Ok, I have a character I am building, and I want to simulate eyes bugging out kinda like the old Bugs Bunny toons. I have regular eyes on layer three. The bugged out eyes on layer two. My question is how do I hide layer three and unhide layer two at a certain point in the animation? So when I render my animation out to an avi file, I get the eyes bugging out?
Thanks,
here is a link to the animation by moving the meshes off/on the screen. You’ll see what I’m trying to do with layers instead of moving objects in/out of camera view.
I don’t think you can hide/unhide layers during animation, but you can use keyframes/IPO curves to move the objects themselves on and off of visible layers. On any given frame, move the object to the appropriate layer with M-key, then I-key->Layer. So if you are rendering with just layer 1 visible, you would make your bugged out eyes jump from layer 2 to 1 and back at the right times. You can open the IPO editor and select the Layer key to see how everything is behaving, and to fine-tune.
Have you looked into Shape Keys to animate your eyes?
Well it only sux if you’re unable to be patient and ask for possible alternative ways to achieve the effect you want.
Comparing Blender to Photoshop is just plain pointless. Blender isn’t Photoshop, or MAX, or Maya or any other app. Turning round saying something sucks because it doesn’t do what you want is just evidence you aren’t taking time to ‘bend’ your own approaches around the application. Afterall, Blender is a program written in code. Your brain is adaptive.
Looking at your AVI file, I’d say there’s actually no need whatsoever for going through switching layers and moving objects all over the place or hiding.
Why not take a look at creating mesh shapes for your eyes?
You could have ‘normal’ eyes and ‘bugged’ out eyes, easily blended back and forth using a shape widget to drive them.
Well that sux. Whats the point of having layers if you can’t automate turning them on/off? Shoot even Photoshop has that ability.
Well, as CD38 said, you can animate which layer your objects are on. Which is just as simple and useful as what you’ve got in mind.
PolygoneUK is right though. Flipping things from invisible to visible layers is great for having things suddenly disappear and appear, but if you want the bugging out eyes effect you’re talking about, I presume you don’t want them going from unbugged to bugged in the space of a single frame. So probably what you want to use is shape keys. That way the bugging action itself can be animated and controlled.
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I saw your video. So I guess your bugging action isn’t within a single frame. Are you making a bunch of different partially-bugged eyes and swapping them in to animate? If so you really don’t want to be doing it that way. Layers are not really a fundamental animation tool in Blender like they are in some 2D apps. Layers in Blender are really just a way to separate things that the audience (camera/renderer/whatever) is supposed to see from things that they aren’t supposed to see, and separate things for you to organize your work for animation/rendering/etc. You shouldn’t be depending on layers for basic animation.
In reference to PolygoneUK, I didn’t say Blender sucked. I said it sucked that I couldn’t animate layers. My reference to Photoshop was the way you can turn on/off layers. That’s how you make rollovers and animated gifs. That’s what I was expecting when I saw the layers. I figured if you keyframed a layer on, then keyframed it off it would put that in the NLA editor, but it didn’t. And yes, my buggin eyes are in 1 frame. I couldn’t figure out how to do it otherwise. I understand (I think) about the moving objects to layers. Only problem is when I press MKEY, nothing happens. Zilch. I press the IKEY and I see the layer option. By the way I am using 2.41 if that makes any difference. As for the shape thing, I have no idea what that is. I looked at the button and sub-buttons, but it didn’t make any sense to me.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Layers have pretty much a totally different use with things like animated gifs. In Blender, you won’t use layers like that, but once you get used to animation in Blender, you’ll be very, very glad about that.
The idea is that you have a basic shape for your mesh (say, unbugged eyes) and you make a shape key on that mesh, deforming it into the bugged shape. Same mesh, different shape. And when you make the shape key, Blender gives you a “slider” you can animate. When the slider’s on zero, the mesh is the basic shape, when the slider’s on 1, you’re fully bugged. You can of course keyframe the position of the slider.
Haarvik, I didn’t say you called Blender sucky, I just felt that calling it sucky because it didn’t do what Photoshop does, was a bit harsh.
