TheXanthia
Animation: how it's done
Animations consist of individual frames - at a rate of 20 frames per second our eyes can't distinguish between the individual frames (images) but perceive motion.
The "action scene" I made consists of some 1,100 frames. You don't have to make each individual frame yourself though.
For instance, you can define the location (in 3D - on X, Y and Z axis) of an object at a certain frame, for instance frame 470. Then move the object to a different location (defined in X,Y,Z coordinates) for frame 1100. And then tell Blender how to get from the first to the last location and at what speed. Blender will then generate all the frames in between.
The above is a screen capture of the Blender workspace.
Top left you can see the (solid view) epilogue of the action scene after the spaceship drops out of warp. This epilogue starts at frame 470 (where the scene also switches to camera 3).
There are various ways to animate an object. For this epilogue I wanted the ship to move on a curved trajectory. So I first added a curve (the thin black line) that I manipulated to nicely bend around the moon.
Then I added a physical constraint to the spaceship, indicating that this spaceship has to follow the curve, starting from frame 470. And it has to arrive at the end of the curve at frame 1,000.
Then you can define at what speed the ship moves along the curve. This can be done in the Graph Editor (bottom half of the above screen capture). You can, for instance, make it move at a steady speed with linear interpolation or at viriable speeds with a Bezier curve interpolation (like in the above example).
You can manipulate this "speed" curve - you can stretch it, skew it, subdivide it, make it go up and down to get variable speeds or make the object pause for a while before resuming its course etc at any point along its trajectory.
As show in the lightblue curve in the Graph Editor, the ship comes in fast (when it drops out of warp) and then slows down (curve becomes flatter) as it approaches the moon and takes a turn to hide behind it and then comes to a standstill (curve flatlines).
Animation: how it's done
Animations consist of individual frames - at a rate of 20 frames per second our eyes can't distinguish between the individual frames (images) but perceive motion.
The "action scene" I made consists of some 1,100 frames. You don't have to make each individual frame yourself though.
For instance, you can define the location (in 3D - on X, Y and Z axis) of an object at a certain frame, for instance frame 470. Then move the object to a different location (defined in X,Y,Z coordinates) for frame 1100. And then tell Blender how to get from the first to the last location and at what speed. Blender will then generate all the frames in between.
The above is a screen capture of the Blender workspace.
Top left you can see the (solid view) epilogue of the action scene after the spaceship drops out of warp. This epilogue starts at frame 470 (where the scene also switches to camera 3).
There are various ways to animate an object. For this epilogue I wanted the ship to move on a curved trajectory. So I first added a curve (the thin black line) that I manipulated to nicely bend around the moon.
Then I added a physical constraint to the spaceship, indicating that this spaceship has to follow the curve, starting from frame 470. And it has to arrive at the end of the curve at frame 1,000.
Then you can define at what speed the ship moves along the curve. This can be done in the Graph Editor (bottom half of the above screen capture). You can, for instance, make it move at a steady speed with linear interpolation or at viriable speeds with a Bezier curve interpolation (like in the above example).
You can manipulate this "speed" curve - you can stretch it, skew it, subdivide it, make it go up and down to get variable speeds or make the object pause for a while before resuming its course etc at any point along its trajectory.
As show in the lightblue curve in the Graph Editor, the ship comes in fast (when it drops out of warp) and then slows down (curve becomes flatter) as it approaches the moon and takes a turn to hide behind it and then comes to a standstill (curve flatlines).