Created with Adobe Firefly by Danica Do
Blender Animation
Introduction to Blender
Blender has a lot of "moving parts", but there are some specific things we will be working with for this initial project. Learning which icons bring up the different panels is a good start.
Critical Knowledge
Orbit, Pan and Zoom navigation uses the same Shift/Scroll Wheel method as Sketchup.
The Zero (0) key on the number pad is different from the one on the top row - it changes your view to look through the camera. Note: your cursor must be in the main viewport for this to work.
F12 will render an image of the current camera view. The size is controlled with the Render panel - set to 10% by default, you change it to 100% for anything you show to others. Go to Image-->Save As on the rendered image to save it to your output folder. Give it a good name!
Some panels only appear when the right thing is selected. In other words, you can't open the Light panel if the camera is selected... you can't change the color of a painted part unless you've clicked on that part first.
There are many things that can be keyframed in Blender, but they don't have blue numbers or stopwatch icons next to them like we see with Adobe Premiere or After Effects. For this project, we will keyframe the rotation of Simple House while keeping the camera point of view in one place (for now).
Take It For a Spin
We'll make a short 3 second animation by having the house spin around once. Adjust the camera position slightly to fit YOUR specific model. We want the entire house visible in the camera frame the whole time it spins.
Rendering a Video
Once we have the keyframes in place, we want to see the results. Reducing the resolution to 10% gets quick results that are pixelated, but shows us if we got it right before investing a lot of time on a full render at 100%.
Blender Animation
Before we render anything that we really want to show on our Portfolio, we should make any necessary adjustments to the way the colors look in Blender.Â
Color Changes in Blender
In general, the colors are not nearly as bright as they were in Sketchup. Fortunately it's pretty simple to make them look for saturated or even change them to a new color altogether!
Slowing Down the Spin
3 seconds is a bit short to show off your amazing model, so we'll extend the length to 300 frames and have the house rotate back to its original position more slowly. This will make an even better video to post on your Digital Portfolio.