Working with Layers

I’m back learning Blender again… I used it 2 years ago and have come back to it and working on learning more… I created a snowman for my first animation 2 years ago… and I used layers working with it, but when my computer crashed, I lost the .blend file where I created the animation… so can’t remember how I did what I did…
Right now am working with an animation… I have small rocket that flies across the sky and as it passes a particular area, a letter appears… when it is at the frame where the letter appears, do I move that letter to the 1st layer from the layer it is on? or is there a way to leave it on it’s layer and just make it appear when I reach that frame… ? I worked with a couple layers in an old animation but that was 2 years ago and can’t remember how I did it… I don’t remember if I moved my object to the other layer when I reached the frame or if I just made the layer visible at that frame and left the object on its layer…I have 16 layers
I’m thinking when I reach the frame, I need to just move the letter to the 1st layer… but am not positive because I don’t want the letter to show up until that frame… so my first 60 layers or so is just the rocket going across the sky… and then the letter appears… (I may shorten that number of frames… am playing with it right now…)

thank you in advance for answer …
Barbara

I found the answer… got it working… thanks :slight_smile:

Barbara

One aspect of Blender that might be new to you is that, now, you can “animate anything.” So, for example, you can now animate the “Visible” property of any object, so that it “appears” on-cue. (Curiously, you cannot animate the “visible layers” property, nor can you animate the “visible on layers” property of any object.)

Is there a place I can read how to do that? I have been using it by having it on layers and then making the object move from a particular layer to the main layer when I reached a particular frame…
would be great if I could do it by making it appear on cue… I’m doing another animation where I want to have three words appear into the main layer when I want it to come in… but right now am having problems… I pose my character and enter a keyframe for that pose… go to the another frame and enter keyframe for the new pose… but it is not working so posted a message into the rigging area… thanks…

It’s quite a remarkable thing. Click on a setting, almost any setting, and press the “I”-key (“insert keyframe”).

The setting acquires a yellow background to indicate that its setting is now being controlled by an F-curve, which you can see in the Actions and/or NLA Editors. You can advance to another frame, change the setting, press “I” again, and thereby add another keyframe for the setting of that particular variable.

For instance, in the Outliner view, the little “eyeball” icon indicates visibility. Click it (it turns gray = “off”), press I. Advance a few frames, click it (solid = “on”), press I again. You’ve just set two keyframes … off again, then on again … for the visibility of that particular object!

There are other things you can do, such as “Drivers,” which allow you to define an F-curve which takes one value as an input (shown along the horizontal “X” axis) and generates a value for another as output (shown as “Y”). (That’s the sort of thing that’s used, for instance, to make a control-bone, if (say …) rotated upward along the X-axis, cause a shape-key’s value to be altered such that the character’s expression turns from a frown into a smile.)

Plenty of tutorials on that, but I think you get the big idea, and “the big idea” is important. The original code-name, I think, was “Animato,” and the goal was, “animate anything.” They pretty much did that, too. If you remember “the old Blender,” this new flexibility takes, ohh, about two-and-a-half seconds to fall in love with. :slight_smile:

thanks sundial for the information… will check on it and play around with it… appreciate your help… I used the old Blender two years ago trying to learn the molding of characters and animation… didn’t do real good yet but was learning… then got side tracked to working on other things and didn’t come back to Blender til now and I work on it for hours every day now trying to learn and get better with it… I have a blog of children’s stories and thought it would be cool to create a small video sometimes with the animated animals I use in the stories. Been modeling some houses for the scenes… slowly getting better with them…
have a great day and I will check on all the information you gave me…

You’ll find that “the old blender” to be best a forgotten memory: most of the techniques that you had to use “then” have been superseded by better ideas. Curiously, one of the “anythings” that it seems you can’t (yet) animate is, “layer masks.”