Happy to share with you this experiment I worked on during Christmas Holiday.

Nutcracker 3d Model :
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character/fantasy-character/nutcracker-toy-rigged

This project was donein Blender, and rendered in Cycles render.
Software : Blender, Substance Painter, After Effects.

Some technical details :
– first, i modeled the Nutcracker in blender, this kind of toy is really quick and nice to work on since it is made out of more or less only primitive objects.
Like sphere and cylinder put together.
– The model was then Unwrapped using the UDIM workflow and textured in Subtance Painter. All textures are exported a single PBR shader that is pretty easy to connect in blender, it uses only one shader to texture the entire object.
– I am using a Mixamo Motion capture file to animate the Nutcracker, and for this you can simply downlaod the default rig from Mixamo.
Import it into Blender, Rig and Skin your model ( to achieve a production quality you will always need to refine manually some parts, even with automated tools )
Then upload the model on Mixamo, or the new Rig only as FBX ( Mixamo has Known polygon budget issues ) apply your animation and download the animation from Mixamo as FBX “with skin” enabled to fix bas rotation issues.
Apply the animation to your Blender Rig using the NLA modifier and add a ” stepped interpolation modifier to the Animation action.
– The Human is a 3d scan i rigged with Rigify, both hand are targeting random points procedurally on the nutcracker to create the illusion of a animator doing its job on the muppet.
i wanted an animation that moves very fast to have more of a ghost of an animator than a realistic human.
– Rendering was done in cycles, it was about a minute per frame on a single RTX 4090, with 512 samples. i rather render a larger image with a decent amount of sample than render the correct resolution with Higher sample.
Downscaling the render will help reducing noise and sharpening the image in compositing.

This project was done in about 7-8 hours on my personnal computer.

If you have any question, please feel free to ask in a comment.
feel free to share this video using appropriate credit.

Music : smooth jazz all star, Single Ladies

Feel free to support me by getting one of my 3d model for a fair price or to share my Cgtrader store :
https://www.cgtrader.com/albin
https://www.blendermarket.com/creators/albinbkb
https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/AlbinMERLE
https://www.artstation.com/albinmerle/store