Real girl seamlessly (?) blends into CGI girl

[Jos Metadi]

Next time (assuming there is one) I would recommend zooming much farther into the real cheek before switching to the CGI cheek. Far enough in that you really only have to match the texture of a relatively flat piece of skin instead of having to model the whole head, and far enough out that you have time to morph to the final 3D microscopic structure of the dermal cells.

JoS

[Carm3D]

Yeah, I asked him to make sure the camera dude trucked in until her cheek filled the frame... But unfortunately for me, he didn't..

It was fun modeling her face, however.

[pearson]

Here is a good example of how to do this.

Intimate Strangers (http://www.lotsofrobots.com/extras/Strangers.mov)

Of course, you should never work with a crew who's motto is, "Fix it in post!" LOL

[gaggle]

Egads, aye, hardly seamless :)
Yeah next time bring some sort of blunt object to beat the cameraman if he refuses to comply with a simple zoom-order.

[wgreenlee1]

:surprised
That kinda scared me......
:surprised

[Carm3D]

Sorry about that WG1.. Next time I'll warn you.

[JoBbE]

hi carm :)
some things about your comp:
a) the head's shape doesn't exactly fit (look at the neck and the mouth, also at the forehead and the nose)
b) pay attention to the make-up! (esp the eyes!)
c) the ear disappears :eek:
d) on her right shoulder a strap appears :eek: , the strap on the left shoulder kind of tells scotty to beam him some centimeters to the left....
e) you should apply some color correction otherwise everybody will immediately notice the "seam" : the original skin is redish while the cg skin is yelowish
f) the hair is ok but you should consider blurring it a bit


that should do alot!


ok :)

still working with am carm? and... do you know if all the other (ex) am dudes do still chat somewhere? they used to chat regularly in their 3d-geeks channel but their hp disappeared and now I can't find them anymore...

[Carm3D]

Hey JoBbe,

Thanks for your suggestions,, I was thinking about tweaking the shape and position of the lips and doing some colour correction.

No, I don't use A:M anymore.. They won't get another dime from me. But I hear that A:M v9.5 has a chat system built into it, and that's how all the A:M people chat now.. (Great, another thing to make A:M crash!)

[JoBbE]

lol I don't use it anymore either :)
But I'm surprised thay actually realeased 9.5... and even less stable.... that's great :applause:

[Bog]

The main things I notice are that your model's nostril and lip shapes don't actually match up. Good effort, and all, and it looked pretty close on head position.

Pearson said it best. "Ahhh, you can fix it in post...." is the cry of (A) the amateur or (B) someone with infinite time and budget. Seeing as (B) is more fictional than a Railtrack timetable....

Ick.

[arvid]

Is it really necessary to model the entire face? You could use the footage and just add a new cheek, and use radial blurring to hide the cracking of the image during the "zoom-in", and do it really fast. That's what they get for doing such a crappy pre-production! :p Post-production has to be planned way ahead.

[Carm3D]

Hello everyone...

I was given some more time to polish up the so-called seamless transition.. It's not perfect, but I believe it's a heck of alot closer than it used to be.

Enjoy. :bounce:

Mandy_CGI.MOV (http://www.Carm3D.com/larry/Mandy_CGI.MOV)
(1.15 MB Quicktime)

Eyelashes by Sasquatch.

I made morph maps to tweak the geometry to more closely match the video version.. One raised the nose, made the lip corners go up and down, made the upper-lip taller, bulged out the cheekbone, etc.. worked out rather well.

Also, I ultimately ended up using a "Light incidence" gradient to force the colours to look right. It slowed the rendering down, but it did the job.

I've got 2 training tapes enroute to me on character animation in Lightwave... The next one will be better... I promise.

[hypercube]

Hmm, well, it's definitely closer, and a great deal more like her, but still not there..I think the main thing is that unless you're SUPREMELY confident and have a 100% photoreal exact match model, you NEVER transition to the CG version with the camera sitting right on the object/person/etc. and not moving. Right now it looks like the girl morphs into some alternate version of herself and then you zoom in. Always seems to work better if it's kept all cg or all live, or make the transition at a point the viewer's not going to be thinking about it.

I'd look at how the others mentioned did it, even if you start a 2D move in on the plate and then tranzition to the CG midway, motion blur should hide any problems with the plate size-up, and it'll be much more convincing. Also from an animation standpoint, depending on how much you see of her face with a new camera move, she seems cross-eyed or not looking the same direction as the original girl, plus it must be very windy/sandy on the beach because the live model is blinking quite a lot, and the cg model isn't blinking at all.

I think it really will work, just have to be a bit more tricky about it.

P.S. People out there actually plan properly for post production? The hell you say :D

[Carm3D]

What a great suggestion... The transition should have occurred when the camera was spinning about her... But heck, if I'm gonna go that far, might as well do the whole thing in 3D... Probably would have been easier too.. Oh well. I'm currently adding "Free radicals" on top of that animation.. The entire scene has the camera match-moved to the ground, and so that aspect of it should come out pretty cool... I'll post when I have it to show.

Thanks for the tips.

Carm

P.S. After repeated viewings, the part that really bums me out is that she lost her faint little smile.. Maybe they'll give me another day to fix that.

[SeanW]

You did a really good job but the only thing that just really is killing you is the lighting. The footage has a really nice soft light on her face. And when it blends these harsh shadows apear under her cheek bones and neck. For me it becomes more menacing due to this light change. I think if you added a warm sunsetish color to soften up her face and get rid of those shadows it will improve it considerably.

