Folding Paper Exploration

I’ve always loved the look and feel of stop motion paper animation, especially in motion graphics. My goal was to build a system that can create realistic-looking stop motion videos as automatically as possible. The whole pipeline is automated, pulling images from a folder. The animation is done in Vellum, automated using TOPs, and rendered in Karma. Several FFmpeg scripts are used to create different formats and add a procedural wiggle animation.

The textures themselves are generated using Processing.js. I used Processing for quick iterration and automation capabilities. Different HLSL Shaders simulate paper qualities like ink bleeding or CMYK Dots This was before the update to Houdini Copernicus; I might revisit the process in the future purely in Houdini.

Custom python scripts allowed me to cut out the characters regardless of orientation.

ffmpeg scripts allowed me to automate the export process, turning the rendered images into transparent videos using the ProRes 4444 codec, making them easy to integrate into any project.

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