Hi there all,
All’s well now I wish to be able to animate this wheel: Spin it 360°, orbital movement, whatever u wish to call it.
you could try it ith Ipo’s
Take a Rotz and put in two keys (ctrl rmb or lmb, i always mix them upt 
pres tab, pres n, for x enter 0 for y enter zero, pres enter, select other key, pres n for x type the desiired amount of frames iit should take to make a full turn, for y type 360. press enter and voila, it should turn now.
you could try it ith Ipo’s
Dont understand ith, sorry. Dont understand Ipo’s either, as I’m still a newbie. Maybe divide into steps?
This forum’s great! Tnx for kind comment
Going to try, back tomorrow
Open a second window and with your cursor in it hit Shft-F6 (IPO)
Select the object (Pink)
Hit I-Key and select Rot (raotation)
You have just made an Ipo, the blue line.
Hit the arrow key (Up takes you ten frames and right 1)
Check the far right box in your buttons window to see which frame you are on.
Hit R and rotate your model 180 deg.
Hit I-Key (second knot on Ipo)
Arrow to move ahead again.
Rotate 180 again
I-Key again.
Shft-LMB to go back to frame 1
Alt-A to play anim.
Instead of rotating the model you could enter the numerical equivalent as Koudejongen explained.
Think I’m going to copy and save this as I’ve answered it about 3 times in the last month or so.
%<
Much tnx for the info. Lots of words I must study. I’ll try and be back soon
DEFINITELY you should take a look at the link Fligh gave to his posting for beginners which links to a lot of great tutorials, especially the one at to begin with (that one got me up to speed quickly and saved me a LOT of aggravation):
http://www.d.umn.edu/~dhomich/bwblending.html
Another neat way to make an object rotate is by making a circular path (after making it go to AnimationButtons F7 and press CurveFollow button) and then making it a parent to your object. Then you can reorient your wheel (by rotating the curve) and preserve the rotation.
Still trying to get the wheel to rotate.
2 q: 1. How do I make it run forever?
2. How do I export it as a gif for web?
Tnx again for u’re great help
p.s. a q:
I-Key again.
before [LMB] what’s the purpose?
if you want it to run forever as a gif, you have to make sure that you complete a full circle in the frames your planning to use in the gif.
Then in the program you use for making the animated gif sequence specify that it should loop.
Then it should run forever and ever till your sick of it and close the page
I usually use flash or fireworks to make gifs, but there ar other freeware programs that can do the same…only I don’t know wich ones :-?
did you already succeed in making it turn?
This is where I got so far, is this any good? Each point’s 20f 45 deg for practice so it’s 80f total
Is this any good? Pls let me know
Tnx
hmm, that’s a weird way to use ipo’s…
when I want something to rotate I put in only 2 keys. one on the first frame and one on the last frame.
I give the first a value of 0 (on the vertical axis) and the second a value of 360.
Then the object should spin 360 degrees around the axis you want, in this case the z-axis (rotZ).
I’ve just got to say something here. I’m all for helping people out when they get stuck trying to learn Blender, but Io98hgsbi, I don’t think you are putting much effort into learning from the tutorial and documentation recources. This is not rocket science stuff you are trying to figure out. Take another look at the links people have been giving you.
Yeah, I agree because I said the exact same thing to someone asking q about nodeling in Rhino.
Yes, Blender IS rocket science for me 'cause I’m newbie, sorry.
Tnx for nice comment.
to koudejongen:
if you want it to run forever as a gif, you have to make sure that you complete a full circle in the frames your planning to use in the gif.
Then in the program you use for making the animated gif sequence specify that it should loop.
Then it should run forever and ever till your sick of it and close the page
First, I dont understand, sorry. Blender is supposed to be an object animatior, right? From u I gather that Blender dont have no loop option. Am I right?
