Simple Animation

We just want to learn how to make a simple animation where the camera spins around an object.

First we tried this tutorial on camera animation here:

• This guy doesn't explain things nearly as well as the other guy!
• We gave up on this one because the method isn't a smooth circle around the object and he goes too fast to follow along

Next, we tried this one with a bendy clock and this one from Tutorial Brothers, but just ended up using pieces from each.

Here's the general process:

• add a curve--path
• scale the path with S, a number, and enter
• edit the mode by pressing Tab (the path gets arrows on it that shows the direction)
• select points on the path and pull it into a half circle
• move the path so it goes around the teddy bear (which is centered on the origin)
• select the camera and then the path (with shift-right-click), then ctrl-P and select follow path
• move the camera so it's at the start of the path, rotate it so it points towards the bear (NumPad-0 shows the camera view)
• Do the same (follow path, move to beginning of curve but behind camera) for both light sources
• Set the length of the animation to 100
• Set the output (under render, on right-hand side) to png
• Press animation and it will create a picture for each frame to be assembled later

We later used the above process to add a bezier circle which then became the path all the way around the bear. We modified the number of frames in the circle with the properties--curve section (when the circle was selected).

To assemble the pictures into a video, the best tutorial we found was this one on BlenderDiplom by Gottfried Hofman. Not only does he show how to make a video from images, he also shows how to add an audio track and fade it in and out--something we also used.

Here is the finished animation: