Today we’ll be making a Light Alley animation in Blender. I’ll be using the 2.81 version of Blender. In particular, we’ll be making use of the following tools and techniques:
- solidify modifier
- glass material
- emission material
- array modifier
- graph editor
This is what it should look like:
And here are the steps to go:
Table of Contents
Step 1 – Model the Basic Shape of the Light Alley
Move the default cube up : G Z 1
Go to edit mode.
Delete 3 faces of the cube : front, back and top.
Loop cut the two lateral faces and remove the top halves.
Go to object mode.
Step 2 – Set the Material
Add a solidify modifier: thickness: 0.01
Apply the modifier.
Set the material: metallic: 1, base color: hex: B34D17
Go to Material Preview.
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Step 3 – Model A Lamp
Add a UV sphere and scale it: S 0.15
Move the sphere up: G Z 1
Give the sphere a glass material: roughness: 0.2, Blend Mode: Alpha Blend, Screen Space Refraction: +
Go to Edit mode, wireframe shading.
Select the right half of the sphere.
Separate the right half: Mesh → Separate → Selection
Step 4 – Distribute the Lamps
Go to object mode, solid shading.
Shade both halves smooth: Object -> Shade Smooth
Select each half one by one and grab to the opposite side of the cube (hold Ctrl while grabbing to snap).
Select both halves and grab them down: G Z -0.3
Step 5 – Screen Space Reflections and Refraction
Go to Render tab. Check Screen Space Reflections and inside it check Refraction.
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Step 6 – Create the Light Bulbs
Now we’re going to create the light bulbs. Add UV sphere and scale it: S 0.05
Give the sphere an emission material: base color: hex FFFA8E
Go to front view, wireframe.
Move the UV sphere (light bulb) into the left hemisphere, duplicate it and grab the duplicate to the other hemisphere.
Step 7 – Join Objects
Select both light bulbs, both hemispheres and the cube and join them all into one object (Object → Join).
In the Outliner rename the cube ‘segment’.
Step 8 – Add More Segments
Add an array modifier to the segment:
- relative offset x: 0, y: 1, z: 0
- count: 200 Apply the modifier.
Set world color to black.
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Step 9 – Set the Camera
Go to solid shading so that you can see better.
Select the camera and reset its position (Alt+G) and rotation (Alt+R).
Rotate the camera: R X 90
Step 10 – Insert Keyframes
Go to top wireframe view.
In the timeline set the end frame to 500.
Go to frame 1 and in the Properties panel insert a single keyframe for location Y.
Go to the last frame.
Set the Y location to 200 and insert a single keyframe for location Y.
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Step 11 – Graph Editor
Split the Timeline editor and open the Graph editor.
In the Graph editor click Normalize to see the graph better. Zoom in to see it.
Open the Properties panel in the graph editor (N).
Step 12 – Play the Animation
Go to frame 1 in the Timeline.
In the 3D View editor go to camera view, wireframe shading.
Play the animation. Watch how the camera is moving: slowly at the beginning, then faster, then it slows down again. You can see it in the Graph editor as well.
Step 13 – Quadratic Interpolation
In the Graph editor change the interpolation to Quadratic.
If you now play the video, the camera moves slowly at first and then it accelerates.
Step 14 – Render the Light Alley Animation
In the Output tab select a folder for the video.
Set file format to FFmpeg and encoding to MPEG4.
Make a test render: Render -> Render Image
Render the animation.