I have an animation problem that I cannot solve.
Here is the scenario:
I downloaded a free van from the Internet.
I divided the van’s top into four doors. To do so I had to separate the portions of the top. (Yes, it is the top that I want to open for a demonstration of Blender’s capabilities.) There are two doors in the front and two doors in the back.
The two front doors on the top open at the same time. They open up from the van’s top centerline and out 180 degrees. Hinges are along the edge of the van’s top.
As needed, two back doors on the top open at a later time as needed 180 degrees.
I have been able to make two front doors open at the same time. Yet, when I try to open the back doors only, the front doors open too.
I do not know what to do to make the front doors open only when I want them to do so and open the back doors only when needed.
I do not know how to attach the .blend file or I would do so.
You say you made the front doors open, at what frame does the animation start and end?
I am assuming that the animation for the back doors is after the front, so if you are at a place in your timeline that the back doors are opening, the front doors would be open as well, unless…
You could add two empties, one as the IPO driver for the animation of the front doors opening, and one for the rear, then when you want one or the other set of doors opening, you translate the appropriate empty to perform the animation.
There are of course other solutions like perhaps NLA but someone else would have to advise you an that, I have not had any experience with NLA yet.
If you can make a blend file available that would be very helpfull.
It sounds like you animated your front door(s), then copied it/them (shift-D) to make the back doors ? If so, then when you copied them, you also copied the animation “IPO” curves. (If your UserPreferences/Edit Methods / Duplicate with Object:IPO is turned off then IPO (animation data) will be the same for the duplicated object. If that user preference option is turned on, then when you duplicate the object, a new IPO curve will be created but iniitially it will be the same as the original object.
So even if you have 4 …or 2 independent curves, to make the make doors open after the front doors, you either need to shift all the IPO curves for the back doors later in time …(or key them later).
If you dont’ have independent curves for the objects, when you select any object the IPO curve name will be the same for all of them. Beside the name in the IPO window, the number will be greater than 1. Clicking on that number will create a new unique IPO set of curves for the object.
See my attached picture where the two cubes are sharing the same IPO (“ObIpo.004”) because the number shown is “2” for both of them.
You can upload your file to somewhere like savefile.com or 4shared.com if you still haven’t figured out the problem.
I have to admit to a stupid error in the timing of the key frames. I had neglected to check that when I was so busy checking the names of each Ipo plot. I reset the frames for the front and the back and they all opened as required.
Also, I had the wrong impression that if I selected only one door, i.e. the left front, and had its name displayed in the Ipo curve editor, only that door would open. So, I learned there. The points at frame#s in the Ipo plots are most important.
Following up:
It was my impression there was a way to display all the Ipo plots at one time. Is there a way to do that?
You can display all the plots/curves for an object by hovering the mouse over the channel name sidebar and pressing ‘a’ to toggle all/no curves selected, or you can shift-click on the channel names to toggle their display.
You can also open more than one IPO window, and use the “pin” icon to tie that IPO window to a particular object (otherwise with the ‘pin’ deselected, the IPO window will display the curves for whichever object is selected.