I started to use Blender 2.5 just few times ago and I’ve already discovered that most of the tutorials are for old versions and I can’t do the same in 2.5 if someone can help me with my questions or just link the url where I can get the tutorial for that.
Well, the idea of my example animation is following:
3 cylinders are getting together in one letter (for example F)
each of them has separate curve to follow
what i want is to move the combined letter F with another curve later on and to rotate it as a complete object using bottom of letter as the rotational axis. (acting like it was laying on the ground and after stand up)
so 3 questions are:
how to combine few object in one during the animation?
how to change the following of curves?
how to rotate using different parts of object as rotational axis?
For question 1 & 3 I would suggest to use seperate layers or make a new scene and combine the 2 scenes with the sequence editor.
For both methods you need to duplicate the 3 curves and combine them together with Ctrl-J. This makes it one object. When you put your 3d cursus at the bottom of the F you can go, in object mode, to the object toosl menu and choose Origin->Origin to 3d cursor.
You should be able to do this with constraints. Add follow path constraints to your cylinders; increase the time offset of the main cylinder so that it moves after the other cylinders are in position; add ‘child of’ constraints to the 2 smaller cylinders and choose the main cylinder as target. Move the origin of the main cylinder to its base so that it will rotate around the base and not around the centre.
