Hi

if I understand correctly, you would like to use GIMP to draw an animation on top of recorded video frames?

How I would do it is:

1) split the video into individual frames (using ffmpeg for example)

2) load frames as layers into GIMP

3) for each frame, create a layer group with two layers: your animation layer on top and original video frame on bottom. i.e. the layout suggested for the onion layers plug-in. [1]

4) draw your animation on the animation layers.

5) export frames using export layers plug-in. [2]

6) encode exported frames back into a video file (again using ffmpeg for example)

This will only work for (very) short videos though. Loading up hundreds of frames into GIMP will very likely exhaust the memory on your system. Not to mention of course that drawing hundreds of frames of animation will be a lot of work.

[1] https://github.com/avian2/gimp-plugin-onion-layers

[2] https://github.com/khalim19/gimp-plugin-export-layers

Best regards Tomaž

On 30. 04. 2018 07:51, drakeraider wrote:

I don't know if this makes sense, but I created this account just to ask.

I want to take a video and an effect layer, for instance dust or something, perhaps a short animation or something, and place it over the video.

That part's easy.

The question is, is there a way in gimp, (or some other free software if someone has a better idea,) to make that layer conform to the animation of the video? For instance...

A video of someone walking down the hallway, using GIMP or something to animate dust swirling around them as they walk.

I have access to BIMP and GAP if that helps, I don't know what my limitations are. Figured I'd ask.