Different camera angles always make animations more interesting and usually look pretty cool at the same time. Making cameras switch in Blender is actually reasonably simple all you need to do is set up a marker and then bind the camera to that marker. Start off by adding your extra cameras to the screen, you can do this by pressing Shift + A and select camera from the list much like you would when you're adding other mesh objects to the screen. Once these cameras are set up position them around the scene so that they will capture each of the camera angles that you want. For the sake of testing to see if everything is working it may be a good idea to place the monkey head in the scene so that it can be seen by each camera. This way when you test your animation as each camera switches you will see a different section of the monkey. Once each of your cameras are set up find the animation timeline at the bottom of the screen. This is what you will need to use to add the markers to the scene.
To set up a marker select the frame that you want the camera to change on by either clicking on it on the timeline show above or by clicking on the box shown below and typing in your chosen frame number.
(Click on this box and then replace the numbers in the box with your chosen frame.) Before you set any markers up it's always a good idea to set a marker on the first frame of your animation so that Blender knows which camera your animation starts with. Set your frame number to 1 and then hover your mouse over the green line and press "M". This should add a little yellow triangle on frame 1 as shown below.
Now you have the marker set up right click to select the camera that you want the animation to start with. With your camera selected click on the view button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and click on the "bind camera to markers" option. Alternatively you can hover your mouse over the animation timeline and press Ctrl + B to bind the camera.
Once you've done this move to the frame that you want you're camera to change on by typing the number in the box shown previously. To add the second marker move your cursor down to the green line again and press M. This should add a second small triangle just like last time.
Right click on the second triangle to make sure that it's the only one selected. If both of the markers are orange Blender will bind the camera to both markers and the camera won't change when you want it to. With the second marker selected right click on the second camera in your scene and like you did with the first camera click on the view button in the very bottom left corner of the screen and click on the option that says bind camera to markers. This will bind your second camera to the second marker. Now you've bound the two cameras to the markers it would be a good idea to test to make sure that its worked . Set your animation frame to 1 and then press 0. This should change your view to the camera that you bound to the first marker. Press alt a to play the animation and wait to see if the camera changes when it reaches the second marker it means everything is working as it should be. Repeat these steps for any other cameras you might want to include in your scene and add cameras to your hearts content. Video tutorial here:
As always any feedback is always appreciated on these tutorials, also be sure to tweet me @markimo2 with any troubles or further questions.
Having text in an animation often helps tell the story or can be used to show interaction between characters in the scene. This short tutorial will show you the easiest way to keyframe your text so that it shows up when it is needed and disappears when it needs to. First off start by adding your text to the scene and positioning it so that it can be seen by the camera. Press shift + A and add your text object to the scene.
Once the text is in the scene rotate the text by 90 degrees on the X axis by pressing "R" "X" "90". Now the text should look like it is standing up, use the move and rotate buttons (R and G) to move the camera around so that it can see the text.
Now that the text is in the camera view you will need to add the first keyframe to the text object, in the top right hand corner of the screen there is a list which shows you all of the items that are in the scene at the time.
Somewhere on this list should be an item called "text" unless you renamed it to something different after adding it into the scene. On the far right hand side of this list there is a small camera icon, this icon controls whether or not the item is rendered in the scene. When the icon is solid as shown below the text will be rendered in the scene.
On the other hand if the icon is lighter as shown below the text won't be rendered.
To change this in your animation you need to set a keyframe for each of these states. To set these keyframes up you need to decide which frame you want the text to be rendered on. To change this you first need to select the frame you want by using the controls underneath the animation timeline at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the box shown inside the blue outline above and delete the number, now replace this number with the frame number that you want to change your text object on. If you want your text to be rendered on this frame make sure the camera icon is solid as shown in the photo above and then right click on the camera and click on the insert keyframe option.
This will put a green circle around the camera icon.
To change the text from rendered to un-rendered or vice versa use the controls at the bottom of the screen to change the number of the frame to the frame that you want the text to change on. When you've selected your frame left click on the camera icon and then right click again and click on the insert keyframe option to insert the second keyframe.
If you press Alt-A now to test your animation you won't see any change in the 3d viewport. To test to see whether or not this worked click on the render option next to file in the top left corner of the screen and click "Render Animation". As each frame renders watch to make sure that the text appears or disappears on the correct frame. This method of making things appear and disappear also works on normal meshes or models. Just follow these exact same steps and you should have no problems. If you have anymore questions or anything in this tutorial doesn't work be sure to tweet me @markimo2 and let me know.
