To follow along, all you will need is Blender 4.0 running on a computer that meets the minimum system requirements. Later versions of Blender will probably be suitable for this book as well, with only minor changes, though this can’t be guaranteed.

Figure 1.1: The default scene in Blender 4.0, shown here in the “Print Friendly” theme

If you have already made significant changes to your user preferences or startup file, go to File | Defaults | Load Factory Settings to restore the same environment as the one shown in Figure 1.1.

Tip

For the time being, there’s no need to click on the Animation tab at the top of the screen or to switch to any other workspace. Everything in this chapter can be done in the default Layout workspace. Remember that workspaces are just preset window configurations for your convenience. They are not essential to each task for which they are labeled. Since Blender’s interface is so flexible, I usually ignore them or make my own.

Open a new file in Blender and take a look at the numbered area at the bottom of the screen just below the 3D Viewport. This area is called the Timeline, the most basic editor for animation work:

Figure 1.2: The Timeline

The Timeline displays your keyframes and contains controls for playback and basic keyframe editing. Much of the work of animating will involve this window and/or one of Blender’s several other animation editors.

Moving through time

The first thing you probably learned in Blender was how to navigate the 3D Viewport, moving your viewing angle around in 3D space using the middle mouse button and various keyboard shortcuts. For the same reason that you needed to learn this before actually modeling anything, you must learn how to navigate in time before animating anything.

In the header (the part with menus) of the Timeline, you’ll see some menus, playback controls, and finally some integer properties:

Figure 1.3: From left to right – the Current Frame, Start Frame, and End Frame properties

These are the Current Frame, Start Frame, and End Frame properties of your scene. The most crucial of these properties is the Current Frame.

Current Frame is a very special property that determines the frame, or point in time, in which the scene is displayed. Just as you must view a 3D model from many different angles, as an animator, you must move through time, viewing your animated scene at many different frames as you work.

Changing the Current Frame value moves backward and forward through time in your animation. There are a variety of ways to do this:

• Directly editing the Current Frame value in the header of the Timeline
• Clicking anywhere along the Timeline’s row of frame numbers
• Tapping the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard
• Holding Alt while scrolling with the mouse wheel

Tip

The vertical blue line in the Timeline which marks the current frame is called the playhead. Dragging the playhead left and right is a technique called scrubbing, which is indispensable for reviewing and inspecting your animation.

Give these methods a try. As you adjust the Current Frame value, the horizontal position of the playhead in the Timeline will move with it. Keep in mind that, because we have not yet animated anything, nothing else in Blender will move.

Setting the frame range

The default scene in Blender has a Start Frame value of 1 and an End Frame value of 250. This means that the animation will begin at frame 1 and end at frame 250, for a total duration of 250 frames. At the default frame rate of 24 frames per second (FPS), this will yield an animation just over 10 seconds long.

Tip

The Frame Rate setting of your animation can be found in the Dimension panel of the Output Properties in the Properties Editor. For the remainder of this book, however, we’ll stick with 24 frames per second, a nice divisible number and a rate commonly associated with a film-like or “cinematic” look.

250 frames is an awful lot for our first animation, so let’s shorten the range we have to work with. Dial down the End Frame property from 250 to 120:

Figure 1.4: End Frame set to 120

This shortens the duration of the animation to 120 frames, exactly 5 seconds. Just enough time for our epic 3-part adventure!

Adjusting the Timeline view

Although we’ve set our animation to end at frame 120 and not at frame 250, the Timeline is still displaying a range of frame numbers from 0 to 250. We’re no longer interested in any frames past 120, so let’s adjust our view to use the horizontal span of this area more effectively:

1. Middle-click and drag rightward in the Timeline to move the frame range 0 to 120 into roughly the center of the area.
2. Use your scroll wheel or Ctrl and middle-click to zoom in so that the Timeline displays only the desired range of interest, 0 to 120.

As you can see, the controls for changing the Timeline view are pretty much the same as any other area in Blender:

Figure 1.5: The Timeline, adjusted to show only frames 0 to 120

Tip

If you lose your way in the Timeline (or almost any other editor, for that matter), press the Home key or go to View | Frame All. This has the same result as what we just did, restoring the editor’s view so that all visible content is nicely centered.

