the timeline is how you view all the frames in your scene.
It provides simple tools for navigating the frames of your animation.
Let's talk about the fundamentals of the timeline editor in blender
to showcase exactly what the timeline does.
Let's try to make a quick bouncing ball animation with our cube here
except instead of a cube. Let's use the ball
to do that.
We can simply subdivide our cube by holding
control and pressing to on the number row.
I'm also going to right click the sphere and select shade smooth. Wonderful.
Now let's get animating.
You can animate very quickly by clicking this white circle
record button which turns on auto key frame mode.
We can then transform our ball freely
since we're doing a bouncing animation. Let's go ahead and start it a little higher.
So we'll move it along the Z axis.
As you can see this creates a key frame at our current frame.
Now in order to create an animation,
will want to insert another key frame for the ball to interpret it to
but creating another key frame on the current frame
simply overwrites our first key frame
so we'll want to move our current frame to a later frame in the timeline.
How do we do that
well to go to a specific frame. You can change your current frame manually here
but there are a few more options.
We can also left click drag the top bar
of the timeline where the frame numbers are labeled
to scrub through to a specific frame or hold Ault and use the scroll wheel
for fine tuning. You can also press the left and right arrow keys.
Now with this we can move our current frame to frame 10
and move our ball again to insert another key frame.
But where should we move our ball?
Well we're trying to make it bounce so let's
bring it back to the ground for this frame.
We can do this very quickly by pressing alt G to bring it back to
the origin and then move it up a bit just so it's above the grid.
Greg as you can see we have automatically inserted a new key frame on Frank 10 as well
since we have two key frames now in theory are ball should now be animated
and at this point you might be interested
to see exactly what that animation looks like
to play an animation. Simply press space bar or click the play icon button at the top
but you'll notice you don't see any movement when you play the animation.
That's because the play button starts
playing your animation from your current frame
and our animation starts at the beginning.
However, once your current frame reaches the end frame,
your playback will loop back to the start frame and continue playing.
Hey there we go. We got a basic downwards motion
but I really don't like waiting that long to see it loops.
So let's adjust the loop region
to do that.
We can edit our start and end frames of our
playback range on the right of the timeline here.
This playback range is marked by the dark grey regions
before and after the start and end frames respectively.
Let's bring our end frame down to frame 40.
This makes our loop region appear a bit too small
but we can actually zoom in on our timeline with the scroll wheel.
You can also press home or click view. View all.
If you need to also pan your timeline, simply middle, click,
drag or hold control and use your scroll wheel.
Nice. Now we can continue animating
Real Quick. Let's add two more key frames to finish our bounce animation.
I'm going to add a key frame on frame 15 where the ball bounces up just slightly.
This is going to be like a really heavy bowling
ball or something so it won't bounce very high.
Then on frame 20
will simply want the ball to be on the ground.
Again we can insert a new key frame and try to eyeball it.
However, that's not really efficient. Doing the same post twice manually.
Okay, so let's delete that frame 20 key frame real quick
to delete key frames,
simply select them right click for a context menu and select delete key frames.
You can also simply press X. Or the delete key.
So what we want to do is copy the key frame from
frame 10 where we already have the ball on the ground,
Luckily that's really easy.
We can simply duplicate the key frame on frame 10 and drag it over to frame 20
To do this. You can simply select the key frame. We want to copy
right click for a context menu and select duplicate.
Then move the duplicated key frame to frame 20
and left click to confirm.
For hot key users you can press shift D. As in duplicate.
Let's play back our animation again to see our masterpiece.
Well it's got the right poses but it isn't
really bouncing but rather just moving up and down.
How do we fix this?
Well by default,
blender interprets the key frame poses with a sort of smoothies in and out motion,
slowly transitioning the velocity of the object between poses.
This is usually great. But for us it's working against our goals.
Luckily blender allows us to change different aspects of
the interpretation curve to fix issues like this very easily
to make the bounces appear sharper and more sudden.
We can simply select the frames at 10 and 20.
The frames were they bounce off the ground and change
the handle type from our right click context menu,
what is handle type.
We'll go over handle types in more detail in the graph editor and dope sheet videos.
However, just know that if we select vector,
our curves for the bounce should be fixed.
For hockey users you can also press V as in vector to bring up the handle type menu.
And as you can see we now have a bouncy bouncing ball
and congratulations you've made a quick bouncing ball animation
in blunder.
Ah but what if we wanted to slow it down a bit?
Let's pretend it's going in slow motion for example,
luckily with our timelines, basic key frame manipulation features. That's easy.
Simply select all the key frames in your timeline by pressing a
then you can bring your current frame back to the
beginning and hit s to scale your key frames outwards
from your current frame.
As you can see our key frames are being spaced out more and more as we drag our cursor.
We can also type a number during this process to specify an amount to scale by.
So I'm going to type the number two and press enter.
This will double the scale of our key frames.
This means that our key frames will be twice as far away from each other
and thus the animation will take twice as long and be twice as slow.
Okay great.
Now let's say we want to render it out.
Remember the start and end frames we said earlier.
This is also the range of frames marked for render output,
meaning that when you press render animation it will begin
calculating with the start frame of your playback range,
then render each frame after that one by one
and stop after it finishes calculating the end frame
but it also means that we can't easily animate outside of this
playback range in case we wanted to edit or insert key frames.
