brand-loop

Brand loop (seamless liquid background)

scripts/scene.py builds the whole studio in Blender and renders it:

• Blobs: metaballs in two families that merge only with themselves. They're glossy and liquid-like, with a two-tone colour that follows each blob's squash.
• Backdrop: a warm off-white wall with ripple rings expanding from the centre, two per loop.
• Lighting: an elliptical key light with soft shadows, plus reflection-only softboxes for the liquid sheen.
• Camera: a 50 mm lens at f/2, giving shallow depth of field.

Every motion is a sine of whole cycles per loop, so frame N equals frame 0 exactly. The centre of the frame stays open for a logo or title on top. The video has no text and no sound.

Requirements: Blender 4.2+ with EEVEE (tested on 5.2, Apple Silicon GPU), and ffmpeg with libx264 and libx265.

Workflow

1. Colours

The cool family uses 5 shades, dark to light, for the big blobs. The warm family uses 3 shades for the accent blobs. You can get them two ways:

• From a logo: python3 scripts/palette.py logo.png prints its main colours and a suggested --cool/--warm pair. You can also pass --logo logo.png to loop.sh directly.
• From brand hex values: fewer shades are fine, because they're interpolated.

Keep the two families clearly different, such as blue and orange or teal and coral. Mixed colours would turn grey where blobs merge, so they're kept apart. --paper "#fcfbf8,#f2eae0" sets the backdrop's centre and corner colours.

2. Preview (about 1 minute)

<skill>/scripts/loop.sh --name acme --cool "#0b3d91,#1565c0,#1e88e5,#42a5f5,#80d8ff" --warm "#ff6f00,#ffa000,#ffca28" --preview

Read <name>/<name>-preview.png, which shows six moments across the loop, and check:

• The colours read as the brand's.
• The backdrop isn't grey.
• The two families never cut into each other.

3. Render (long: run it in the background)

<skill>/scripts/loop.sh --name acme --cool ... --warm ...            # 4K 60 fps, 10 s
<skill>/scripts/loop.sh --name acme --res 1920x1080 ...              # 1080p, about 4x faster

On an M1 Pro, a 10 s 4K60 loop takes about 95 minutes (600 frames, about 9.5 s each with 2 Blender processes), and 1080p about 25 minutes. The render resumes where it stopped if it's interrupted. Frames are deleted after encoding unless you pass --keep-frames.

Output in <name>/:

• <name>-4k60-loop.mp4: H.264, plays everywhere.
• -loop-hevc10.mp4: 10-bit, smoothest gradients, for editors.
• -1080p60-loop.mp4: for the web.
• -still.png and -keyframes.png.

4. Check

• The script prints a seam check. The PSNR of the last-to-first step must be close to the PSNR of a normal step; if it's much lower, something isn't periodic.
• Read -keyframes.png.
• Tell the user it loops with no visible seam, and remind them to turn on looping in their player or editor.

Knobs

Pass any of these straight through to scene.py, either by editing loop.sh's LOOK array or by running Blender yourself:

• --key, --fill and --wash: light levels.
• --emit and --world: backdrop brightness.
• --ringamt and --ringbump: how strong the ripples are.
• --fstop: blur (lower is blurrier).
• --glow: blob vividness.
• --dur: loop length; motion stays periodic at any length.

Layout, sizes and paths of the blobs are the BLOBS list in scene.py. Positions are in metres, and the frame at the focus plane is 0.864 × 0.486 m. After moving blobs, check that the two families never come closer than the sum of their sizes.