Newb here, so if this is in the wrong place I'm sorry

I just started playing with Blender and I’ve been able to do some minor things that, while pleasing, just aren’t really that great yet.

I’m playing with simple model animation. I’m not messing with riggings or anything like that just yet. In otherwords I’m animating “starships” from various series that I find and set them to a space background.

Here are my problems and I realize this is just basic interface issues.

One how do I bind a lattice to a model so that I can animate a roll, bank, or curve motion instead of being stuck with just… Camera pan in and pan out, and ship move from one side of the screen to the other.

The second issue I’m having is importing two objects into one scene. I’ve tried appending but it doesn’t work. Here is the scene I wish to make.

Spirit of Fire, from Halo franchise, stationary while two Pelicans fly by it, bank, and roll.

Outpost Riley,

Here is an excellent tutorial to help you achieve what I think is your goal:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Animation/Basic/Moving_objects_on_a_Path

SHIFT-F1 either links or appends depending on which button you click at the bottom of the Load Library' window that pops up. You can clickActive Layer’ to force the appended object to your current layer.

Split the 3D' window and open anOutliner’ window to see a tree display of your Scenes including all objects.

HTH,

Mark