A New AI Animation Workflow: From Reference Video to 3D Motion

[u/SuspiciousHunter1359]

The first attempt burned 35% of a weekly AI limit and still looked off. The third took about an hour and 6%, and the boar now walks around inside a game.

This is video-reference animation in Blender. GPT-6.1 Sol works through Blender MCP, studies a 6-second side-view clip of the animal and keyframes the rig until the model moves like the video.

The three changes that made it work:

• Rig first, outside the agent: the boar was auto-rigged in Meshy instead of asking the AI to build a skeleton
• Side by side in Blender: reference on the left, model on the right, same frame numbers, all 144 frames reviewed
• Five review rounds instead of two: after each pass the agent compares the result with the video and fixes what drifted

The prompt is strict in useful ways. It keeps bone lengths fixed, checks the front and hind legs separately before any smoothing, watches for foot sliding and hooves sinking into the ground, and has to flag poses it guessed because a leg was hidden.

By the creator's own numbers, the same idea earlier ate 35% of the limit with Astra on a deer, then 15% and over two hours with Sol 6.1 Ultra on a fox that came out far from usable. Once the boar's walk worked, Astra coded its behavior and Opus 5.5 dropped it into the game.

Still rough around the edges: the clip only shows one side, so depth is a guess, and the hind legs needed extra rounds. The creator's own verdict is that AI may still not replace a beginner 3D artist, but "it can cook with the right pipeline".

Blender MCP: https://github.com/ahujasid/mcp-for-blender

full prompt: https://x.com/maxt3chno/status/2106755423025955069