How to keyframes in blender
Tutorial: Blender Keyframes For Beginners
Timecodes:
welcome to another exciting blender
tutorial and today we're going to be
touching the subject
of keyframes in blender so keyframes are
a
fundamental part of animation in any 3d
software
and essentially if i were to put it in a
simple way if we were to move any object
or rotate it or scale it
add any kind of value to a transform
vector
over this timeline so for example it's
frame 30
i want it to be in this location b to
scale
with these transform vectors we can
insert a keyframe so it's going to hold
all of those
values or those numbers on that specific
keyframe
and then we can come to another frame we
can move along our timeline
and we can change those vectors however
we want
and we can insert another keyframe and
then blender will automatically
through what we call interpolation add
in that data for us
so we don't have to do it like the old
days we had to go frame by frame
like stop motion animation and take a
picture each time so
the computer does a lot of the work for
us and keyframes can not only be used
for our location our rotation and scale
transforms
they can also be used for anything like
for example the strength of a light we
can make a light
be a certain strength at a certain time
and later on in our timeline
we can increase the strength and blender
will automatically do that for us we can
change
colors over time we can change
how a modifier behaves over time so
that's what i'm going to be showing in
this tutorial just the real fundamentals
of keyframes for beginners and i hope
it's something you can use to grow as a
3d artist so
let's get started so i've opened up a
fresh new scene in wonder 2.93
and you can see here it just comes with
the basic default cube the camera and
the lamp
we're just going to be selecting uh the
cube here the mesh objects
now anything really does in our viewport
we can pretty much animate and add
keyframes to but let's just use the
default cube here it's really cool
so what i'm going to do is i'm going to
hit one to go into my front or
graphic view um doesn't really matter
you can even just go to your your front
view it doesn't even have to be
your graphic just you know front view so
it should be fine
and you're going to see down here we
have our timeline right
so we starts at one here and by default
it runs to 250 on the end here
and it's actually running at 24 frames a
second so if you hit the space bar
and you play the animation you can see
it's actually running you know 24 frames
for every second that passes now what
we're going to do
is we're actually going to select this
default key make sure it is actually
active
it's very important that it is selected
you can confirm that by coming up to
your scene collection here and seeing
that the cube is active
and let's start by coming to frame one
obviously that's the beginning
of our animation now whenever we want to
add in a keyframe
a really easy way to do that is to hit i
so with any object you have selected in
your world
space here you're going to hit i the i
key on your keyboard and it's going to
give you all these insert keyframe
options right so the most common one is
location
so location is pretty much when we move
anything so
if you hit n to bring up your properties
panels hit the n key
come up here to the item and you're
going to see all of these transform
vectors
so if we hit i you can see we have the
location which is this one here
if you hit i as well you can see
rotation
and you can also see the scale here
these are our three
main transform vectors for anything
in the 3d space here so along the x y
and the z coordinate
we have these values here and we're
using these ones we can do any kind of
animation really
so let's start now to kind of have that
out of the way with a basic animation so
let's one let's make this cube just move
so let's come to frame one and we're
going to hit i and we want to move it so
that's going to be
what a location so we can hit location
and on frame one it's now
keyed that location so you can see here
it's confirmed because we can see that
the location here is actually now
yellow so if we actually move the little
slider you can see it's no longer yellow
it's green
the green lets us know that on
dislocation vectors
along the timeline somewhere there is a
keyframe that's why these two here are
not green
but if it's specifically on the keyframe
here at frame one
you can see it is yellow that being said
you can also
hover over these transform vectors and
also hit i and it'll insert a keyframe
so let's move about 25 frames in
so this is the 24 frames a second that's
the
the frame rate in blender by default
so let's come to about 25 so in 25 it's
going to be roughly a second that has
passed so let's make this move
so we're going to hit g g allows us to
move things in our space
and then we're going to hit x the x is
going to constrain it to the x
axis here so we're going to move it over
to the side a bit and you can actually
see here now
that we have negative 6.6046 meters
over here and the negative you can also
come and drag this slider to do the
exact
same thing okay so you can hit g x
or you can just come in here and
manually do it you can see
we have the green here which is the y
axis so if you wanted to move it
on the y you can do it in the negative
or the positive positive value
and up and down it's going to be our
z-axis which you can do as well
so you can use these here to move the
cube however you want
or you can just hit g and you can do the
exact same
thing positive negative on any of the
spaces so just using those free
transform vectors on the location
you can move an object anywhere in
blender so while we're on frame 24 here
i'm just going to move it here
anywhere really and then hovering over
here i'm going to hit i
for those location vectors and it's
going to insert a keyframe once again
you can just hit i in your
your world space here and also insert a
location keyframe
so now if we go to frame one and we hit
the space bar we have that movement
so between frame one and frame 25
blender is automatically going to fill
in that
data via interpolation so an
interpolation
is just this method it uses to
automatically calculate
and fill in all of these spaces in
between so it's not going to be like
all-time stop motion animation where we
have to come to every single frame
