Blender Tutorial: Hoverboard [VFX]

 

In this video, we will be taking a video of a skateboarder and adding a little "Back to the Future" in this Hoverboard VFX Tutorial. 

If you guys want to follow along and download the video I used, you can find it here. 

This effect is really simple and quite effective, just by removing the Wheels and replacing them with a nice clean section of our video we can get this awesome Hoverboard effect.

To pull this off we only need a couple of Tracks, Masks and a little Compositing. If you have the VFX Nodes Add-on, we can use the Clone Node to do the compositing work for us.

You can check out the VFX Nodes here.

If you are recording this footage yourself, I would suggest adding a couple of Markers on the skateboard. They will certainly help you with the Masking step. 

If you are not able to add Markers, not to worry!. We will be using the Wheels for our Tracking (though we will need to offset the Tracks when the wheels go out of frame).

The more time you spend in the Masking step will greatly effect the final result. If you rush through, it will be noticeable when you have rendered it out. If you are working on an important project you are going to want to make sure the masking is on point. 

As I mentioned, it would be much easier to do this whole effect using the VFX Nodes Add-on. That being said, in the video we look at both ways should you choose not to download it.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful and as always thanks for reading!.

Blender Python Tutorial: How to Display Info/ Error Messages to the User [learn python for beginners]

 

 

In this video, we will be looking at how we can display messages to the user. This can be simple info messages to error messages and more. 

You can also use it to debug your scripts and print messages and/or numbers to let you know what is happening.

As always you can follow along and download the template script here. 

Alternatively, you can download the finished script here.

To do this is pretty simple and only requires one line of code:

This is placed in the Execute of the Operator. 

 

When the button is pressed, the string we entered "This is a Custom Message" along with an Info Icon will be displayed at the bottom right of Blender:

 

 

It will also be displayed in the Info Window.

We can change the type of message that is displayed. For example, should we want to display a caution or warning to the user we simply need to remove 'INFO' and replace it with 'WARNING' like so:

This will change how it is displayed:

Notice how the Color and Icon has changed. This will immediately let the user know that something may be wrong and needs attention. 

 

If you want to display an error message:

If you change it to 'ERROR' it will still change the color and icon like so:

But it will also add a pop up message:

We also use 'PROPERTY' and 'OPERATOR' which again will give us more options to display messages to the user.

If you want to display a property you can do so: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which would be displayed as:

 

I hope you find this tutorial helpful and as always thanks for reading!.