Hello. Can Blender make motion loops/backgrounds, like the type that are used in churches? I know Blender is designed for 3D images and animations, but people on the boards have said it is possible to do 2D motions with Blender–albeit it being a tedious process.
I’m looking to do something like have animated text with 3D effects (zoom in, angled, extruded, etc) on a motion background.
Presentation software doesn’t give me the text animation that I desire, although I can get the motion background. So I’m wondering if Blender can pull it all off.
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It all depends on how you set things up. You can use Blender to create a video that you can playback on loop on your own. But if you need that loop to happen and then have text come in as an overlay, that’s a bit more complex. All of those assets can be created in Blender, but you’d use something else (like presentation software) to play the requisite animations with user control.
Thank you for the information. Are there any tutorials that can show an example of this?
You are using some Blender vernacular that I am not yet knowledgeable of. I don’t know what an overlay is, and while I have heard the term “assets”, I don’t really know what that means in Blender. I’ll have to learn more about Blender to gain an understanding of all these things.
Overlay isn’t Blender specific, it refers to overlaying video. Assets again is a generic term, not specific to Blender.
Sounds like you’re trying to dive in at the deep end with little knowledge of video overlays or how to create them. May be worth just looking on youtube for “how to” videos on such things so you will have both an understanding of the concepts and terms, plus an insight on what sort of techniques are required. Blender does do motion graphics, here are some links which may assist.
So let’s assume that you’re plan is to have a looping video background for a presentation and then you want to have text fly in on a user command. The quick-and-dirty approach to this would be to use something like PowerPoint:
Create your looping animation in Blender
Render your animation to an h.264-encoded video in an MP4 container
In PowerPoint, insert your video. Adjust it to fill the full screen. You can also set it up so it auto-plays and loops immediately when you get to that slide.
Still in PowerPoint, set up your text for your presentation (along with any animated moves to get it on screen)
Now you have a Blender-animated loop that plays forever and moving text that appears when the user advances the slide.
Thanks everyone. I’m looking into all of those things you all have mentioned. Those videos colkai mentioned are really good. I’m looking at them to get some understanding.
Fweeb: I followed you right up to where you said an “MP4 container.” Once I do the render to .h264, how do I make the container? Is that also in Blender, or do I need go elsewhere.
Mike, I’m not getting what you mean in saying Blender is not needed here. You say to take an MP4 video and follow Fweeb’s instructions. In order to get the MP4, I need Blender to make the looping video. What am I misunderstanding about what you are saying?
Sorry… little idiosyncratic thing about video encoding. In digital video, you have encoding methods (h.264, Quicktime Animation, MPEG-2…) and you have containers, the files that hold the encoded data (MP4, MKV, WMV…)
All tools (as far as I know) that encode video, also put that data in a container. This includes Blender. So when you’re encoding from Blender, use the following steps:
In Render Properties, go to the Output panel and set your file format to be FFMPEG video. An Encoding panel should appear below the Output panel after you do this.
In the Encoding panel, chose the h.264 in MP4 preset. For now, leave the rest of the encoding settings at their default values after you load that preset.
That should be enough to get you started at least.
My apologies. I tend to work with a daily build that I compile from source each day. In your case, you’ll choose the H.264 output type. Then you can make adjustments in the Encoding panel as I’d mentioned.