In later chapters, it will be necessary to scroll around, zooming in and out at different keyframes as our animations become more complex. For the rest of this chapter, however, we can leave the Timeline view where it is.

Animation playback

Controls for playback and for jumping to specific frames are in the center of the Timeline header:

Figure 1.6: Timeline playback buttons

Hitting the spacebar or clicking the Play button will play your (presently very boring) animation, rapidly incrementing the Current Frame value at the established frame rate. Hitting Ctrl + Shift + Spacebar or clicking the backward Play button plays your animation backward. Until stopped, the animation will play on repeat, looping back to the Start Frame after the End Frame has been reached.

You can stop the animation immediately at the current frame by hitting the spacebar again or by pressing the Pause button in the Timeline. Hitting Esc will stop the animation and also return to the original frame at which playback began. Remember to stop the animation before attempting to edit anything.

Tip

Playing and stopping animations is such a frequent action that I almost always use keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking on these buttons. The hotkeys for playback work in every editor, so you won’t always have to have the Timeline open.

We’ve gone long enough without animating anything – let’s now make the cube move!

In the first act, our hero Cube will stride fearlessly from west to east. We’ll achieve this using keyframes, a technique inherited from the traditional hand-drawn animation process.

In hand-drawn animation, a lead animator draws the most important frames in a shot, or “keyframes,” which determine the positions and expressions of characters and objects in the shot at key points in time. These keyframes are then passed to the “in-betweener,” who draws the rest of the frames in between to create a smooth appearance of movement.

In Blender and other animation apps, keyframes play a similar, though much simpler role: determining what the value of a property will be at a given frame. It’s easier to see for yourself than read about it, so let’s jump right in!

Keying the initial location

To begin, we’ll give our main character, Cube, a suitable starting position:

1. Go to frame 10.
2. Select the Cube.
3. Move the Cube up 1 unit on the Z axis so that it rests on the “floor” in the 3D Viewport.
4. Move the Cube -5 units leftward on the X axis.
5. Now, let’s insert our first keyframe! With the Cube still selected and your mouse cursor in the 3D Viewport, press the I key.

   This brings up the Insert Keyframe menu, one of several ways to insert a location keyframe:

Figure 1.7: The Insert Keyframe menu

What you see here is a list of some (but not all) of the selected object’s properties that can be keyed. Click Location to insert a location keyframe.

Important note

From this point onward, always be aware of what you have selected and what frame you are on, especially when inserting keyframes.

The keyed property

We have just inserted a keyframe for the location of the Cube on frame 10. This is huge! In the future, we will insert and edit dozens of these things at once, but for the moment, let’s dwell on what has changed.

Firstly, a small diamond shape has appeared in the Timeline. If you don’t see it at first, scroll up or press Home; it might be hiding:

Figure 1.8: New keyframe on frame 10

That’s our keyframe, insofar as it exists in the Timeline. Its horizontal position marks the frame on which you have “keyed” a property of the Cube. Although you can’t see it yet in the Timeline, it also contains the X, Y, and Z values of the cube’s Location property when it was keyed.

Tip

By default, the Timeline only displays the keyframes of selected objects; they will hide when you select a different object. In later chapters, we’ll examine other editors better suited for displaying the keyframes of multiple objects at once.

Secondly, take a look at the cube’s Transform properties:

Figure 1.9: The keyed Location property

The Location values are now highlighted and distinguished by a small set of keyframe-shaped icons to the right. This indicates that they are “keyed.”

Tip

Animated properties are highlighted yellow when there is a keyframe for that property on the current frame, green on every other frame, and orange when manually changed.

Try moving the Cube again, and then change frames. The Cube will immediately “snap” back to its keyed location. The property has been “taken over” by its keyframes. From now on, any manual change you make to the cube’s location can only be temporary unless you insert another keyframe for it.

Important note

A single property cannot have two keyframes on the same frame. If you insert a keyframe where one already exists, the new keyframe will simply replace the old one.