I’ve succeeded to make it turn but it stops at a certain point and I won’t be content until I have it rotate full circle.
bob_dog I was waiting until someone had the never to say this. It seems that this guy just wants and answer without having to make the effort to try to find the answer on his own. When I ask a question here. I look thru the 2.0 guide, then I look thru the blender book and if I still cannot find the answer I search for tutes on line if all of that fails then I ask a question in the forums or in #blenderchat or #gameblender. It just strikes me as funny when people just want instant answers and you can tell by the way that they asked the question that they have not even bothered to make the effort to find out on their own.
In other words I will offer people a “hand up” not a “hand out”
I’ve just got to say something here. I’m all for helping people out when they get stuck trying to learn Blender, but Io98hgsbi, I don’t think you are putting much effort into learning from the tutorial and documentation recources. This is not rocket science stuff you are trying to figure out. Take another look at the links people have been giving you.[/quote]
Yes it does you can make it loop contiously for however long you want. BUT I am not going to tell you how. BUT here is a hint go to www.yahoo.com and search for +blender +IPO
or if you really want to get close +blender +perpetual motion
I agree wit hyou guys on this topic. therefore I will not anser anymore questions in this topic.
However I am gonna clearify myself on 1 point.
If ypu want to loop something in gif format it doesn’t meatter howlong it runs in blender.
The real looping parts has to be done in the gif prog.
Blender can do all kinds of cool stuf incuding looping things, but as far as I know it can’t do looping gifs.
But maybe somebody can rectify me on this point.
I might be wrong so don’t quote me on this, but I think Blender supports GIF export through the new QuickTime export function.
Martin
You can tell your object to continue rotating in the IPO window by using the buttons on the right to change the animation mode. One of them, (I think it’s ‘constant’) will make it so the ipo just keeps going to infinity in the direction specified by the last ipo key you assigned it. Here’s another rotation tip…: If you are getting whacky rotations that rotate in directions that you did not intend, just go into the ipo window, select the keys that apply to other rotational directions, and simply delete them. good luck. Don’t listen to these guys. %| 
(kidding) Oh, and one more thing,…if your rotations look ‘bumpy’, you can delete the keys between the first and the last for a smoother action. good luck. There are other ways to do it too, such as,…: using duplicate IPOs, grab, move, then selecting the last ipo of the first one, and using ctrlJ to join w the first of the second one. Another way is to create an action strip in the NLA editor, scale it way up, and then instruct it to subdivide/repeat the action for a specified number of cycles… Hope this helps. <<<also, I am not seeing the gif option(?) i use a program called movies12 that converts raw avi into gif.>>>
I do not know about the quicktime export function. As far as I know that was part of the funblender/tuhopuu (sp) build only, but I might be wrong. What I did, the one time that I wanted to make an animated gif was to render all the frames to .jpegs by checking the jpeg box in the display buttons. Then I used Ifranview to convert all those jpg to gifs in one batch operation. Any good graphics program should be able to do that. Then I used gif construction set to make all thos files into an animated gif.
Two problems with this approach.
#1 You will have a LOT of jpgs depending on how long your animation is and what frame per second you set in the display buttons for the animation. You really do not need 25 or 30 frames per second for an animated give you should try adjusting that way down to suit your needs. The balance is between the number of still pictures and the blockiness and realism of the animation.
#2 Gif is a 256 color format from the mid 80s. Blender saves its jpg in 64bit format so the conversion to gif may make your picture come out looking very badly from what you might expect. The solution is to use a few image textures as you can in the animation and to try to stick with as few blender materials as possible when making up the animation.
You will have to set the gif animation to loop in gif construction set or whatever gif animation program you will be using. Setting it to loop in blender will give you some idea of how many frames you will need to make the animation look reasonable.
I hope this helps.
I might be wrong so don’t quote me on this, but I think Blender supports GIF export through the new QuickTime export function.
Martin[/quote]
Blender DOES export quicktime, but not gifs as far as I know. also, gif construction set has a feature that is like a movie to gif wizard or something. it’s in the main file menu. I use a program called movies12 that is not shareware but freeware, and is extremely fast and compact, and it seems to have a prefference for raw avi, which is what blender does so well. With movies 12 you can do the jpeg method too.
BTW to see what codecs blender can do just right click on the button that says ‘Targa’ to change it.