scale script. Is it poss to break up a mesh made from text so as to apply individual randomisations to each letter?

    All in all tho, FAB tutorial.

    99.99% Brilliant.

    Cheers Bart et al

    Tom - v 2.43 - AMD 64 512 meg RAM

  27. this is maybe a noob problem but here we go...

    as i load the avi files in to the video sequence editor
    and make a window to view the result
    there is nothing but blackness showing up there.

    How do I get to see the out put?

  28. Hello!

    First of all, great tutorial!
    Now, I just can't find the EFFECTS tab anywhere... I'm using Blender 2.42a.

  29. I've got some tutorials on editing video with blender.. I use it to edit my videos in Ubuntu..
    I'm currently perusing the sequence plugin code, and am trying to figure out what the difference is between facf0 and facf1 in the code, thought I'd might find some description of that here.. Oh well..

  30. Great infomative tutorial though after what seemed like a lot of work I had the same crashing problem as MercuryCrest.User preferences/system&open GL/MEM cache limit change to 1024 fixed it for me.

  31. I'm having some trouble in Part 5...

    I have followed all the steps and when I play/render the animation, the 'bars' do not move. The particles are created, however for some reason my 'bars' are not attached(?) to the particles.

    Any help?

    Thanks!! ;-D

  32. Hey, this is a great tutorial. I don't know if anyone answers this anymore, but if so, I could use some help. I was able to get through everything but on page 3 at the forth animation logo step, I am completely lost. What am I making here? I don't understand. I see that there's a description of IPOs and stuff, but where am I adding verticies? Which IPO? I'm completely lost.

  33. for 2.49 version the do sequence button has some problem but if you Anim with the out put the same just don't click do sequence then the Images will show up I the blender temp folder or where ever you have blenders loader.

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