SWAP between different objects in the Dope Sheet ?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hello All,

I would like to experiment something with Blender but I’m not sure how to do it.

I’ve created a few random objects, every objects have different number of faces, colors, maybe even materials.
What I want to do is to SWAP (replace in place) between them using the Dope Sheet to animate the changes manually using keyframes.

A good example I can think of is from a Stop-Motion Animated Clay with different Mouth Shapes swap every few frames to get a nice animated result.

The only similar thing I found was in this link: HERE (replace object)

But I didn’t understand how to keyframe the changes on the dope sheet, I can use “i” shortcut to enter a keyframe for Location, Rotation, Scale, etc… but I didn’t see any option to keyframe the different mesh data.

Please let me know how I can animate such thing with an ease, if there is an Addon or a simple way to accomplish it
I’m very curious and would LOVE to test it.
If there is a Video Tutorial please share, It will be much easier for me to follow and learn because of my bad English.

As you can see on the animated GIF, it works nice if I change it on realtime,
but I want to keyframe the changes…

Thank ahead and have a beautiful day! :slight_smile:

http://krazykartoons.net/MISC-STUFF/Blender3D/Blender_Swap_Animation_Test-1.gif

2

Lot of different ways to do that. Quickest way is to keyframe it in your outliner. You can put a keyframe on the render icon with it on, You can put a keyframe on the render icon with it off. I would also put one on the eye icon so you can view it in the 3d viewport as well. Another way is to use render layers and keyframe the mix node either 0 or 1. Another way is to use a transparent material and keyframe that on or off. Another way is to move the object out of camera and into camera in one frame increment. That will get you going. I hope that is what you are after.

3

Thanks for the reply, I didn’t know I can keyframe the outline! I must try that :slight_smile:
The other ways, I thought about all of them but still wonder if I can just keyframe the Mesh Data and change it but I guess it’s not possible… maybe there is a nice Addon for such thing?

If anybody knows, please share it will be much easier to animate especially if you have a HUGE list of object to swap.