Animation Tutorial
by Tom aka Night4554

The sooner you get it into your head that Blender is a large 3D graph, the easier it is to understand the IPO window and animating.

The most important key you will be using in this tutorial is your I key, so make sure it's working. =)

Before we begin, I'd like to explain just what a loc is. A loc, or a keyloc, is basically a command that says "OK! At this time, this is going to be HERE, and it's going to be this size, and this rotation and this color...." There are bunches of types of keylocs from Alpha and Avail to Speed and Size. While the majority of these locs are beyond the scope of this tutorial, we will be going over the following:

1. Loc- the standard keyloc, used for motion in 3D; tells the object what point to be at in the X, Y, and Z axis

Other tutorials will go over other types of keylocs In addition to these keylocs, we'll have to go over frames as well. Before you have always worked in frame 1. Now we will be working with other frames as well. You see the frame you're working on in this picture:
So without further adue we'll start out the tutorial:

    1) Open up Blender
    2) You should see this something resembling this:
    The most important part of the picture is the square in the center.  (If you don't have it, press space>>Add>>Mesh>>Plane)
    3)Press I to bring up the following menu:
    4)Select Loc
    You have now locked the plane into this place at frame 1.  Now we will move it.
    5)Press the right arrow key.  The frame should now be on 2. (Find the frame indicator here)
    6)Press the left arrow key.  The frame should now be on 1.
    7)Press the up arrow key.  The frame should now be on 11.
    8)Press the down arrow key.  The frame should now be on 1.
    9)Now hold shift and click on on the frame indicator.  You can now press the right and left arrow keys in conjuction with backspace
    and the numeral keys to manually change the frame.  This function works on all sliders and buttons with numerals.
    10)Set the frame on 25.
    Unless you change it in the Animation menu, 25 is the default frames per second (fps).
    Now we will get to the actual animating.
    11)Move the plane to the right 5 or more boxes
    12)Press => (right arrow) to advance the frame to frame 26
    What happened!  The box moved back to the beginning!  Here's where I'll explain why: You set the keyframe back at frame 1.  When you moved
    the frame to frame 25, the plane had not moved.  When you move the plane, well it's moved.  However it's a temporary move, unless you make
    it permanent.  To make it permanent you have to loc it again.
    13)Set the frame on 25.
    14)Move the plane to the right 5 or more boxes
    15)Press i, and select loc to lock the plane
    16)Press => (right arrow) to advance the frame to frame 26
    There we go, it's in place now.
    Now we're going to preveiw our animation.
    17)Press SHIFT+ <=(left arrow)
    This moves the frame automatically back to the beginning of the render.  I say render because you can set the render to begin at a
    different frame than 1.  But since we have not down this, it will goto 1.  (pressing Shift + => (right arrow) to goto the end, but
    the end is set up for frame 250 so don't bother)
    18)Hold => (right arrow) to see the box move.
    This is a bad method however, and does not debit our status of incredibly great people.  (or so I tell myself =) )
    19)Hold ALT and press A
    You'll see that it goes to frame 25 and then the box stops, but the frames keep going until frame 250.  This is because the render is set to end
    at 250.
    20)Press ESC (escape) to end the animation

New Commands-

- i -The main animating key; it inserts keylocs, of varying types depending on where your cursor is when you click it
- => (right arrow key)- moves forward one frame
- <= (left arrow key)- moves back one frame
- ^ (up arrow key)- moves forward ten frames
- v (down arrow key)- moves back ten frames
- SHIFT+Left Click - when down on a button (with a numeral value) or a slider, allows you to manually change the value
- SHIFT+ <= (left arrow)- sends the frame automatically to the first frame in the render
- SHIFT+ => (right arrow)- sends the frame automatically to the last frame in the render
- ALT+A- preveiws the animation
- ESC -ends an animation preveiw and exits menus and such