Keying the second location

Play the animation and look closely at what happens to the Cube. Nothing! Now, play the animation backward. What happens then? Again, nothing – but now it’s happening backward.

Our one keyframe simply determines that the Cube must be at a certain location on frame 10, but one keyframe isn’t enough to create movement. Until we add a second location keyframe, our Cube will remain at just one location – not only on frame 10 but on every other frame as well.

Let’s add that second keyframe:

1. Go to frame 40.
2. Move the Cube 10 units rightward on the X axis.
3. Press I and insert another Location keyframe:

Figure 1.10: The Cube on frames 10 and 40

Now, play the animation. The Cube moves! Two keyframes were all we needed to create motion. Now let’s take a closer look at what happens between those two keyframes.

Principles of keying

Note that we never issued any “commands” to the Cube in order to make it move. We did not, for instance, encode any events like “begin moving at frame 10,” or “stop moving after frame 40.” This is a misapprehension that novice animators often have. By inserting these keyframes, we simply declared that on frame 10, the Cube shall be in one specific place, and on frame 40, it shall be in another.

Also, watch what happens to the X Location value of the Cube as you change frames:

Figure 1.11: The Location property on frame 20

Although we might say we have “animated the Cube”, it is more accurate to say that we have animated just one property of the Cube (Location), and even then, only one of the three components of that property actually changes (the X Location). For now, everything else about the Cube (for example, its Rotation and Scale) remains unaffected.

Finally, note that we didn’t need to interfere in the 29 other frames between frame 10 and frame 40 in order to make the Cube move smoothly from one place to another. Blender handled that automatically, playing the role of in-betweener for us. This is arguably the greatest advantage that digital animation offers over traditional animation.

Tip

The method by which one value transitions to another is called interpolation. We’ll explore some different interpolation modes in the next chapter.

Keying rotation

In the second act of our epic 120-frame animation, the Cube gets homesick and turns around, in preparation for the long journey back to its birthplace. We’ll animate this part by keying not the Location property but the Rotation property.

As you might expect, we can follow the same process as before, using the Insert Keyframe (I) menu. Since you’ve already had some practice, we can cover this part more quickly:

1. Go to frame 45.
2. Ensure the Cube is still selected.
3. Press I to bring up the Insert Keyframe menu and click Rotation.
4. Go to frame 55.
5. Rotate the Cube 180 degrees on the Z axis (clockwise or counterclockwise – your choice).
6. Repeat step 3 to insert the second rotation keyframe.

There should now appear to be four keyframes in the Timeline: two for the cube’s location and two for its rotation. For the moment, we cannot tell just from looking at the Timeline which are which but rest assured that they are distinct. We will learn how to look at their contents more closely in the next chapter.

When you playback your animation now, the Cube will move from west to east, wait 5 frames, then briskly spin around for 10 frames to face the opposite direction.

We’re ready to animate the dramatic third-act finale! Having turned its back on the frontier to the east, our hero Cube will head back home, weary from its sojourn, to rest at the very same spot where its life began.

To animate this last part, we could continue with the same technique we’ve been practicing – going to a new frame, moving the object, inserting the keyframe, and so on – but there are other ways of animating at our disposal you need to be aware of.

As it happens, the Timeline is not just a window for displaying keyframes. We can also use it to edit them! In this section, we’re going to set aside what we’ve learned about inserting new keyframes using the Insert Keyframe (I) menu and instead use the Timeline to take advantage of the ones we’ve already made.

Basic keyframe editing

How does one edit keyframes? Here are the only actions you need to know for now:

• To select a keyframe in the Timeline, click on it using whichever mouse button you’ve been using to select things. Hold Shift and click to select multiple keyframes.
• Use Grab (G) to move selected keyframes through time. You can also click and drag keyframes using the same mouse button you use for selecting.
• To duplicate keyframes, use Duplicate (Shift + D). Duplicated keyframes will be “stuck” to your cursor as if you had used Grab (G) on them.

If you’re thinking this is just a list of controls you already know about, you’re absolutely right! If you know how to select, move, and duplicate objects in the 3D Viewport, then you already know how to select, move, and duplicate keyframes in the Timeline. The controls are exactly the same.

