Special Functions

Answers in this category:

1. What are dupliverts
2. What are dupliframes?
3. How can I create a moving camera? Specifically, I want a camera to rotate around an object while staying trained on that object. Can\'t seem to move the camera after I make it use an IKA limb.
4. What does PowerTrack do?
5. Making dupliverts/dupliframes real objects
6. How can objects track or follow each other?
7. How can I create a moving camera? Specifically, I want a camera to rotate around an object while staying trained on that object. Can't seem to move the camera after I make it use an IKA limb.
8. How can I do rotoscoping in Blender?

1 - What are dupliverts

Contributed by B@rt.

Setting 'DupliVerts' in the AnimButtons window duplicates
the children of this object on each vertex. This only works
for meshes and particle systems.

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2 - What are dupliframes?

Contributed by Luis E. Collado.

When you create a path animation the object that is parented to the path is moved along the path. For dupliframes each dupliframe is a copy of where the object would be in the path animation. It looks like dupliverts except that a dupliframe is not real, it is a representation of where the object would be at each frame in the animation. Dupliframes can be made real, when a dupliframe object is made real, then it can be modified like any other object because it is a copy of the original object.

Example: You may want to make a dupliframe rendering of dominoes, one way would be to model a single domino and parent it to a path ( you can make the path follow any shape you want ) then if select the domino and select the dupliframe button you will see many copies of the domino. These are ghosts since there is no real mesh there, but an image of where the domino would be in time.

Hope this helps

Luis

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3 - How can I create a moving camera? Specifically, I want a camera to rotate around an object while staying trained on that object. Can\'t seem to move the camera after I make it use an IKA limb.

Contributed by Luis E. Collado.

What you need to do is to make the camera track. You do this by selecting the camera, then selecting the object that you want the camera to be trained on, and hitting . This may change the rotation of the camera, to correct this select the camera alone, and then hit to clear the rotation. Once you have done this move the camera around and you will notice that it remains fixed on the object. You can then either do a key frame animation, or a path animation with the camera, and it will always tracks the object. You can always remove this effect by selecting the camera and typing .

I hope this helps

Luis

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4 - What does PowerTrack do?

Contributed by Zycho.

Powertrack allows an object to track another object , while it's following a path. For example: a camera parented to a curvepath and tracking an empty will behave totally weird unless you enable Powertrack for the camera.

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5 - Making dupliverts/dupliframes real objects

Contributed by Marcus Stade.

Dupliverts and dupliframes are possibly two of the more underused features in blender, but they're still VERY useful. To shortly explain them would be something like this: Dupliverts makes a virtual duplicate of a object onto another objects vertices, which can produce quite cool effects. Dupliframes are virtual objects placed along the animation path of the object. Now even if those features are super, sometimes you'd still like to make these objects REAL instead of simply virtual for further editing. This is very easy to do. If the virtual objects are dupliverts, select the object they're 'bound' to and press ctrl+shift+a, then enter. If they are Dupliframes, just select the object that is duplicated and perform the same operation(ctrl+shift+a), then press enter. That should do it.

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6 - How can objects track or follow each other?

Contributed by B@rt.

Select the object that you want to point to another object. Hold down SHIFT and select the second object. Press CTRL+T and confirm the requester.

Now, if you move the second object, the first one will follow it.

To remove tracking, press ALT+T.

Hint: sometimes you get strange effects. In such cases, it helps to clear the rotation of the tracking object with ALT+R. If the object is not rotated correctly, enter editmode and perform an additional rotation there.

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7 - How can I create a moving camera? Specifically, I want a camera to rotate around an object while staying trained on that object. Can't seem to move the camera after I make it use an IKA limb.

Contributed by Daniel Jircik.

When trying to make a keyframe animation of a camera rotating around an objetc you will notice that after you have made your keyframe and movement entries that the camera doesn't really follow a circular path. It more or less takes a shortcut to each keyframed location. To make a perfectly circular orbit try this.
ADD>CURVE>BEZIER CIRCLE move this circle to a layer you are not using. Now press CRTL + ~ to see all layers. Parent the camera to the circle and do your keyframe rotations with the circle. An interesting "twist" on this is to also keyframe the size of the circle . That way you can have a smooth rate of descent or ascent into the circle.
Don't get dizzy.

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8 - How can I do rotoscoping in Blender?

Contributed by anonymous.

Hi,
here's a tutorial for you.

https://helium.homeip.net/xoom/tutorials/logoTut/logoTut.html

Mackesch.

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