How to design a layout for SynthEdit with Blender

Step 1: make a simpel knob to start with (to learn make a basic form , check the Blender wiki) .

Step 2: choose the number of steps, press 'F10' in the buttons window and set "sta" to 1 and "end" to the number of steps you want .

Step 3: go to frame 1 and position rotate the knob to it's start position, hit 'i-key' and choose "rot" .

Step 4: go to the last frame you want and set the knob to it's last position, hit the 'i-key' and choose "rot" again . Now the knob will rotate when you go to the previous frames .

Step 5: view the IPO editor window and make the Z rot line straight. To do this select the line, hit 'tab', select the vertex, hit 'shift+s' to snap them horizontal.

Step 6: select another knob and view the IPO editor window .
choose the same IP as the one you already rotated .

If you want lights, make them double so you can switch positions of one light(not lit) and another(lit). It's a good idea to add a text with the number of the light and make it parent of the light . When the synth has more lights or on of buttons, they can also made child of the text by selecting the child first and the parent (text) last and pressing 'ctrl+p' . Every frame where the lights should be lit , they can be moved all together. press 'alt+p' to unchild the mistakes you made.

Now go to the scene view, make sure output is set to .bmp or .png and hit the "animation" button. Blender will now render all frames from the start untill the end frame. The DOS looking window tells you where the images are saved and how much time blender needed to render each one. So you can calculate how much time you'll have for A BREAK !!

**shortcuts**
i : insert action into frame
ctrl+p : make last selected parent of other selected objects
alt+p : clear last selected parent relationship to other selected objects
F10 : in button window go to 'scene' buttons
shift+s : snap
e : extrude selected
ctrl+r in editor window : slice in X or Y direction
r : rotate (use the mouse and left-click to release or type the degrees on the numpad and hit enter)

To finish the rendered pictures, I've written another tutorial named
"How to turn Blender-rendered images into working SynthEdit knobs".