1 min read

Animating Objects Without Keyframes With Blender

Animating Objects Without Keyframes With Blender

Today I've been learning how to animate procedural movement without having to set keyframes. This can be achieved with the Drivers you add to object properties such as translation, rotation, etc.

This is how you do it:

  1. Select the Object
    • Click on the object you want to animate.
  2. Open Object Properties
    • Click on the Object Properties tab (📌 orange square icon in the Properties panel).
    • In this example, we will associate X and Y Location properties with a Driver.
  3. Add a Driver to Location Properties
    • Right-click on the X Location input field and select Add Driver.
    • Repeat for the Y Location input field.
  4. Edit the Driver in the Driver Editor
    • Open the Driver Editor (Graph Editor → Switch to Drivers mode).
    • Set the following expressions for movement:
      • X Location: sin(frame / 10) * 0.5
      • Y Location: cos(frame / 10) * 0.5
    • This creates a circular motion for the object between -0.5 and 0.5.
  5. Play Animation and Render
    • Press Spacebar to preview the animation.
    • Adjust driver settings if needed.
    • Render the animation when satisfied (Ctrl + F12).

Here you can see two objects moving:

Mikko