Does anyone remember this?

[Eren Ozkural]

Hey guys, all the noise/hubbub about creating a stereo image from a single sensor on THIS thread suddenly reminded me about a camera system I heard about as a kid.

I seem to remember reading about the Arnie film "End of Days" in Empire magazine back when I was a kid. I have vague recollections of this "new" camera system that recorded 3D data live on set to aid compositing.

Having grown up to work in the vfx/directing/photography fields this brings to mind a LIDAR scanner that would record point cloud data to re create on set geometry and save time with modelling and the sort.

I don't think they used LIDAR on End of Days however as I'm quite sure that the unit they talked about was relatively small and mounted next to the film plane of a 435 or panaflex. LIDAR takes quite a bit of time to scan a room with any degree of accuracy so camera (or come to think of it actor) movement would be a no no. That, and recording data from one angle would probably result in data that needed cleaning up with weird spikes and blanks appearing due to the single point of view.

So, I have 2 questions:

1) Am I making this up, or did they really try out a system like this? In all fairness it could just be me remembering it all wrong. The fact that I can't find anything about this online makes me think that I remembered it all wrong. Perhaps someone older/wiser than I am with lots of AC back issues could help me out.

2) Would it be possible to make a product like this for creating single camera stereo 3D? Just input your frame size, frame rate and slave it to a digital cinema camera. It records the data onto onboard/removable storage and you have instant depth mattes as a propriety file (to save storage space/io speed) that can then be baked and exported as an image sequence (DPX, TIFF, JPEG, PNG etc.)

I know it would be a poorer substitute for 2 camera rigs and it would be constrained in terms of frame rate, would probably require some cleanup work etc. Still, would you guys like to see something like this? Would it be possible?

 

[Bruce Allen]

Hey Eren, to the best of my knowledge End of Days just did traditional LIDAR scans in conjunction with survey points etc for the scene inside the church.

with any degree of accuracy so camera (or come to think of it actor) movement would be a no no. That, and recording data from one angle would probably result in data that needed cleaning up with weird spikes and blanks appearing due to the single point of view.

Well they tried it in some scenes of that Radiohead "House of Cards" video (in conjunction with other techniques) - take a look at the making of - they explain the different techniques' applications relatively well...
http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

2) Would it be possible to make a product like this for creating single camera stereo 3D? Just input your frame size, frame rate and slave it to a digital cinema camera. It records the data onto onboard/removable storage and you have instant depth mattes as a propriety file (to save storage space/io speed) that can then be baked and exported as an image sequence (DPX, TIFF, JPEG, PNG etc.)

Yeah - though I think it'd probably be easier just to have stereo cameras!

I imagine that every 3D tracking team on the planet is madly trying to rewrite their algorithms to take full advantage of stereo recording now. Hopefully we'll get to the point where we can easily derive accurate depth map from stereo or multiple cameras soon in off-the-shelf apps.

Maybe they'll need to add in some clever tricks like shooting at a high frame rate and projecting patterns every 1/120th of a second or so.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Thanks for the input Bruce, appreciated as always. Looks like I was making stuff up. Hey, maybe I should just build this camera mounted LIDAR/depth matte generator

I'm familiar with the radiohead house of cards video. I've done some similar quick tests using Trapcode Form which they also used for that video.

3D RED LOGO LINK
GIRL LINK

 

[Bruce Allen]

If you build that LIDAR thing let me know where to I should start sending your daily congratulatory beer shipment.

Yeah, RE the house of cards video - what I didn't know until I watched the making-of was how they put all of those gobos in front of Thom Yorke to intentionally break up the closeups. The rain effect was cool - although you could do that in post of course.

And love the Trapcode Form (even though we have a permanent Shine ban at work Also check out Cinema4D's MoGraph module. It's pretty easy to set up things like grids of 3D objects driven by textures (video, procedural, etc) - can be done in any 3D program of course, but this just makes it easier. Instant David Fincher Reznor video...

Or we could just invent some kind of infrared or ultraviolet glowing fog or camera mounted light so we could just have sensor that only is sensitive to that getting pure z-depth

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Ryan Sims]

And love the Trapcode Form (even though we have a permanent Shine ban at work

What? Shine banned? :001_cool:
Has the be the most used effect for the past 10 years.
I still love it.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Haha, Im enforcing a GenArts Sapphire glow ban over here. Our term for it is "Indian Wedding". VC's Optical Flares will be on that list in a years time if everyone keeps this lens flare craze up (which I'm not immune to unfortunately).

Hmm, the on camera LIDAR is beyond my time/means of making but I'd like to think that it's possible for some small/lean company to make the unit at a price that would make it "distruptive technology" ala RED. Man, onboard LIDAR+accelerometer+ GPS coupled with some kind of OTOY like real time 3D fx....

I've always envisioned that filmmaking would eventually involve recording point clouds in a studio (ala cameron's "volume") or on location, marking your assets like actors,props modifying them as you wish and then creating the lighting/camera work in post. Imagine taking, say 4 of THESE devices (but on steroids) on set and just concentrate on getting the performances.

Bear in mind, I'm not condoning this or claiming it's superior/inferior to making movies the way we do now...it's just the way I see filmmaking heading in the next 100 years.

So back on track, what would it take to make on camera LIDAR? The closest thing I can think of is those Cine Tape Sonar devices. The sweet spot for those devices are much tighter than what our on camera solution requires.

Infrared wouldn't be a reliable solution either as the heat pollution from lights would surely make things more difficult.

I guess some kind of expanded Sonar/invisible laser would need to be used.

Anyone have further thoughts on this or the future of digital cinematography?