The open-source software Blender continues to expand access to 3D modelling and animation. OK Go's new music video was made entirely in the free program, and the Grammy Award-winning rock band is encouraging fans and aspiring animators to tinker with it all they like.
As a Blender Studio project, the files and documentation are freely available to download, providing inspiration to get started with a program that we rate highly in our comparison of the best 3D modelling software programs. You can remix the open movie or even learn how to make 3D animations (also see our our Blender tutorials).
The video for Impulse Purchase mixes Will Anderson’s quirky animation style with Lucas Zanotto’s playful design language. OK Go frontman Damian Kulash controlled the main 3D character model in real time using face-capture during his live performance.
He said he had reached out to Lucas after seeing the artist's short animated loops. "They’re so inventive, so full of joy, always delivering little doses of the kind of wonder we’re always searching for in our own videos," he says. "So I thought the universe flowing from his brain might be the perfect setting for a lyric video, but when I reached out to him, he had a more ambitious project to propose: a ‘live performance’ with me as one of his characters.
"Suddenly it was a much weirder, more wonderful project than what I’d envisioned."
The pair teamed up with Will Anderson to design a dynamic procedural system in Blender for puppeting a digital character via face-capture software with support from Blender Studio. While the video above features a performance tracking Damian’s face, anyone can make an adaptation capturing their own performance of the song or otherwise remixing the animation.
All of the necessary files, tools, and documentation are available for download from the Blender website. Users can use them to interact with the main character from the video, and also learn how to create their own interactive animations.
Impulse Purchase appears on OK Go’s latest studio album And the Adjacent Possible, which was released earlier this year. For more of the week's 3D modelling news, see the new Nvidia AI Blueprint for 3D Object Generation.
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