Relevant to Blender v2.31

The single step in-place is the core of a walk, and once you have defined one there are techniques to make a character walk along a complex path. But, for the purpose of our Quick Start, this single step in- place is enough.

Change to the Rendering Buttons (F10) and set the animation start and end to 1 and 40 respectively (Figure 4.67, “Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation.”). Because frame 41 is identical to frame 1, we only need to render frames from 1 to 40 to produce the full cycle.

Figure 4.67. Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation.

2. Select AVI Raw as the file type in Format Panel (Figure 4.67, “Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation.”). While this is generally not the best choice, mainly for file size issues (as will be explained later on), it is fast and it will run on any machine, so it suits our needs. (You can also select AVI Jpeg to produce a more compact file, but using lossy Jpeg compression and obtaining a movie that some external render might not be able to play).

3. Finally, press ANIM button in Anim Panel. Remember that all the layers that you want to use in the animation must be shown! In our case, these are layers 1 and 10.

Our scene is pretty simple, and Blender will probably render each of the 40 images in a few seconds. Watch them as they appear.

Once the rendering is complete you should have a file named 0001_0040.avi in a render subdirectory of your current directory - the one containing your .blend file. You can play this file directly within Blender by pressing the Play button beneath the ANIM button (Figure 4.67, “Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation.”). The animation will automatically cycle. To stop it press ESC.

We have produced only a very basic walk cycle. There is much more in Blender, as you'll soon discover!