mouse record menu

Support Basics & Interface
1

can anybody tell me what exactly the “mouse record” menu does? You can find it in the IPO window & pressing R … I’ve no clue how to use it & am just curious :smiley:

thanks, smn.

2

It does exactly what it says on the box. Records the mouse, that is, the mouse movements. Means that you can play your anim, move the mouse around a bit and its x- and y-movements will be stored in up to two different, selected IPO-channels. Think of it as really cheap motion capture…

3

hmmm thanks, sounds interesting :stuck_out_tongue:
i’ve tried using it but haven’t come very far, is there any tutorial around for this ?

4

I can’t get it to work!

I’ve tried adding location and rotation animations to the plane and deleting all but 2 of these - then pressing “R” -
If I select “Still” (after pressing “R”) I can move or rotate the plane around with the mouse - and if I select “Record anim” then a counter for the animation frames appears and changes. Sometimes a dot that represents a keyframe appears on both of the IPO’s, on the right side.
I tried giving the IPO’s several keyframes and made the IPO’s have a shape… the IPO’s keep on being reset to 0 with a single keyframe (dot) appearing). This appears where ever “End” (the last rendered frame) was set to. e.g. if “End” is set to 275, the single keyframe will appear at 275 after you press “R” and select an option.

I have been using the left mouse button to end the recording of the mouse movements - this ends the “recording”, but it doesn’t show up on the IPO’s as expected. I’ve tried it both in version 2.23 and 2.26.

Thanks if anyone can help.

5

It works for me…

You have to hold the Ctrl key to “insert frames” as you move the mouse or object.
This is how I did it:

In top view create a cube, in an other window open the IPO for the cube
with the cube selected and the mouse in the ipo window hit “r” then pick still or animation, ether way to start recording keys you need to hold the Ctrl key and move the mouse. when your done RMB or space.

Hope this helps… :slight_smile:

6

Where is this menu popup I have never seen it in my three years of using blender and do not recall it being mentioned in the manual

7

It’s the left mouse button… thanks anyway… CTRL is the magic button.
BTW, can I record rotations or movement without deleting one of the 3 channels/axes? (see rest of post)

SHABA1:
You need to give an object some IPO’s - e.g. select the object, press “I” and insert Loc or Rot. Then go to the IPO’s (e.g. CTRL-left arrow) and delete all but 2 of the visible IPO’s. Then while the mouse is in the IPO window, press “R”, etc.

8

Ok I see the menu that popup up, it says “Record Mouse”. On choice says “Still” the other says “Play Anim”. My question is now what do these menu choices do?? This does not seem to be documented anywhere in the 2.0 guide.

P.S I forgot to mention that somehow when I moved the mouse when I clicked the “Play Anim” choice the plane moved too. I sm still mystified about what this does though. Can somone explain REALLY SIMPLY

Thanks

9

SHABA1:
Still doesn’t seem to do much. I’ve only found things out through experimentation. The plane is supposed to move around while you’re recording the movement - and if you’re recording rotation IPO’s the plane should rotate as you create the IPO’s. This lets you see the animations you are creating as you create them.