Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Motion Control?

Jim, You are a man of many talents. Mind if I ask how long it took to roto and comp that shot? Maybe we should cancel our NAB booth ;)
 
Curt, no way... too many things MOCO can do for real... can't do time-lapse with this process, or precise repeats with tight framing... this is just an option for some situations... I put half a day into the roto, but it would need several days to trim up and be right. My technique vrs MOCO on this setup would require the same clean up though, and have the same issue of getting the takes done between clouds and shifting sun... Really look forward to meeting you in person at NAB!

ThinkBug... looks like we'll get our cameras the same week... also, sure, you could do a fight with this process... and many other things like the "guy about to get hit by the car who jumps out of the way in the nick of time" sort of stuff...
 
Yeah, moco definitely has its place. It makes things like that shot much faster.. no tracking involved but theres still plenty of roto if you aren't using a green screen. Have you seen this Kylie Minogue video? They used a milo for the shoot but even knowing how moco works it can still be confusing. Basically they did one shot where the crane loops back and the end of the shot plays right back into the beginning. They use the ladders and a light pole for convenient cut points. Very impressive use of moco though.
 
Yes, that's a great piece... soft spot in my heart for Kylie, bless her... anyway, thanks to everyone for checking it out. I really look forward to seeing you all at NAB!

I hope to have time to push this technique a bit more, just have a hard time getting willing on-camera subjects... the dogs run away from me, and the wife vanishes the moment she sees the tripod come out...
 
Hi Jim,

Very impressive, I love the concept behind this technique. I own a production company in Sydney Aus, and we are always looking at ways to do high production value shots with innovative techniques. Well done.

Seth.
________
R32
 
Your "actor" will start wanting royalities. Does he get paid 5 times?
I remember you saying SAG wanted their fees for the virtual skydivers!
 
Jim, that's a neat little trick there. I'll have to jot that one down for later. ;)
 
That's Lightwave...

I'll post a God's POV movie of one of the virtual cameras "painting" a take onto the world sphere... pretty freaky looking seeing the background locked in place and the FOV of that camera basically a "window" that moves across the sphere revealing more background as it follows the talent around...
 
Very clever.......
did you roto out shadows as well?

what did you use for tracking
 
I just used very basic roto shapes for the talent and his shadow. I was caught between doing enough roto that people wouldn't be distracted by it and miss the "really cool" thing of mixing dissimilar takes, yet I didn't want to finish it out because it was not a test of roto ability or talent. It COULD be made perfect, with two or three man days of work, but I'll save that dedication to the actual job.

SynthEyes was used for the tracking on each take, in "tripod" mode. In my work in general, I use tripod tracking instead of 2D compositing app tracking 75% of the time because you have much more precise results when a hundred or so trackers are averaged out compared to 1 or 2 track points...
 
Fantastic Jim. I've played around with a much less precise version of this technique on Inferno, but in that ap you loose a ton of res when projection mapping onto a sphere. Plus the res caps out pretty quick and texture errors occur. I think you're onto something pretty cool here. I was once going to do an entire music video with various performances projected onto a sphere, with a 4 minute crazy camera move (background was going to be black - haha.) Anyway, kudos to you. Ah... the wonders of nodal point pan / tilt, eh?

Alex Boothby
 
Thanks Alex... it really works smoothly, and the front projections kept their resolution quite nicely... I didn't have to blur the untouched master take for a good match. I was even able to dial in the exact amount of motion blur, which varied depending on if the orignal element was moving with or against the desired final direction. Bottom line, I can't wait to try it on RED footage!

The devil is in the details; undistorting the source footage correctly, exact knowldege of the camera FOV and various methods to re-align each take to overlay the master take.

I love nodal! Of course my camera isn't on true nodal, but that is only an issue with the inital SynthEyes track and I think in this case it wouldn't impact the outcome with a little forethought and planning...

I will do more after NAB as soon as I have time...
 
Great stuff. I bet you could use the same technique to generate a clean plate, which you could use to difference key the talent... er, farmer. This would save a few hours of roto for accurate mattes (too bad the damn clouds don't take direction well...)
 
Icarus was great. Could reconstruct a primative 3D obj from a scene after tracking it. Very handy for 3D matte painting, set extension, etc. Miss that Icarus....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top