[MasterZap]

I still dont get why you go through all the trouble instead of doing it like this (http://www.lotsofrobots.com/extras/Strangers.mov) ?

Her nose shape doesnt match, the head pose doesnt match, the ear is gone.... e.t.c...... and do you seriously think this will look *appealing* as a "skin care product" ad!? :thumbsdow

I dont mean to sound like an arse but....... yeah you probably put a heck of a lot of work into doing the best you can but... it still looks scary, at best!!

Why not do the swooch zoom as the above clip? Would have saved you time and gotten a much better result?

Could have even done cool time compression on her "rather less than inspired" twirl on the beach too.... normal speed, 1 second of 300% speed, normal speed until cheek, 500% speed swosh-zoom into model, then model...... voila.

Just my completely honest opinion.

/Z

[Carm3D]

Well MasterZap, what can I say... You are right.. She does look scarier than the real thing.. If they give me more time, I will tweak it more.. But I don't have time to just redo the entire thing to make it look like the example you showed me.

It's probably no excuse, but this is the first time I did something like this, and next time I will learn from my mistakes and do better.

This project was a nightmare, done entirely in my free-time (in addition to my regular job).. I wish I had more time to make everything good.

[MasterZap]

Yep, life is like that. Good thing is you learn from it.

I am not saying I could have done it *better*... heck when I tried to model a human face I scared the whole family :)

I must say that camera guy wasn't too good either. And the girls acting could also be improved. So in a sense maybe your bit is the best bit of the entire film in the end? Chin up, move on, keep hacki'n :thumbsup:

/Z

[hypercube]

I think the main thing to look at in Andy M's is the snap zoom. Obviously there the real camera zoomed in closer, but there's still a further zoom being done on the cg side.

I didn't quite mean to do the transition earlier, or during the rotation, that would add even more difficulty, but later on. What's hurting it the most right now besides lighting tweaks and little differences is that the camera is sitting still, directly on the face..then it transitions..sits..and zooms in.

What I meant was that you would zoom in on the live action plate in 2D (whatever comping software you're using), perhaps with a 'zoom blur' effect, then make the handoff to the CG in mid-zoom. That should help hide the fact of what's going on. Right now it's hitting the viewer over the head with it since it's like all the action stops for the cg fade to take place. Just because the live camera stops doesn't mean you have to be stuck with it..as long as it's fast and especially on video (well, current video) you can get away with an amazing amount of fake camera movements and things of that nature.

Hope that makes more sense, or something..just some thoughts and suggestions. I know what it's like to have to deal with incredibly un-thought-out shooting/footage and have to do ridiculous effects on a ludicrous budget and timetable, so I really can sympathize. Curious to see it with additional layers and things too.

[stephen2002]

ahhhhh....mutate. There is enough of a shift in here facial features that is pretty freaky. You might want to just do some sort of pixliated fast zoom on her face and then go for the CG. If you leave it like that, well, scary.

It looks like a good CG face, but it does not quit match the original. Also, some of the lighing is very off, which changes much during the trasition.

[Carm3D]

I see what you're trying to say, HyperCube.. Unfortunately the real camera never moved into her cheek.. He just kinda stood there.. In any case, I know not to attempt such a maneuver in the future.. I'd just do the entire thing in CGI. F- it!

I deleted the old Mandy video.. Here she is with the Free-Radicals raining in on her... I really like how these turned out.

Mandy_CGI_FreeRads.MOV (1.23MB Quicktime) (http://www.Carm3D.com/larry/Mandy_CGI_FreeRads.MOV)

Have a happy day!

(and for Pete's sake, stay out of the sun!)

[MasterZap]

Unfortunately the real camera never moved into her cheek

Yeah but if you zoom the video frame... can be done in premiere, after effects, or even inside Max if you put some keyframes on the scaling of the background or such... a million of ways... you can swoosh into the actual *image* regardless of what the fool with the camera was doing.....

/Z

[Carm3D]

All I've gots is Lightwave.

[Anthony]

Let's see...the real girl's

Cheeks aren't as concave
Eyebrows are longer
Eyes are wider and larger, with longer, thicker eyelashes
Area around mouth isn't pulled as far back into the head
Nostrils are fuller
Shoulders are flatter as they approach the neck
Face is less bulbous in its general shape

Keep at it! And remember to match the lighting and color values.

[gaggle]

And The Lord sayeth "thoust shall not leaveth this threadeth without having readeth mine devine Holy Rules™. They shall guideth thou towards thine devine goals:

1) To makeeth with the mad-eth jammin' 3d, thy will needeth a post-production program such as the esteemed Master Zap speakeths of. Thy can choose to ignore this ruleth only if thy are makingeth with the low-poly modeling that goes straight to a gameengineth. Not having postproduction toolseth makes baby Lord cry, and thoust shall pheear doing so, as I shall surely smite whomever makes him sadeth.

2) Thy shall always remember the rule of KISS, the best solution is ofteneth the simplest. A zoom / digital zoom/ dolly towardseth the actress will surely yield better results thaneth doing the currenteth transitioneth. Baby Lord is scared of currenteth CGIeth woman. Remember KISS next timeeth, or thine will be doomed forever.

5) This is the third rule, no more, no less. Three shall be the number of rules thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then thoust have readeth all rules, and all rules thoust have readeth. At this time thoust may stop readingeth, or, proceed to reread the first two ruleseth at thine own leisure.


Thanks to Jon for letting me use this account, don't have the time to register myself, kinda busy these days.


Regards
God
"Responsible for all creation. Yes I made this mess :cool:"

[Carm3D]

I can't afford After Effects because I gave all my money to God. :D

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