Blink…

he Bone character rig is coming along nicely. I have added a bone that drives two shape keys for the eyes to blink.

Blender Blink Bone from Tim Brown on Vimeo.

I used Video Sequence Editor (VSE) in Blender to add the captions to the video. This is not as easy as adding them in CamStudio while making the screen capture, however it allows much more flexibility. For instance, notice how they fade in and out? Notice also how they have transparent backgrounds? I thought you would. The captions are .png images, made in Gimp, of the text with a transparent background. All that was needed to add them to the video was to add both the video (1) and the image (2) to the VSE and create an “Alpha Over” effect in the correct order (2->1). I also wanted them to fade in and out rather than having them instantly pop onto the video. To do this I added a curved IPO curve to the Alpha Over effect.

This was more a learning exercise than anything else, so it’s not perfect. I had some trouble matching the frame rates also, so it’s a bit jerky, but it does show to blink bone!

The next “step” (pun intended) is to create a walk cycle for this little guy.