I am a Blender newbie and I am trying to figure out how I can make this animation using Blender.
I have sequence of surfaces that correspond to an animation. I would like to read in each surface, apply some properties to the surface, and then create a rendered animation of the sequence of surfaces - all in Blender.
When this is done, I would also like to move the camera around the surface as the animation is in progress. The animation of the surface may repeat itself several times as the camera is moving around.
Could I do this in Blender? I’d really appreciate any help…
Welcome to the Blenderartist Forums! Though I am not familiar with STL files, blender is able to read STL files (go to file> import) and all the other things you want are definately possible in Blender! Blender has a quite steep learning curve though, so you will need to invest some time in learning blender. There are many nice tutorials available! Happy Blending
How many surfaces / .stl files do you have? If it’s just a few dozen, you may be able to do this by importing them all to the same 3d location in a Blender scene. Then animate their layer visibility. This technique gives you flexibility with aspects of the scene like camera position, lighting etc. The camera can be moving around while the different surfaces are popping into view in sequence.
You could also render each object separately and string the images together in the compositor or sequence editor, but then you couldn’t make or change camera moves as easily.