7.1 How to make an animation with

Blender?

The method Blender uses to create animations has a name of

interpolation, which works based on a combination of keyframes and

transformations along a Timeline. Each keyframe "marks" a property of

an object at a certain point in time.

You can think of an animation as a sequence of still images. When using

a certain speed to reproduce them, you have the illusion of motion. Each

still image in animation has a name of frame.

An interpolation animation uses the different values of a property to

create motion. For instance, if an animation has 50 frames where you

set a property with a value of 200 at frame 1, and a value of 500 at

frame 50.

The interpolation method calculates a proportional progression between

frames 2 and 49. If you have enough keyframes in a Timeline, an

animation appears when you hit the play button.

A Timeline for animations uses frames to identify the time. Usually, an

animation has 24 to 30 frames for one second of animation. For

instance, if you get an animation that has 5 seconds with 30 frames per

second requires 150 frames.

The rate of frames displayed per second has a name of frame rate, and

it appears in lots of places with the acronym FPS. For the rest of the

book, we will use FPS to identify frame rates.