Blender Time-Lapse Tutorial

Updated September 2017 (screen shots are from Blender 2.78)

Blender - looks to be a pretty amazing 3D image and video rendering tool; open source, free, no watermarks! On the other hand with power comes complexity; its user interface is not intuitive for the newbie. At first glance it seems overpowered for time-lapses, a bit like walking into an auto mechanic's workshop when all you want is an adjustable wrench. But almost any new software takes a little bit of use to become familiar with it, even Windows Movie Maker. Still having trouble with the final quality on vimeo.

Here's one way to create a time-lapse from a series of stills (copied from YouTube user SuperPepperMint 1 minute speed demo):

BUT FIRST AN OVERVIEW emphasizing that Blender works in layers (strips) using a sequencer:

1. create the time-lapse separately (a simple clip without titles or sound); render
2. in a new project
   • load strip for the time-lapse just created
   • add strip for audio
   • add strip for title
   • add strip for copyright
3. render to final

DETAIL:

1. basic time-lapse only

• Launch Blender
• On the top toolbar, click on the drop-down button left of "default", choose "Video Editing"

• Not quite at the bottom, click on the sequencer menu "add" then select "Image":

• Single-click your way to your image folder (no double-clicking needed!)
• Click on the first image, scroll to the last image then Ctrl-Shift-click on it to select all, then at upper right click "Add image strip"
• When it returns to the video editor sequencer, you will see the strip, along with the number of images loaded (in my case 482):
• Jot down that number, you will need it elsewhere!

• Next go to the menu of the sequencer (roughly middle-left) and choose properties:

• The sequencer will be replaced by the strip properties; grab the vertical scrollbar at far right and, scroll down a bit to see:

• Still in the output section, check the box "File Extensions", then choose format. You might see something like PNG. Click the drop down to choose H.264:

• You can watch the progress at upper right, both by frame number as well as percentage:

• On my system it took about 2min for 486 frames.
• Playback: I had to use FLVplayer (or VLC Media Player) to read the AVI file because Windows Media would not play it. There are many other settings you can try here!
• FILE SAVE AS !!

2. Add audio and titles

I pulled the following from the tutorial by MickeyCal Myers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-qMPzhFNwg) 2:56 is where this comes in.

• File - New to give you a new interface. To the right of Help on the nemu bar, click the drop-down icon to choose "Video Editing":

• The video sequencer now takes up the bottom half of the window. Its menu is at the bottom of its section (a little counter-intuitive). Ignore the very bottom section which is a timeline strip. Click on "Add" and choose "Movie":

• Navigate to the time-lapse you just created, click it, and then push the button at right "Add Movie Strip"
• .
• You will now have the strip on the sequencer with its properties at right:

• Now load your title slide (perhaps a composite, perhaps the still image that is the first frame of the video): click again on add, but this time choose image, select the one you want, then press the button "Add Image Strip", resulting in this:

• At this point, the strips need to be moved to be put in the right timing. Right-click on the image strip and change the start frame to 1 in the properties window at right, and end frame at 3 seconds (my default) in this case frame 36 because we are running at 12 fps. Right-click on the movie strip, change the start frame to 36.
• Next add the text strips (do it twice to have a title and a copyright notice):

• If the text properties is not already present at far right, right-click on the text strip, then scroll down and modify the properties. Font size at 100 is a decent start, and Y position at 0.9 puts it at top:

• SAVE AS !!! (easy to forget)
• We are now ready for the final creation, but before, we have to set the properties of the scene. First, on the sequencer left-click the end of the scene, and at the very bottom where the timeline is, you will see "Start 1 End 250 and 136" (136 is where all my strips finish).

• Scroll through the properties and adjust the values (like in part 1 - note it looks like you can save "preset" to do this automatically next time), change the Output filename/location and the format (not PNG!) to H.264, codec to H.264, and checkbox for lossless. (format AVI? was default), audio codec try MP3 ("none" gives you no sound)
• Scroll back up to the top of the properties section and in the middle of the Render section, click "Animation":

• Oooof! The final time-lapse is here on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/233555414. I can see all sorts of banding, so the quality is low. Need to understand how to force it to high quality.

Additional thoughts:

• Only scratched the surface of what Blender can do. Undoubtedly there are ways of fading titles/sound and blending/crossfading image to video, but I simply have not had the time to figure it out.
• I can't get this to play in Windows 10 Media, but Applian FLV and VLC Media Player handle it fine. My inexperience with codecs and formats.
• Looking forward to trying out compositing a before or after image and using lighten