and move it a little by little by little
by little right
um so if we were to actually select
these keyframes and they're active and
we hit t
we can actually see blender comes with
interpolation methods
which we're not going to be going into
because this is not what that's about
this is just teaching the keyframes that
could be
a video for later a subject for a later
video
so we can essentially go along our
timeline with any kind of spacing
and we can move the cube around so i'm
going to frame 60 now
so which is another two seconds in and
then i'm going to hit i and i'm going to
insert a location once again you can
manually move up here
if you want and just doing that you can
pretty much move a cube
a camera anything in the 3d space you're
around now what are these rotation and
scale ones now they're
pretty much just as the names suggest
not only can you move things
by hitting g or coming here to the
location sliders you can also
rotate by hitting r you can rotate you
can also tap r
twice and that will rotate around the
origin point
or you can come here to the rotations
and for example if i wanted to rotate it
on the
x i can come here to the x and rotate it
only
on the x axis as you can see if i wanted
to rotate it only in the y i can rotate
it on the y
or i can double tap r and rotate them
all over the place and you can see the
rotation vectors here
are going crazy so let's say we come
over here to frame one
and let's just you know give it a random
rotation so it's about this much on the
x with this much on a y
you know just make it whatever you want
hovering over here you can hit i
to insert a rotation vector you can see
it's now yellow on frame one
or you can also in your key your
viewport space here just hit i
and this time insert a rotation not a
location so you can insert a rotation
then come to something like frame 40
maybe
and then mess around with this you know
rotate it a little bit differently
and then hit i and insert the rotation
or you can come here
and just hit i over here
and you can go all along here and just
rotate it however you want
hit i and insert a rotation and we're
going through the 3d timeline
the timeline here and as time is going
on
we can do all these different moves hit
i into the rotation and we can now see
when we play animation
all of this here is happening and that's
pretty cool now the scale
is just as the name supply so the scales
are going to be the exact same thing we
can
hit s we can hit s to scale hover over
here we can hit i
hovering over these guys here and i'll
insert a keyframe
move along the time line anywhere and
then
hit s to change the scale then hit i
and insert a scale once again you can
hover over the scale here or hit i
here those are the two different ways
you can do it and now
we also have that scale but what if you
want to do all of them at the same time
so what if i want to come here to 80
and then move it rotate it
and scale it so i've got all of these
guys changed here now
what we can do is we can hit i and we
can come here and insert a location a
rotation
and a scale all at the same time
and using these methods here you can
really make anything
transform rotate move through the free
space in any way you want
and it's just super simple very very
easy anybody can do it
if you wanted to make the markers look
different you can come here to the king
and you come here to the new keyframe
type and you can change it to these
different keyframes
for different things it really just sure
is for organization purposes
so you can see here if i now hit i and i
insert a for example location keyframe
somewhere
i've changed it to that blue keyframe
now and you can see it's different i can
also come here
to the king and change it to any one of
these ones
and that's for if you're doing like
animation you might want to do different
kind of things like breakdown poses
keyframes
moving holds extremes jitters i won't
get into that but that's just
one of those cool things about blender
that you can also add different colored
markers
another thing with keyframes if you come
to some of the
like for example let's go over here to
the materials tab
right and a lot of the things here you
can see have these little dots next
next to them so you can not only add
keyframes to
these 3d transform vectors here you can
take some of these things for example in
the materials for example say for
example i
took went down to the viewport display
and i changed the color here
so i gave this a material to kind of a
red and then maybe on frame 40
i can click on this little dot here and
it'll insert a keyframe
then i can come to frame 100 and i can
change that to a blue color and then
click
on this little keyframe button here and
now between 40 and 100
it's going to automatically morph that
color or interpolate it for me
between red and blue so keyframes can be
used
for all sorts of things wherever you're
going to see this little yellow these
little buttons
you can click them to change the value
of things
over time via the keyframes you're going
to see these
little keyframes just in about anything
anywhere we have
a slider or a color value or something
you're usually going to get these little
buttons so you can add
keyframes for things like that as well
so blender is really cool like that
where it gives you a lot of control over
these sort of things
even the world color the strength of a
light for example you might want a light
to start really weak and then
get stronger there's all sorts of things
you could do like that for example if we
select this lamp over here
or the light and we go to the light
settings so for example maybe at frame
40 we want the light to have 1000 watts
of power so we click on the little
keyframe here
and let's say by the time it gets to
about 120 frames in
a few more seconds we want to change
this to like 6000
watts and then we click on a keyframe
and now between
40 and 120 that light will get more
intense and if i actually go into my
rendered view here
you can see between 40 and 120
that light is going to become more
intense
so that is the basic fundamentals of
keyframes in blender
and i've done it really simple at a
beginner's level so you can kind of
understand it
and it's not too complicated and yeah
that is it
and i'll see you guys next time for
another tutorial
you
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