I want to make a storyboard/whiteboard type presentation video. My particular project in mind, instead of a whiteboard consists of a glassboard. I’d like to make an animation of a (hand) finger rubbing across a foggy glass wall, (like you were in the shower and writing on the glass walls). Then after some time elapses it slowly fades back to being foggy. On top of that central interface (essentially a glassboard), I’d like to add the rubbing sound and finally, an actual video in the background of something that would revealed only in portions where the fog is cleared. I’d like to type in text and let the tip of the finger follow the natural way the letters would be made on the wall. This could be interactive animation where a player does it himself anyway he wants, but for my purpose I don’t need the interactivity. It would be like one of those whiteboard promo videos essentially, but glass, fog, and finger. I searched them online and found some decent looking software to customize, but it’s not what I want for my needs.
I have years of experience in Blender modeling and 3D printing, but have not done any video/animation yet. This would involve python scripting of course. Do you think my best route to go is in Blender or some other video editing software out there or a combo? Thanks for any input, I really would appreciate it and come back with updates if I’m able to make this project.
You should be able to do that in blender without any scripting. I haven’t had too much experience with the blender video editor, but I think you should be able to do it all in Blender if you want.
You can use Dynamic paint to make a mask for the part where the finger touches. You render it out, and you have a frame sequence of the path of the finger. In your video editing program you have your main video on the bottom layer. Then you have a very blury version (or whatever you want the fog to look like) on a higher layer. You use your animated mask (which was created using dynamic paint) as a mask for the fog layer. Then over that, you have a 3rd layer which is the animation of your hand (rendered by itself so everything else is transparent)
3 layers.
Top: Finger animation
Middle: (Fog with animated mask)
bottom: your video
To make the fog fade back. I would have a fully black frame (or white depending on what your mask looks like) and I would put animate it fading in over your fingermask to make it fade out.
I haven’t used Dynamic paint, so I don’t know it too well, but maybe these links can help.
Thank you Scotchtapeworm for your advice. I played around with the concept but resorted to simple transitions instead. It works. Using Blender engine for a slideshow demo video wasn’t really a great idea for this project, if I had implemented this feature it would take too long anyway. It’s definitely a cool feature. Anyway, here’s the video I made if anyone is interested.