I’m a newbie who is working through the tutorials sold by the Blender Foundation, and using 2.27. I started to make my first animation (you make a chess pawn in frame 1, then move it around), set the frame button to 11 (as instructed), moved the pawn to where it’s supposed to be for that frame, and then tried to use the IKEY, which I assumed was the one on my keyboard that is used to type the letter “i”. Nothing happened, no matter what part of the screen was activated, edit mode status, selection, etc. etc. Tried every combination of SHIFT CTRL ALT various mouse clicks before and during, you name it. Tried going back to 2.25, installing the Publishers Key. Even tried just forgetting about the IKEY and setting KEYAC and KEYOB in the info window!
I’m sure I’m missing something obvious. Can anyone help. Very, very basic BlenderForDummies info is requested.
You have to hit the [I] key for every key frame. (Did you for frame 1)
Key frames are set in Object mode.
If you hit the [I] key (over 3D window) a pop up appears with several options. Select the one corresponging to your transformation (Loc for movement; Rot for rotation, Size for scaling; if you are not sure RotLocSize). Only after one of this options was selected a key frame will be inserted.
Layer option is a another topic
Avail sets keys for every available property ( for the mesh)
Mesh option is used for vertex keys (another kind of animation)
To control if your keys were set use the Ipo curve editor in default “Display Object Ipos” mode (button with axis)
Set your screen up with one 3d-window and one IPO-window open.
Select the object that you want to move in object mode (pink).
Use the arrow keys to get to the frame that the animation will begin.
Press i-key (Yes, the i on the keyboard).
A window will pop up from which you can select which IPO’s to activate.
Choose the location-IPO (Loc).
This will set the initial position of the object, and the IPO curve in the IPO-window will register a knot (a point where the IPO-curve and the green Progress-bar intersect).
Use the arrow-keys to move to the frame where the object stops moving.
Move the object to that position in the 3d-window.
Press the i-key.
Choose the Loc-option again.
Press Shft-LeftArrow (takes you back to frame 1)
Press Alt-A and the animation should play.
This will slide the pawn across the board from A to B.
If you want the pawn to lift from the board and lean forward on takeoff, then you need to i-key at point A, again as it leans forward (A1), again at the peak of its trajectory (A2) and finally at point B.
If you choose this option its probably better to use Loc-Rot-Size IPO-option.
Thanks much. Your posts were very helpful and enabled me to do what I needed to do. This is an excellent forum; it definitely makes learning Blender workable.