Using Reference Footage in Blender

After much excitement and thought, I decided to just go ahead and try using reference footage in Blender, even though I didn’t really know how it would all work. I started by setting up two cameras: one camera from the front with the other at a 90 degree angle (side). I was looking for a few things while setting up the shot. 1. I wanted my subject to be distinguishable from the background. Ideally I would have set up white sheets behind my little brother (my subject), but what we had worked fine. Another aspect to this was lighting, which compensated for my lack of a solid background. 2. I was looking for enough space. I needed room above my subjects head and below his feet – enough for him to move around and jump without going off screen. 3. I tried to think of myself working in blender and what things I could do to make the process easier. I figured out that I should put the camera at about his chest area because that’s usually how I have my view in blender set up (ortho). (Also, I made sure that when my subject was in the middle of one camera, he was also in the middle of the other camera horizontally and then marked that spot for a reference.)

After getting the shots my next decision came: do I try to use both videos separately? Or should I edit them together and cut off some of the screen space to make it easier. I didn’t know how this whole thing would work in Blender, but it was all a learning experience to just get me to try this process out. So, for simplicity in Blender, I imported the video files into Adobe Premiere and started editing. During the shoot, I made sure to clap my hands on screen to have an easy way to time both shots. After getting them timed, I brought both of them to about 75% size and placed them next to each other. The front angle to the left and the side angle to the right (overlapping the front). Then, I took the overlapping video and added a 4 point garbage matte effect to it and made the overlapping video cut off in the middle so that both videos were cut equally. I exported as a .mpeg.

I looked up a tutorial that I previously posted on here, the Blender and Voodoo tutorial. I remembered that tutorial covering how to import a video and play it during an animation. What I had to do is add a background image and choose movie. Also, I made sure to click auto refresh or something like that to make sure that the video frame changed when the frame of my animation changed. It didn’t work. After restarting and going through the tutorial 5 more times, I tried something that I noticed was different from my screen and the screen of the tutorial. It worked! In blender, your video doesn’t show up unless you are viewing an Orthographic Perspective. Mine was set to User Perspective. Another thing to mention, is the video didn’t show up in any other windows. I was thinking that I could have done what I had planned on doing from the beginning: take two separate reference video files and have them in different angled windows. So, I would guess that if you open two separate background images in different windows, the process would be the same.

Next, I changed the size of the videos. In the Background Image Properties window, I changed the percentage of the size down to fit the size of my character. Then, when I zoomed in, the quality of my video was not compromised at all! So, I had my front angle to the left, my side angle to the right, and I put my character right in the middle of them where the video split. It was difficult to see the rig controls with all of the distracting colors from the video in the background, but I got over it. Now, every time I turned the camera in that window, the reference footage would disappear, but I would then just change back to a front (ortho) perspective to get it back. My last test before I started animating was to see if I could cover the other angle; it wasn’t looking too bright, because when I rotated my view the reference footage disappeared. I tried switching to a side angle (ortho) and it worked!! I was so proud of how easy everything was in Blender. Now, I could simply change angles and my character, in between both reference subjects would just turn to the side. It was perfect.

A few notes that I had from my first experience with reference footage..
I set up my cameras looking the wrong way. I had a camera from the front and to the left of my brother. I should have had a camera to the right of him so that when I changed angles in blender, I wouldn’t have to hold ctrl to get the other side, but it wasn’t that much of an extra burden. Another thing that I did incorrectly at first was set my brothers feet facing down. Like in a cartoon, if a foot is facing you, it points down a little and is lower than a foot behind it. I knew this wasn’t right, but I did it anyway. When I thought about it, my real camera was NOT an orthographic perspective, but a user perspective. When I changed my 3d view to User, the feet could be flat on the surface in Ortho and look like they were facing down and one higher than the other in User, like my reference footage. So, bear in mind that you won’t be working with orthographic footage if you use any normal camera. My last note is on keyframing. I decided to treat the animation like pose-to-pose rather than straight ahead. I started with straight ahead and it was taking forever. What I looked for in pose-to-pose was any change in movement or direction with different parts of the body. When I found a shift, I would set a keyframe. For instance, when my brother jumped, I chose the highest point in the air for a keyframe, but in mid air, his arms came up with his body and halfway through the jump stopped while his body kept moving higher. Because his arms significantly changed in movement, I set a keyframe there as well. After the main movements were keyframed, I could go back and work on more subtle things like some facial animation and other movements. (I didn’t do much with that yet because this was just a test, but it seems to be the best workflow for this type of thing.)