TIMELINE

There are many features in the timeline in Maxon's Cinema 4D, that's why it can be confusing at first.

The easiest way to create a timeline in C4D is to click the record button in the time manager.

This will make keyframes for the selected object and create a timeline for that object if there isn't one already.

You can control which specific timelines are created for your object by checking the "Position", "Size", or "Direction" check boxes. For example if your object only moves up and down just use the position checkbox, this keeps the timeline from getting cluttered.

The checkbox called sub-objects creates a keyframe for all the children of your selected object.

Those are the easy keyframes, to make a keyframe for something else there are a few more steps.

We'll blow up a ball for this example. Start by creating a new project and adding a Sphere from the menu:

Objects > 3d-Objects > Surface Sphere (don't select Perfect Sphere)

Now open the "Time Line" window which can be found, oddly enough, under the windows menu.

Command click on the word "Sphere" (right click in windows) in the Timeline and a menu will pop up.

Select New Track > Special Effects > Explosion.

You'll see the word explosion (or part of it) to the right of the word "Sphere". This is your track, almost ready for keyframes but not yet.

Command click on the word "Explosion" (right click in windows) and this time choose "New Sequence". A dialog box comes up where you can set the starting and end points of your sequence. This can be the length of your entire animation or just a few frames long for something like an eye blink which can then be copied and pasted all through your animation. You can scale the width of the whole timeline window to fit your monitor using the + and - keys on the 10 key pad (the part of your keyboard that looks like a calculator).

Now for the keyframes, Command click on the bar (right click in windows) that appeared when you made a sequence. Select "New Key". Another dialog box pops up where you enter the point you want this key to be at. 0 works fine here.

You can also just control click the timeline to add a keyframe which will be placed at the point in the sequence where you've clicked.

There is now a complete animation, to see it click the play button in the time manager.

You should now see the sphere exploding, if you don't make sure you have the camera icon selected in your toolbar.

Or from the menu choose Tools > Options > Camera

If you double click the keyframes you get a dialog box with controls relevant to that sequence, you can also drag keyframes to the left and right after they're placed. Try this by dragging the explosion keyframe to the right and notice that the explosion now starts at the new location.