From BlenderWiki
Ipo Curve Types
Introduction
All data that can be animated has a dedicated Ipo curve (also called “channel”).
Considering object’s transformations, material’s properties, textures properties, bones, constraints, etc, in Blender 2.49 we can have more than 150 animatable properties for each object.
It is easy to understand that visualizing this amount of curves in a single editor would be impossible.
For this reason, as already said here, Blender distinguish Ipo Curves according to their type.
Ipo Types
Four Ipo types are always available, meaning that the parameters on these Ipo types can always be animated.
All the other Ipo types are specific to the object type and its properties.
Also, only some Ipo type can become an action. See more about action later.
| Ipo Type | Is it always available? | Can become an Action |
|---|---|---|
| Object | YES (obviously all objects have an object datablock) | YES |
| Constraint | YES (all objects can be constrained) | YES |
| World | YES (there is always one World datablock in the current scene) | |
| Sequence | YES (there is always one Sequencer datablock in the current scene) | |
| Material | ||
| Texture | ||
| Shape | YES | |
| Particles | ||
| Path | ||
| Camera | ||
| Lamp | ||
| Pose | IT IS ALWAYS AN ACTION |
Object
This Ipo type type gather animatable object’s properties.
This page shows how to animate an object using these Ipo types.
| Loc | Location | Object's transforms |
| Rot | Rotation | |
| Scale | Scale | |
| dLoc | Relative location | Object's relative transforms These allow you to animate a transformation property relatively to its current value |
| dRot | Relative rotation | |
| dScale | Relative scale | |
| Layer | The layer which the object belongs to. This property can only have integer values (example: during a given frame an object can belong to layers 1 and 3) | (various) |
| Time | This property is used to retime the animation of an object | |
| Col | Object color, in case you enable a material’s ObColor option | |
| FStrength | Controls the Strength of the field | Force fields |
| FFal | Controls its Fall-off power | |
| FMaxD | Controls the MaxDist (max distance of the effect) | |
| RDamp | Controls the Damping factor of the collisions | Collisions with particles |
| Damping | Controls the Rnd (random damping factor) of the same collision (!) | |
| Perm | Controls the Permeability to particles |
Constraint
Each Ipo type can have two animatable parameters.
See this page for details and examples.
| Inf | Controls the Influence of the constraint. | Values clamped between 0.0 and 1.0 |
| HeadTail | Controls, if available, the place along the target bone to take as real target. |
Note
The Ipo Curve Editor always shows Ipo Curves of the currently selected constraint. To select a consstraint in the stack click on it's panel to highlight it.
|
World
See this page for details and examples.
| Hor | Controls the horizon color of the world | - |
| Zen | Controls the zenith color of the world | |
| Expos | Controls the Exp (exposure) factor | |
| Misi | Controls the mist intensity (Misi slider) | Mist |
| MisDi | Controls the mist distance (Dist setting) | |
| MisSta | Controls the mist start distance (Start setting) | |
| MisHi | Controls the mist Height. | |
| StarR | Control the stars’ color | Star |
| StarB | ||
| StarG | ||
| StarDi | Controls the stars’ distance (StarDist setting) | |
| StarSi | Controls the stars’ Size | |
| OfsX | Since the World can be textured (it has the texture channel selector for mapping settings), these curves are texture channel-specific. These curves are a sub-set of the same ones found for the material Ipo type described below. | Texture channel |
| OfsY | ||
| OfsZ | ||
| SizeX | ||
| SizeY | ||
| SizeZ | ||
| TexR | ||
| TexR | ||
| TexR | ||
| DefVar | ||
| Col | ||
| Nor | ||
| Var |
Sequence
There is only one curve available, Fac, which controls the “factor” of the element, which might be:
- the transparency (for video elements)
- the level (for audio elements)
- or something else (and for some non-animatable elements, nothing at all!).
As the constraint Ipo: the Ipo Curve Editor window only shows the curves of the selected (active) strip in the VSE.
The sequence Ipo curves are used a bit differently than the others, as the whole element’s length is mapped to frames 0 to 100 (see this page for details).
Material
Of course this Ipo type is available for all objects that have a material.
If the current active object has more than one material assigned, then the Ipo Curve Editor shows the Ipo Curve of the Material that is shown in the Material sub-context of the Buttons window.
Note
Since Ipos are datablocks, they can be linked to other datablocks.
The material Ipo datablock is linked to the material datablock, and NOT to the object using it. |
This type of Ipo datablock is a “textured” one (it has the texture channel selector, for mapping settings), and it can control most of the material’s settings:
For more details and examples, see this page – and of course, the material chapter!
| R | Red | Diffuse color |
| B | Blu | |
| G | Green | |
| SpecR | Red | Specularity color |
| SpecB | Blu | |
| SpecG | Green | |
| MirR | Red | Mirror color |
| MirB | Blu | |
| MirG | Green | |
| Ref | Controls the amount of reflection | (various) |
| Alpha | Controls the amount of the transparency | |
| Emit | Controls the amount of emitted light | |
| Amb | Controls the amount of received ambient light | |
| Spec | Controls the specularity | |
| Hard | Controls the the Hard value (for the specular shaders that use it, or for halo materials. (note that this is an integer value). | |
| SpTra | Controls the SpecTra setting (makes specular area opaque) | Raytraced transparency |
| Ior | Controls the index of refraction. | |
| FresTra | Controls the Fresnel power | |
| FresTraI | Controls the the Fresnel blending Factor | |
| Mode | It's an integer-only curve, that enables a different feature for each strictly positive value (this seems to me more like a test/debug feature, as it always enables only one of these at a time). | (various) |
| HaSize | Controls the halo size (for halo materials). | |
| Translu | Controls the translucency (Tralu slider). | |
| RayMir | Controls the amount of reflection | Raytraced mirror |
| FresMir | Controls the Fresnel power | |
| FresMirI | Controls the Fresnel blending Factor | |
| Ofs | Controls the offset of the texture mapping | Texture mapping |
| Size | Controls the size of the texture mapping | |
| Tex | Controls the “map to” color | Texture channel (number of curves: as many curves as texture channels number: indicated by the small counter to the right of the Ipo Type selector) |
| DefVar | Controls the DVar slider | |
| Col | Controls the Col slider | |
| Nor | Controls the Nor slider | |
| Disp | Controls the Disp slider |
Texture
This Ipo type is available for all objects with materials using one or more textures.
