ART 3791

Compositing in Blender

 

Blender contains a composite tool for layering images and animations. The following is a brief tutorial to use the composite tool. Well actually, most of this page is how to set up an image with an alpha shadow and create a simple animation.

 

Create an image with alpha shadow.

Create a scene with a sphere, plane and a lamp
Create a new material for the ground plane (leave it at the default settings)
Create a light that casts a shadow onto the ground plane (lamp / ray shadows)

Render image
(Render Settings window) / Render Panel / Shadow on / Ray on / premult on
/ Format Panel / PNG on/ RGBA on

When the shadow is to your liking, go to the ground plane material and in the "shaders" panel turn on "only shadows"

in the image buffer hit the A KEY to view the alpha portion of the image.

 

 

 

Set up animation parameters
set duration to 30fr - (top file menu) Render / Render settings (F10)
set format to preview - (Render Settings window) Format / Preview / set type to PNG
set Output directory - (Render Settings window) Output / first panel at top /name.
select Render settings / ANIM to render movie

Actually using the Sequence Editor

To find the sequence page CTRL left arrow

In the Sequence window use the SPACE BAR Add Movie or Images

To dissolve, cross fade, key, etc. select two layers then SPACE BAR to add the desired effect.

 

 

In the seq page, adding and moving images uses the same keys as expected.
LMB - to pick image sequence
G KEY - to move image sequence
SHIFT MMB - to move entire field

To Render Composite:

go to the Scene Panel (F10)
In the Anim panel / Do Sequence (under the big Anim button)/ Either Render or Anim

 

 

Two slightly more in depth tutorials

http://www.blendernation.com/tutorials/blender-3d-beginner-tutorial-the-blender-sequence-editor/

http://zachgmedia.com/sequence/Sequence.htm