Invisible Cannon Balls

Whilst doing the camera orientation I came across a different problem. The cannon balls were, as I mentioned before, present throughout the animation, hovering in mid-air. This became a problem because the camera would see them before the tank arrived to cover them up. This meant that I had two options. I could either make the cannon balls move with the tank from the start of the animation or make the cannon balls invisible until they were needed. I decided to do the latter and edit the animation so that the cannon balls could not be seen until they were fired from the cannons.

To achieve this, I employed the wonders of the Auto Key tool. From the start of the animation I created a key frame and edited the cannon ball Object Properties to make them invisible. I then added another Key Frame just before the cannon balls were about to fire to make them  visible again.

This meant that the camera would not see the cannon balls until they were fired from the cannons and hit the targets.

As a side note, I had tried to modify their visibility using the Set Key tool however editing the visibility through this method did not change the animation. They were either visible of not throughout the whole animation regardless of me putting in key frames to change this.

I’m glad to say, problem solved!