Flip-Book

I’ve been focused on learning more about Blender and progressing slowly, it’s a lot more complicated.

The guide work but you really have to know what you’re doing, the Rigify add-on is a must have and it needs 3 bones connected for the spine, the problem is that removing/dissolving bones messes with this.

I asked an LLM how to do the flip-book [from Friction Graphics] in Blender (1 object at a time) and it suggested Collections:

**Flipbook (one object from a group at a time) in Blender**

1. **Create the group (collection)**
   - In the **Outliner**, select the objects you want to animate.
   - Press **M** → **New Collection** and give it a name (e.g., *Flipbook*).

2. **Add a *Visibility* driver**
   - Select the first object in the collection.
   - In the **Object Properties** panel, find **Visibility → Show in Viewport/Render**.
   - Right‑click the *eye* icon → **Add Driver** → **Manually Create Later**.
   - Repeat for each object in the collection.

3. **Set up the driver expression**
   - Open a **Drivers** editor (e.g., the **Graph Editor** → mode *Drivers*).
   - For each object’s driver, set:
     - **Variable**:  
       - Type: **Single Property**  
       - ID: **Scene** (or an empty object you’ll use as a controller)  
       - Path: `frame_current` (or a custom property if you prefer)
     - **Expression**:  

       ```python
       int(frame_current == N)
       ```

       Replace **N** with the frame number on which you want that specific object to appear (e.g., `1` for the first object, `2` for the second, etc.). The expression evaluates to `1` (visible) only on its assigned frame and `0` (hidden) otherwise.

4. **Optional: Use a single controller object**
   - Add an **Empty** (Shift +A → Empty → Plain Axes) and give it a custom integer property called **step**.
   - Drive all objects from that property instead of `frame_current`:
     - Variable → **Single Property**, ID → the Empty, Path → `["step"]`.
     - Expression → `int(step == N)`.
   - Animate the **step** property with keyframes (1, 2, 3 …) to switch the visible object.

5. **Turn on *Playback* settings**
   - In the **Timeline**, set the **End** frame to the number of objects (or a bit higher).
   - Press **Space** to play; each frame will show exactly one object, creating a flip‑book effect.

6. **Render as an image sequence (optional)**
   - In **Output Properties**, choose a folder and format (PNG, JPEG, etc.).
   - Make sure **File Extensions** is checked.
   - Click **Render → Render Animation**; Blender will output one frame per object.

**Quick summary**

- Put objects in a **Collection**.  
- Add **Visibility drivers** to each object.  
- Drive visibility with an expression that checks the current frame (or a controller’s custom property).  
- Animate the controlling value so that only one object is visible per frame, producing a flip‑book animation.

(you don’t need such a complicated setup to animate visibility)

In the video he’s using Bones as drivers for the current image, it’s another way to do it.

By the way this video is helpful if Rigify gives errors and in conjunction with this one you’ll understand the guide better, do note that the bone moves vertically in it though (in the guide it is horizontal).