WIP: 6sec Camera Mapping

[unseenthings]

Going for the Van Helsing look:

http://homepage.mac.com/andrew_phang/iMovieTheater24.html

It's made from scavenged stills cam mapped in C4d and comped in AE.

C&C most welcome.

Thanks!
I haven't seen VH, but I definitely like the piece. Very nice!

[cbowyer]

The look is very nice, very crisp. It building may be a bit bright though for a sky that dark.
I would like to see some movement in the clouds too. In the 3d Fluff camera mapping tutorial I think used a bone deformer on the sky to get enough deformation to occur that it look as though the clouds where moving.

That's my cents.

[mustardseed]

Thanks for all the feedback. Here's an update:
www.mustardseed.com.sg/downloads/Castle_Main_comp_Stage03final.mp4.zip

Added more atmosphere and tightened up the timing of the lightning hits, and tried a verrrrry slight turbulence displace on the clouds.

[ooo]

Very nice,really! Great atmosphere! Are these volumetric clouds, or how did you make them?

odo

[mustardseed]

Thanks, odo!

The clouds, like pretty much everything else in this scene are photoshopped stills, camera mapped onto simple geometry in C4d.

[mustardseed]

Another update:
www.mustardseed.com.sg/downloads/Castel_Main_comp_Stage04v01.mp4.zip

[wesware]

Hey there.
This stuff looks great!
Awesome job.
Camera mapping is still a mystery to me so I applaud your experimentation.

Question: Is your proxy geometry flat planes or rounded geometry. The lightning seems to be a little flat on the scenery... maybe I need to look at it again. Is the lightning a post effect? Perhaps you could mask it a little and create more of a highlight and falloff when it shines. This may be contradictory to the "VanHelsing" look, though.

Are you going to create a tutorial for this? If not, then I curse you :)... please make a tut. I am so clueless to camera mapping.

[wesware]

Ok, checked it out again and seems like you have a definate light source in regards to the lightning... sorry :)

Perhaps I'm wanting more contrast (within the realm of the "VanHelsing" look).
More dynamic interaction between the terrain and the light effects?

[Rich-Art]

Nice stuff.
Real nice.....

Peace,
Rich_Art. :thumbsup:

[mustardseed]

Thanks again, everyone for your feedback and comments. I think I'll be stopping here for now. 30hours for a 6sec experiment is a little excessive even for a slacker like me.

Wes, thanks for your crit, I pushed the contrast a bit more in the final colour grade but still kept as much of the depth I could. Looks better. I agree about more interaction with the foreground to time with the lightning hits, but this is all I have time for right now, I'm afraid. Everytime I launch the file I wanna tweak something...

For all your final viewing and critique, please...

http://www.mustardseed.com.sg/downloads/Castel_Final.mp4.zip

[PetrolUk]

Looks brilliant Mustard Seed.
I love the look that camera mapping gives you and I think it's something I'll look into experimenting with when I get some time.

[mustardseed]

Thanks, David. Can't wait to see what you come with!

Hey Wes, sorry I won't be able to put any sort of tut together for quite a while more due to work commitments, but here's a quick run through in the attached pic. I think you can see how I did it from here for a start. Besides, I simply followed all the tuts I could find here on the forums and stuff I learned from dvGarage and PixelCorps.

[Simon Wicker]

Are you going to create a tutorial for this? If not, then I curse you :)... please make a tut. I am so clueless to camera mapping.

camera mapping is just view dependant texturing. make some geometry. pick a camera viewpoint, render what you see. paint textures for that one camera view in photoshop. project the textures back on the geometry. add second moving camera into your scene. render moving camera. et voila.

the trick to it (if there is a trick) is that you can also work the other way around. create a static image in photoshop, take that into cinema and add in a camera and then build geometry that 'catches' the projected image. this is just a poor mans image based modelling.

the final trick is of course that if your render camera moves too far then your original map breaks up (you get texture smearing and stretching). to fix this you just stick in a second projection camera and paint a second projected image that patches over the smears and holes.

janine wrote a nice tutorial about simple camera mapping. that should be online here somewhere.

to check out the results you can get through this technique people should take a look at pirates2 on dvd - the opening flyovers of cannibal island (where you see the little village perched on the top of the mountains) was created through camera mapping techniques by the extremely talented chris stoski and barry williams at ILM.

chris has authored some gnomon dvd's about matte painting and camera mapping which i hear are pretty good.

cheers, simon w.

[mustardseed]

Thanks for the heads up on Chris Stoski's DVDs, Simon. I think those will make perfect christmas presents for myself. ;-)

You should probably publish a few yourself, it'd be great to have C4d-centric training too.

Anyways, here's an update on my little project:
http://www.mustardseed.com.sg/downloads/Castel_Final_NoGrain.mp4.zip

I've also started a thread in the Matte Painting forums, where I guess I should have in the first place, sorry. So I'll be posting updates there in future...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=438250

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