Creating A Turntable Animation By Neil Blevins Created On: Aug 18th 2025
Software: Blender or 3dsmax
After modeling or texturing a 3d asset, you'll want to show it off
from multiple angles, and the best way to do this is to create a
turntable. Also turntables are a very common method for showing off
your work at
any games or film studio, so it's important to be familiar with the
process.
For example, here's a modeling and texturing
turntable for Inc the robot from my book project "The Story Of Inc":
Blender Example
Here's instructions on how to setup a turntable in Blender.
Create an Axis by going to Add - Empty - Plain Axis
Select all objects you want to add to your turntable, select your
Empty (make sure it's the last thing selected), ctrl P for parent, set
parent to "Object"
Select the Empty in the outliner
Go to "Object Properties" panel, go to the rotation section. At
frame 1, Type 0 in Z followed by enter. While cursor floats above the
0, hit i to insert a
keyframe
Move to final frame plus 1
Go to "Object Properties" panel, go to the rotation section. Type
360 in Z followed by enter. While cursort floats above the 360, hit i
to insert a keyframe
Go to the timeline at the bottom of the screen, select both
keyframes (using Shift)
place cursor over timeline, hit t,
choose "Interpolation: Linear", now it's a
linear rotation
Go to "Output Properties" panel
In the Output section, choose a folder to place the final
animation, and choose under file format either a set of files or an mp4
to compress the whole animation into a single file
render menu, render animation
3dsmax Example
Here's instructions on how to setup a turntable in 3dsmax.
Create an Axis by going to Create Panel, Helpers, Point. Place
the Point at 0,0,0.
Select
all objects you want to add to your turntable, use the select and link
button and drag to your point. Now all of the objects are parented to
the point object.
Select the point
At frame 0, right click the frame bar slider bar, this Creates a
Key, set the Rotation checkbox only. Click Ok.
move to final frame plus 1
At this frame, right click the frame bar slider bar, this Creates
a Key, set the Rotation checkbox only. Click Ok. Click the rotation
button, click the "Auto Key" button. In the viewport, rotate the point
360 degrees in the Z axis.
Go into the curve editor, select the point's Z rotation channel,
select both keyframes
press the "Set Tangent Types To Linear"
Button, now it's a
linear rotation
Press The "Render Setup" Button
In the Render Output section, click "Files", choose a folder to
place the final
animation, and choose under file format either a set of files or an mp4
to compress the whole animation into a single file
Under time output change from "Single" to "Active Time Segment",
hit render. Now it will render the whole animation.
Rotate the model, not the camera
/ lights
You may notice this technique rotates the model, not the
lights or camera. This is because if you rotate the camera, and the
lights remain static in the scene, when you go behind your model all
you'll see is darkness. While you could light your model to look good
from all angles, doing so usually puts too much lighting in your scene,
and you won't get nice shadows that help you evaluate the surfaces of
your model. You could also look into rotating the camera and lights
while leaving the model in place, but doing so can sometimes create
artifacts if your camera or lights get into gimbal lock. So I recommend
leaving the lights and camera in place and rotate the model only, that
way the lighting will pass over the rotating model, which I feel
creates a better visual.
