Object Manipulation and Basic Animation By Immer Baldos This document is a tutorial on basic modeling and animation using Blender version 2.49b. The goals are to create a Windmill using blender s built-in meshes then create a video animation of the Windmill in action. If at some point the listed commands are not working, please try to place the mouse cursor in the 3d view panel. Blender uses the mouse pointer location to determine which panel will receive the keyboard commands. Modeling the Windmill The Windmill for this tutorial has a cone for a roof, a cube for a body, and 3 cubes for the blades. 1. Open blender
2. Go into front mode (Numpad 1) 3. Go into Edit Mode (Tab)
4. Scale the object on the Z axis by a factor of 2 (S Z 2 Left Mouse Click) 5. Tab out of Edit Mode (Tab) 6. Add a cone (Space Add Mesh Cone)
7. Left Click on Cone then click on OK. 8. At this point it is better to go to wireframe mode to see the cone better. Click on the tab to the right of the tab near Object Mode.
9. Select Wireframe 10. Move the roof to the top (G Z) then move the mouse up to position the roof correctly. Press Left mouse key to apply the changes.
11. We can now take a look at what we have via the render button (F12) 12. Close the Render window and move the 3d cursor button to the top half of the windmill by left clicking on the desired location. Precision maybe required so use the mouse scroll to zoom in and out.
13. Go to Side view (Numpad 3) 14. Move the 3d cursor via left mouse click to the displayed location
15. Add a Cylinder Mesh (Space Add Mesh Cylinder OK) 16. Rotate the cone 90 degrees on the X axis (R X 90 ENTER) then scale to the displayed size.
17. Go to front View (Numpad 1) 18. The 3 blades will be oriented in a Y formation at the front of the windmill. Move the 3d pointer to the base of the structure.
19. Add a cube (Space Add Mesh Cube) 20. Move to side view and scale the blade by.2 (Numpad 3 S Y.1 ENTER)
21. Go back to front view and go to Edit Mode (Numpad 1 Tab) 22. Deselect the vertices (A) then enable border select (B)
23. Select the top vertices via Left Click drag. 24. Scale it on the X axis by.2 (S X.2 ENTER)
25. Exit from Edit mode (Tab) then grab the blade and move it closer to the cylinder (G Z). Left mouse click to apply the displayed position. 26. Duplicate the object (Shift-D) then move it to the side (move mouse left click)
27. Rotate is 120 degrees on the Y axis (R Y 120 ENTER) then grab (G) and drag as displayed. 28. Duplicate the object (Shift-D) and place it on the side (move mouse left click)
29. Rotate is 120 degrees on the Y axis (R Y 120 ENTER) then grab (G) and drag as displayed. 30. Hold down Shift the right click the 3 blades then the center cylinder. Make sure the cylinder is selected last. Zoom in/out using mouse scroll and Pan using Shift-Middle Mouse Button-Drag
31. Parent the blade to the cylinder (CTRL-P Make Parent) 32. Render what we have so far (F12)
33. Close the render view then go to top view (Numpad 7) and zoom out a bit 34. Right click the object on the upper left and duplicate it. Place the new object in front of the blades. 35. Go to Lamp Buttons (F5) then set the energy to.5
36. Go to front view and grab the light and place it near the center of the blades.
37. Select the cylinder (Right Click) and go to side view mode (Numpad 3). Grab and move the cylinder to the left. Blades will follow since the cylinder is their parent. 38. Render
Simple Animation The goal is to have the blades rotate. Since the blades are parented to the cylinder, rotating it will rotate the children as well. 1. Apply all rotations and scaling to prevent anomalies when animating. Select all objects then apply rotation and scaling (A A CTRL-A Scale and Rotation to OBData).
2. Click the Tab on the bottom Panel 3. Select TimeLine
4. Click and modify the end of the animation to frame 200 then press ENTER. 5. Go to front view and deselect all objects (A)
6. Select the cylinder (Right Click) then insert a rotation frame (I Rot) 7. Go to Frame 200
8. Rotate the cylinder on the Y axis 2000 times (R Y 2000 ENTER) 9. Insert a Rotation Frame (I Rot)
10. Click Play. Animation should start and the blades should rotate.