Reply To: Small issue with order of keyframing

Hi there,

Rather than attempt to exactly reproduce the original, (where after all I was experimenting wildly) I did the following experiment which shows it is all real. As ever with Blender I have it mind that I could have made some numpty blunder, but just for once I think I’m bang on. Here goes:-

Make a standard 4 arc roundcube. Add a subsurface modifier with 2 subdivisions, (doubt if this is important, but might make it easier to visualise).

Keyframe the scale at frame 1 to 1.000. Move to frame 100 (25frames sec btw), and keyframe scale to 0.6.

Now keyframe location. Frame 1 all at zero, Frame 100 to X to 0.6, (others at zero)

Go into the graph editor and make sure all locations / scaling is linear

Call that cell 1

Make a duplicate of the above called Cell 2. Clear all keyframes. Repeat the above keyframing but make sure that this time round that a) the movement in X is keyframed first and then the scale down b) The location at frame 100 is -0.6 instead of +0.6. Make sure all is linear. Call that cell 2. The only thing different is the order of keyframing and final location. This is born out by them being listed in different order in the graph editor.

When you run it you will see 2 things a) the ‘cleavage’ in the middle is clearly not central, b) the actual dimensions differ just slightly between cell 1 and 2 at most, (all?) frames between 1-100.

Just to put the cherry on the cake, hide Cell2 and then duplicate Cell 1. Change the location at frame 100 to -0.6 from +0.6. Call this cell 3. This time the animation runs perfectly and the ‘cleavage’ is dead central and the dimensions on Cells 1 and 3 are identical at all frames.

Not a big deal really, providing people know that the order of parameters being set is important for fine detail in keyframing.

PS: I’m running 2.82 and the Camera was at X 0, Y -3, Z -3

PPS:- Yes I’ve tried metaballs and these are great for when you have just one division. However I want to eventually show many dividing together and I got into all kinds of mess trying to use multiple metaballs. Pity really as they are more realistic. As an ex-biologist I know only too well how cells divide and although Cells1 and 3 don’t look too bad, they’re not anatomically accurate. I had to go to a lot of trouble to get that right, see https://vimeo.com/323583396

Cheers

Jim