Putting Together Our Knowledge

If you have made it through the first of the 3 Blender 3D tutorials (congratulations) this should be relatively easy. We do nothing new here, well, mostly nothing new.

Assuming you want to use your photocube, take the photocube from Tutorial #3 and put it somewhere around 4 units high. Either create more 3D cubes or duplicate the existing 3D cube 3 or 4 times. Move the new objects to random locations above and below your first cube. The action is more interesting if each photocube is rotated slightly different from the others. This is a good time to do that. Made a table that the photocubes can drop onto (you know how to do this). Set up the color and reflection that you like. Don't forget to set the bounds up as a box. You've done all this before and this is a good review.

Testing and Finishing

Before going very much further this is a good time to test the action with the game engine. Move the photocubes around until you like what you see when they hit the surface of the table. Good time to add a few lights (test out with F12). The spheres are optional but they add a little interest. If you want some of the spheres, "Add" the spheres and scale down to 20% (s 0.2). Add a material and make them transparent if you like. It will increase the render time but I think the results are worth it. If you add spheres the action will probably change so try the game engine again. If you like the action then "Record Game Physics to IPO" and run the game engine. I try to keep the baked files separate from the unbaked files (no IPOs). If you do the same, then after you record the game physics save the file with a new name.

What Next?

Once you have a blend file with the IPOs baked in you can move your camera to different locations and see what the view is. A few minutes work and you could have a completely different looking animation. You can also move your camera around, key framing the different locations for a really cool effect. The animation to the left is from the same file as the one above except for a relatively small change in the camera location. Maybe will have time one day to put a camera keyframe tutorial in here.

Take a look at the next two tutorials, you should already have all of the skills to create them. Then just have fun. Blender 3D is a feature rich package. We have just touched on a small number of the features. I hope the folks that have created this amazing (and free) system will not look unfavorably on our playtime.