Spinning Drawings

I construct my figures with bean shapes and other forms, which I envisioned as spinning to see the volume (instead of learning how to shade to pull out the mass).  Blender now gives me the tools to make those shapes spin on my drawings.

From a painting/drawing remix

EZGif

Download the Blender File

(Orange_reclining_spin.blend   1.77 MB)

On Ello

In the above spinning drawing, all the "textures" on the shapes are just the main background drawing projected onto them.  

Except for the revolving shape around the head.  Here I added a PNG file with a transparent background (the Alpha channel), to make enough of that volume invisible to reveal the eyes while spinning.

From a PNG drawing

EZGif

Download the Blender File

(Lean_Green_Orbit.blend   1.47 MB)

On Instagram

All the spinning shapes in the above drawing have the PNG image of the main background figure, texture mapped on them.  Since the PNG image has a transparent background, that also made the spinning shapes transparent, or rather partially transparent.

Note that there is a sphere orbiting through the middle of the figure, while spinning also.

BLENDER FILES

for free download

The Blender files for the above two animations are available for download, and anyone can alter them as they like:

• Orange-reclining_spin.blend (1.77 MB)
• Lean_Green_Orbit.blend (1.47 MB)

The spinning shapes can easily be colored differently, or moved, or easily altered to radically change the character of the animation.  I was very conservative with the two animations above, to be less confusing about what is happening.

The first spinning figure GIF was much crazier.

I noticed that other websites like Blender Nation, offered free 3D scenes for downloading:

I downloaded a free Blender file

of the Planet Express Ship

in the upper right corner,

from Blender Nation

***

To Make a Shape Spin

Along its Axis

First change from "Global" to "Local" at the top of the "Layout" workspace:

"Local" refers to the 

axis of the shape

Now "Rotation" will apply to the axis of the shape, inside of the whole Cartesian space.

The longest axis tends to be the Z axis.

• Hit the "N" key to open the Sidebar
• The Item/Transform menu shows up
• Click on "XYZ Euler" to open the drop down menu of more options

Make sure to chose an option starting with Z, if you want to spin the shape around it's longest axis.  And choose this, the same one, every time you add a keyframe for that spinning object.

Hit the "N" Key

to summon this Sidebar menu 

You probably want to use an option

starting with "Z"

to spin the shape around it's longest axis

OTHER TUTORIALS

• YouTube tutorial: Animating the Airplane - Blender 2.8 Crash Course #14  (rotate by inputting numbers into the Sidebar)

• YouTube tutorial:  Blender Constant Spinning Object or Wheel Blender 2.8 (sphere rotating around an object)

• YouTube tutorial:  Blender 2.8 : Apply Transparent Textures (In 30 Seconds!!!) - Principled BSDF Tutorial  (the alpha channel of a drawing can add transparencies to the spinning volume, when "texture mapping" the spinning object -- a PNG file with a transparent background has an alpha channel, telling the background to be transparent)

• YouTube tutorial:  How to package a Blender project to Super Renders Farm (make sure you check the box, to save all your image files in the master blender file)