With the time and available energy I have left at 2:45am local time, I’ve made a .blend file for you to look at.
It doesn’t explain how to get objects to this stage, but it will show you what we’re talking about in an interactive manner.
If I get the time, energy and motivation, I’ll attempt to create a video tutorial showing how to do basic shape keys and the use the widget maker script to make the very same blend.
Ok, I got it now. That shape key is freakin cool! I had no idea! One of the things I think I have problems with is how things are worded in reference to Blender. I have used Max, Lightwave, Maya and Animation Master (novice with eacah) and the terms they use are different than Blender. I do have to say that despite this fact I have found Blender to be far easier to learn than the others. There are some nuances that can be irritating, especially when no one seems to understand what you are talking about, but over all this is a great tool.
I have been able to accomplish more in the two weeks I have been using Blender that in the 6 months I tried using the others ( that was 6 mo. each!). As I learn more I hope I can contribute to others trying to learn. I may take some space on my server and allocate it for tutorials so people have a free place to put them for all to use. Kind of a repository of tutorials if you will. I’ll have to see what I can come up with.
If I can do it, any suggesstions as to where to post the availability?
One thing though, how do you link the action to the control? And the control itself, what is it a plane or a curve, or does it really matter?
Ozo: Driven keys are great! You link the action by creating a “driver” for the IPO curve as follows:
Open a 3D window and an IPO window. Select the object that has Shape Keys defined. In the IPO, select IPO type “Shape” from the dropdown. You should see a list of the defined shapes on the right side. Select one, and select its IPO curve.
Press N-key to open Transform window. Click Add Driver. In the OB: field you can now enter the name of your controller object; it can be any object that can have a Loc, Rot, or Size IPO. You can even use an Armature (see below).
Now in the menu with “Driver Channel” tool tip, select the driver type. Here you tell the system whetner you want a change in the controller’s Loc, Rot, or Size to effect a change in the Shape.
Press I-key in the IPO window to create the driver relationship. The default is One-to-one; you can edit this curve to change the relationship.
Now when you change the controller’s Loc, Rot, or Size (whatever you picked) the Shape will be changed accordingly.
Note for Bone controllers:
To use a Bone as the controller, put the Armature’s name in the OB:field. Now in the Driver Type dropdown, if you select a driver of type Pose, a BO: field will appear where you can type the name of a bone. This bone will be the driver, and again you can use its Loc Rot or Size to drive the IPO.
Note that these drivers are not limited to Shape keys, but to any kind of IPO. You could drive the color or size of an object, or wind-speed, with one of these. Go wild.
polygoneuk your slider is simply great, is there any chance of a video tutorial? it seems not so impossible to do such thing, but a step by step guide is always welcome, by the way how to constrain the movement of the diamond to just one axis or is it automatically when you define a shapekey? thanks for the file, very instrutive
by the way how to constrain the movement of the diamond to just one axis
If you select the object and press N-key, in the Transform panel that appears click the little padlock icons next to LocX/LocY/LocZ to prevent movement on that axis.
Hi greboide, glad you thought my .blend was ‘great’.
In all honesty a better and far more professional example of shape usage can be found on the project orange blog. I just knocked something very quickly together to show the gist of it.
As for doing a tutorial. I said I’d try to find time to do one. I have the relevant screencap stuff installed and good to go, but alas I don’t have very much time at the moment.
I wouldn’t worry because I was planning on doing a couple of tutorials covering shape use and rigging.
I’ll see how the days/weeks progress with regards to free time.
thanks CD38, never looked at that padlock, and poligoneuk sorry if sounded like a beg thing, its just easier and faster to make and watch video tuts than write and read the documentation so i thought its a good idea, if u dont have time to it you dont need to do, anyway thanks both.
No, you weren’t begging at all. Some folk like to watch (including myself) which is totally understandable. There’s very little out there in video terms that deal with shape keys.
I’ve wanted to try a video tutorial for a long time and it’s not just finding time that’s awkward. I’m very self conscious about speaking into a microphone all by myself when doing it.
In due time I will do a couple of video tutorials to start with and see how they go.