So let's say we wanted to only render the 1st 12 frames of our bouncing ball animation
but we also want to animate some key frames a little
bit outside of our render range to adjust our animation.
It be a hassle to keep the range wide for animation but
then change the frame range manually every time we want to render.
So for situations like this, there is this stopwatch button.
This will switch between using the render range
and the preview range for vieux port playback.
What's the preview range? Well let's find out
toggle the preview range on by clicking this stopwatch button will use dark
orange to indicate the start and end of the preview playback range.
While this is toggled on
the render range will still be visible with the dark grey borders and will still
be used for render output but will be ignored on playback and vieux Port renders
Now we can safely animate before and after the render
range but keep our render output range the same.
So we've gone over the basic timeline
features that are required to create an animation
But let's say I'm making an animation and I
want to mark a specific frame for timing purposes.
For example, I might want to add an explosion at frame 25
adding markers is a very helpful tool for animators for this exact purpose
to create a marker,
simply go to the marker menu at the top of the timeline and select add marker
for hot key users simply press em as a
marker with your cursor anywhere over the timeline.
As you can see a small triangle in a vertical line gets
created at your current frame to mark that frame for later.
You can rename this marker at any time by selecting it,
going back into the same marker menu and selecting rename marker,
then type the name you want.
Let's call this one explosion no one and press enter twice
for hockey users you can press control M as in marker
but you have to have your cursor hovered over the dark area below.
Now some of you may be wondering why our timeline
has been so dark since we added that marker.
That's simply because adding markers adds a semi transparent
dark gray section at the bottom of our timeline.
That allows us to select and transform markers
separately from key frames.
If this area is taking up too much room visually,
simply expand your timeline just a little to see your timeline range more clearly.
Again by dragging the top border of the timeline editor panel.
All right now let's create a few more markers for our reference.
Let's say here is where I want another explosion.
Okay, let's press M to create the marker and control M to rename it.
We'll call this one
explosion 02
but actually I don't think it's the right timing.
So I want to move my marker to a different frame,
simply left click drag to move it around
for hot key users.
You can also press G as in grab as long as you're within the dark gray marker region
in the lower half of the timeline.
Another way to create more markers quickly is
to simply duplicate them and move them around.
You can duplicate markers by going to
the marker menu and selecting duplicate marker
for hockey users simply press shift D and as
usual right click to cancel or left click to confirm
and to delete markers, simply select them and press the delete key,
the X key or go to the marker menu and select delete marker.
That's great. We've got a lot of tools in the timeline to help us animate.
Now we're going to switch gears a bit and pretend that
were animating and the view port starts to lag a bit.
You might also see a red number here during playback
this red FPs number means that your current playback speed is less
than the actual FPs or frames per 2nd March in your render settings
there will be cases like this where our scene is
so heavy that are playback won't be able to keep up
this will mess up a lot of our timing and speed as we
might end up rendering and find out the actual playback FPs is much faster
than what we've been animating with.
Luckily the timeline has an option that solves this as well.
We can go to the playback options on the left side of the timeline,
open this menu by left clicking and go to the no sink. Drop down menu
by default.
No sink simply means that blunder is
prioritizing displaying every frame in the view port
instead of prioritizing playing the animation back in real time.
This is typically good for seeing your whole animation without missing
details but not that great for timing purposes on heavy scenes.
If you want your FPs and your playback speed to synchronize
even at the cost of dropping a few frames here and there,
you'll want to change this from no sink to frame dropping.
Once you've done this,
you'll notice that when you play your animation back
the view port will still have a red FPs number
but it will be skipping frames now and then so that the
position of your current frame matches where your current frame would be.
If your playback FPs was real time.
If you're wondering what a v sync is,
it stands for audiovisual sink and it's functionally very much the same.
It also drops frames but prioritizes synchronizing your view port, playback speed
with your audio playback speed instead of your set. FPs playback speed.
Now, I know some of you will be curious about how to add audio to your playback.
So I've included a blitz tutorial here we go
In order to add audio to your playback and the view port,
you have to use the video editor
create a new workspace from the video editing category called video editing.
We're going to want to add a sound or movie file so simply navigate
to the file in the file browser editor on the top left hand panel,
then left click, drag the file into your video sequence. Er
move it around your timeline to where you want it to
be by left click dragging or pressing G like usual.
And now if you return to your layout workspace
during playback you should hear audio
quick tips for the video editor,
press K or go to the strip menu and select cut
to cut your audio strip wherever your current frame is.
Change volume of the audio here and you can mute
the audio on the timeline Under the playback options.
I also recommend going into the view menu and
turning on waveform displaying when working with audio files
and that's it for your quick how to bring audio in blender tutorial.
Now, back to the timeline.
The King drop down menu will give you options
for how key frames work in your timeline.
Most of these settings are fine at their default
values but I'll mention a few things here.
Your active King set allows you to restrict what kind
of channels receive key frames when inserting a new key frame
and the buttons on the right of your king set
are another way of inserting and deleting key frames.
Key frame types. We already went over in the key frames video.
They are essentially organizational labels for your key frames.
But changing your key frame type here will simply change
the default key frame type for newly inserted key frames
to change key frame type of existing key frames,
simply select them
right click for a context menu and go to key frame type to select one.
The rest is pretty self explanatory and hovering over each option
will tell you a little bit more about what they do.
I hope this gives you a good fundamental understanding
of how to make animations using the timeline.