This is the case for many other operations and control schemes. If it works in the 3D Viewport, chances are it will work in the Timeline and other animation editors.

Tip

Selected keyframes are highlighted in yellow. Newly inserted keyframes will be automatically selected. Before doing things like duplicating keyframes, make sure there aren’t any unwanted keyframes in your selection. You can quickly make a mess of things by operating on more keyframes than you mean to!

Duplicating keyframes

A common use for editing keyframes directly is to duplicate certain segments of an animation to save time. To make the Cube return to its original location, we don’t have to move it back ourselves; all we need to do is duplicate one of the keyframes we made earlier:

1. Select the keyframe we created on frame 10.
2. Press Shift + D to duplicate it.
3. Move the duplicate keyframe to frame 90.

Tip

The control schemes for editing keyframes are really quite similar to the ones you’re used to in Blender’s 3D Viewport. For instance: in step 3 here, you can enter the value 80, moving the duplicated keyframe exactly 80 frames from frame 10 to frame 90.

We’ve keyed the Cube’s final resting place! Now, it will be in the same location on frame 90 as it was on frame 10, but now our animation looks a little strange...

Holding a position

Watch how the Cube moves back to its starting point. How slow and clumsy looking! Right after frame 40, it begins to move westward; it doesn’t even get the chance to turn around before doing so.

This is a frequent mistake and/or a sign of an incomplete animation. The last location keyframe we made was on frame 40. Then, we put the next one all the way over on frame 90 without considering how that would affect everything prior.

After frame 40, we want the Cube to hold still for a bit like it was doing before. This does not require any special “hold-still-type” keyframe. Instead, all we need to do is duplicate the other location keyframe from frame 40:

1. Select the Cube object’s location keyframe on frame 40.
2. Press Shift + D to duplicate it.
3. Move the duplicate keyframe to frame 60.

Now that there is a location keyframe on frame 60 identical to the one on frame 40, there will be no change in location between those frames. Because we only edited location keyframes, the animation of the cube’s rotation was not affected:

Figure 1.12: The Timeline with six keyframes

Editing the timing of your animation

Inserting keyframes according to these step-by-step instructions might have given you the impression that we’re supposed to know ahead of time when and where to insert keyframes. On the contrary – animators rarely insert all their keyframes on the right frame on the very first try. When animating on your own, you will assuredly need to adjust the timing of keyframes after they have been added.

Take our current animation, for example. After the last keyframe on frame 90, we’ve still got 30 motionless frames before the scene ends. Why not slow things down and give our animation a little more breathing room so that we can use the full duration of our scene’s frame range?

This next step will be more open-ended so that you can experiment and see how different placements of keyframes affect the animated result:

1. Go to any frame between the first and last keyframes.
2. Select only the keyframes that come after the Current Frame.
3. Grab the selected keyframes and move them 20 frames to the right.

Tip

Try hitting ] (the closing bracket key) for step 2. Respectively, [ and ] are the shortcuts for Before Current Frame and After Current Frame, which are helpful for quickly selecting all keyframes that come either before or after the current frame.

If you haven’t figured it out already, moving keyframes to the right delays them, widening the gap in time between those keyframes and keyframes left behind, and slowing down a part of the animation. Which part of the animation will be slowed down depends on where that extra gap between keyframes was made.

For example, moving the last two keyframes makes the Cube seem to hesitate before its return to the west:

Figure 1.13: The Timeline with the last two keyframes moved

Moving the last three keyframes makes the cube’s 180° rotation take longer:

Figure 1.14: The Timeline with the last three keyframes moved

Also, moving all but the first keyframe makes the cube’s initial embarkation a bit slower than its return trip:

Figure 1.15: The Timeline with the last five keyframes moved

Without changing the order of these keyframes, feel free to continue experimenting with their timing.

Having finished giving movement to the Cube, we’re nearly done with this chapter! We’ve brought a life of adventure to a simple object by causing just two of its properties to change over time.

