Hierarchical Modeling and Animation in Blender

To Do:

1. Watch and follow along Tutorial 14: Into to Animation (16 mins)

   In this tutorial you will learn how to create an animation using keyframes: you go to critical points in the timeline of your animation, position your object(s) appropriately, and tell Blender that this is a keyframe for the relevant transformations (translation/rotation/scaling). Then when you run the animation, Blender will interpolate the specified transformation parameters between keyframes, giving you smooth animation.

2. Watch and follow along Tutorial 15: Linking Objects (Parent/Child) (8 mins)

   In this tutorial you will learn how to create a hierarchy of objects using parent/child links, and how to adjust the pivot (origin) of a mesh so that it rotates at the right point. Here is a summary of new keyboard shortcuts you will be learning and using in this tutorial:

   Ctrl-P	Create a Child-Parent relationship. Select child first, then parent
   Alt-P	Clear a Child-Parent relationship

3. Design a robotic arm that is child-parented together and animated. Develop a 150 frame animation of your robotic arm moving in all directions. Try to make your robot arm pick something up off the plane! Here is an example of past student work (click here for more examples):

   

   Email the .blend file to your instructor.