Blending Animated Computer Graphics with a Movie

Blending Animated Computer Graphics with a Movie
Using Blender

Objective is to take a movie such as an avi or MOV, and add animated computer graphics to it. For example you could take a movie, with your digital camera, of someone sitting at a table. Next you put it into Blender and add your animated character into the scene.

Here is how:
1) Start out fresh:
Open a new session of blender. If desired you can delete the default cube and insert your character rig or other object. Alternatively, you can open an animated blend file, or another good blend file with a rigged character in it.

2) To load a movie as a world texture:
On the header of the 3D viewport click shading > texture > world
Click the texture button or hit f6 on your keyboard.
Click on 'Add New': There is a button with two small triangles in it (on the right side of the text box that contains the word 'none'). Click on that.
On the pop-up menu choose 'image' .
On the Image panel, click 'Load' and find the movie file that you want to use, click on it, hit enter and click 'load'.

3) To set up parameters:
Click on 'auto refresh', on the image tab. Press the button to the right of the box that says '(x) Frames'. It looks like a '<' symbol in a little box. This loads the number of frames in the video into the variable, so that you don't have to figure it out and enter it manually.
On the viewport header, click on the world button.
On the 'map to' tab, click on the 'Hori'(horizon) button.
On the 'preview' panel, click on the 'paper' button.

4) Check it out:
To check to make sure that everything is in the right place, press the 'f12' button on the keyboard. You should see the first frame of the video in the background and the rig or object in the foreground. If you don't, then check to see if the steps were done properly.

5) Load the movie into the viewport background:
On the 3D viewport header, click 'view' and select 'Background Image' from the pop up menu. Click 'Use Background Imag' on the pop up property sheet. Click 'Load', on the new property sheet that pops up. Select the same movie as in step 2 above.
For a clear picture, slide the Blender tab to 0.
For the frames of the video to be automatically updated, click on the 'auto refresh' button (important).

6) Adjust the start ('sta') and end frame numbers of the video, if desired. Switch to camera view (number pad '0') to see the background.
Bobbertt

Free Characters for Blender

There are several free characters for blender available for download. Most are published under the creative commans licensing agreement . Which means that anybody can use them for just about anything as long as you give credit where credit is due, but not for commercial purposes. Here is a snapshot af a character that I created from scratch.

Free Characters for Blender

When I first started learning Blender, It took me a long time to make my first humanoid character. I started with a single plane and extruded it over and over again to build what I wanted. Grabing and pulling vertices to make things look okay. Then there was colors and textures to apply to the mesh. After everything looks good it is time to start rigging the character with virtual bones called armatures. After weight painting and testing it was finally time to make the character move and bring it to life.
There were no available models already made, that you could download. But now there are. E2 Productions lists quite a few on their web site. They are free to download and many are already rigged for movement. Kator Legaz has some too. There are other ones too, if you can find them.

Also I have a few characters that I have created. If you want to, I will send the blend files to you so that you can have them for your collection. Just email me at bobbertt@cheerful.com. and tell me what you want.