The three spatial properties of a 3D object – location, rotation, and scale – might be the three most common properties you’ll typically work with, in a 3D animation, but that’s not all there is to animation. As we’ll see in the next section, keyframes can be used to affect almost any property.

Our odyssey concludes with the main character at rest, finally home from its harrowing adventure abroad. Is our hero triumphant, or sorrowful and full of regret? Hard to say (it’s a cube), but one thing’s for sure: things will never be the same again. Is it the world that has changed? Quite the contrary; no hero’s journey is complete unless it is the hero who is changed by the world. One cube leaves, and a different cube (metaphorically speaking) returns.

In this section, we’ll key one more property of the Cube, its color, to demonstrate how almost anything in Blender can be animated.

Other keying methods

So far, we’ve been using the Insert Keyframe menu to insert our initial keyframes, but this menu is purely a convenience, not a complete list of every keyable property in Blender. For one thing, it doesn’t contain Color.

Fortunately, we don’t need that menu. When you find a property you want to animate, Blender’s interface offers a number of ways to key it right there on the spot:

• Right-click on the property and click Insert Keyframe from the context menu.
• Hover the mouse cursor directly over the property and press I.
• Click on the small dot to the right of the property (note that this dot is just for one-click convenience; a property without one may still be keyable).

Each of these methods accomplishes exactly the same result.

Tip

For every method that inserts a keyframe, you’ll find a similar way to delete it. Try pressing Alt + I instead of I, for example.

Keying the material color

Let’s try out keying the color of the Cube:

1. Select the Cube and go to Material Properties to edit the cube’s default material, Material.
2. Find the Base Color property:

Figure 1.16: The Base Color property

3. Go to frame 1.
4. Pick any color you like for the starting Base Color.
5. Key the Base Color using any one of the methods mentioned earlier.
6. Go to frame 120.
7. Pick a different color for the ending Base Color.
8. Key the Base Color once more.
9. Switch the Viewport Shading mode to Rendered or Material Preview to see the result in the 3D Viewport:

Figure 1.17: Viewport Shading set to Material Preview mode

In addition to moving, the Cube will now gradually change from one color to another over the course of its journey. Personally, I’ve made mine change from a cheery green to a deep and woeful purple:

Figure 1.18: The Cube on frames 1 and 120

Tip

Numeric values aren’t the only type of property that can be keyed. Checkboxes and on/off buttons, otherwise known as Boolean properties, can be keyed to turn on and off as well. Among other things, this can be helpful for making objects appear and disappear.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations – you’re an animator. Surprised? You shouldn’t be – an animator is someone who makes animations, and what did you just do? With just the Timeline, the default cube, and fewer than a dozen keyframes, you animated an epic adventure!

Alright, I’ll admit it – maybe our first animation wasn’t that epic, but it was important! We took something boring and found the potential in it for something exciting. Sure, a cube is just a mesh with some faces and vertices, but then so are the characters and objects in your favorite 3D animated film. And all those fancy characters and objects were brought to life with a bunch of keyframes like the ones you just made.

The only difference? Mainly the amount of keyframes. We’re going to need a lot more keyframes in the future. We’ll also need to know a bit more about the true nature of those keyframes, which, for the sake of brevity in this chapter, has been kept secret. The Timeline, as it happens, is not the ideal tool for advanced keyframe editing. In the next chapter, we’re going to need a completely different editor to crack those keyframes open and poke around inside...

1. Which two properties of the scene determine the length, in frames, of our animation?
2. How many seconds long would our animation be if our frame rate had been 30 frames per second?
3. What’s a frame? What does it mean to go to a certain frame?
4. In traditional hand-drawn animation, a keyframe is a specific type of frame. Is this true of keyframes in 3D animation as well? How are they different?
5. Is it more accurate to say that a location keyframe makes an object go somewhere, or that it makes an object be somewhere?
6. What can you tell about a keyframe just by looking at it in the Timeline?
7. Does one need to key everything in order, from beginning to end?
8. How might one tell if a given property is animated?
9. Pick a random property in Blender and see if it can be animated. If so, how might that property be useful or interesting to animate?
10. What is a property? To what thing or things in Blender do properties belong?