As with materials, the Ipo Curve Editor only shows the texture selected in the textures stack (Texture sub-context of the Shading context in the Buttons window).
Note
Since Ipos are datablocks, they can be linked to other datablocks.
The texture Ipo datablock are linked to texture datablocks, and NOT to objects, NOR to materials. |
As we know, the Texture Ipo datablock groups together all the Ipos curves to animate texture parameters.
Most of the available channels are relevant for procedural textures, but unfortunately textures can be of different types (procedural, image, envmap, plugin).
When we edit a procedural texture, Blender offers the choice to enable Ipo channels not relevant for a procedural texture, or the opposite.
For example, the NSize curve, which controls the noise size for some procedural textures, is of no use for e.g. image texture!
Just choose the relevant ones depending on the selected texture and ignore the others.
For more details and examples, see this page – and of course, the texture chapter!
| NSize | Controls the NoiseSize | Most procedural textures (clouds, marble, ...) |
| NDepth | Controls the NoiseDepth (integer value) | |
| NType | Allows you to select the noise types: below 1.0 for Soft Noise, above 1.0 for Hard Noise. | |
| Turb | Controls the Turbulence setting that sometimes replaces NoiseDepth (e.g. for stucci or wood). | |
| Vnw1 | Control the four weights of the Voronoi texture. | Voronoi |
| Vnw2 | ||
| Vnw3 | ||
| Vnw4 | ||
| MinkMEx | Controls the Minkovsky exponent for Minkovsky distance metric. | |
| ColT | Controls the color type: values below 1 for Int, below 2 for Col1, etc. | |
| DistM | Controls which distance metric to use: again, integer value, below 1 for Actual Distance, below 2 for Distance Squared, etc. | |
| iScale | Controls iScale setting | Voronoi and Musgrave |
| DistA | Controls the DistAmnt (distance amount) parameter | Distorted noise |
| MgType | Controls the type of musgrave texture (integer): below 1 for Multifractal, below 2 for Ridged Multifractal, etc. | Musgrave |
| MgH | Controls H | |
| Lacu | Controls Lacu | |
| Oct | Controls Octs | |
| MgOff | Controls Ofst | |
| MgGain | Controls Gain | |
| NBase1 | Controls the two noise basis selectors types: integer type, below 1 for Blender Original, below 2 for Original Perlin, etc.). | Textures using NBase menus |
| NBase2 | ||
| ColR, ColG, ColB | Control the RGB coloring sliders | Image |
| Bright | Controls the brightness | |
| Contras | Controls the contrast |
Shape
This is an Ipo type available for:
- meshes,
- curves
- surfaces
- lattices objects.
It controls the object’s shape (i.e. the location of its vertices or control points).
It has a quite specific behavior, discussed here.
Particles
This type of Ipo is only available for objects (meshes) that have one or more particle systems. See this page for more details.
Path
This Ipo type is only available for curves. It has only one curve, Speed, which controls how it is walked by objects using it as path, see this page.
Camera
Obviously only available when the selected object is a camera, this Ipo type controls some of its specific properties available in the Camera panel of the Editing context-
| Lens | control the camera’s focal (always in length unit, even when the D button is set and the Lens field shows this value in degrees) – or its Scale when in Orthographic mode. |
| ClSta, ClEnd | control the clipping start/end |
| Apert | seems to control nothing (I guess it’s for “aperture”) |
| FDist | controls Dof Dist setting, i.e. the distance of “perfect focus” |
| ShiftX, ShiftY | control the X and Y shifting of the render plane |
For more details and examples, see this page – and of course, the camera part of the render chapter!
Lamp
This Ipo type is only available for lamps, and controls some of their specific settings found in the Lamp sub-context, Shading context of the Buttons window.
This type Ipo datablock is a “textured” one (it has the texture channel selector, for mapping settings).
For more details and examples, see this page – and of course, the lighting chapter!
| Energ | controls the energy | all |
| R, G, B | control the color | |
| Dist | controls the half-intensity distance | |
| SpotSi | control the angle | spot |
| SpotBl | control the softness | |
| HaInt | controls the halo intensity (HaloInt slider) | |
| Quad1 | control the linear attenuation factor | Lin/Quad Weighted falloff spots or lamps |
| Quad2 | control the quadratic attenuation factor | |
| The other curves are texture channel-specific, and are a sub-set of the same ones for material Ipo datablocks, described above. | ||
Pose
This type of Ipo datablock controls the pose of an armature.
There is one Ipo datablock per animated posed bone.
For more details and examples, see this page – and of course, the rigging chapter!
| LocX | Control the location of the bone (has no effect on connected bones) | NOTE: All these curves represent the local coordinates of the bone. |
| LocY | ||
| LocZ | ||
| QuatW | Control the rotation of the bone (using four-dimensional quaternions rotation) | |
| QuatX | ||
| QuatY | ||
| QuatZ | ||
| ScaleX | Control the scale of the bone | |
| ScaleY | ||
| ScaleZ |
