Hey Everyone,
I spent yesterday thinking about a tornado shot that is doable within my time table. I think I have something, and I found a good image and got cleared to use it from the photographer, so I’m in. Should be fun. I’ll be posting WIPs as they advance, so stay tuned.
Best of luck to everyone.
Chris
Hey Everyone,
I’m planning a shot between 5-10 sec.; probably on the low side of it given my schedule. My primary focus is simply to make a dramatic and believable shot of a tornado. Below is the photo that Marie Smith generously provided.
The following is the edited image in order to provide environment mapping. Little attention was given to mirroring problems because only the left hand side of the image will be shown in the gate. Main changes were darkening the sky, painting out cars, noise reduction, and other small things.
The tough part about using a still for a tornado shot is that tornados obviously generate lots of wind, so note I’ve painted out parts of the trees (the tops) and will be doing both cg tree and grass replacement. For greater control when I put a car speeding down the highway, I’ll also be using a cg highway. Also note that I painted out the mile markers and will be puting those back in 3d as well.
My goals for this week is to photo model the environment for photogrammatic projection, get the new road in, and establish the camera movement (probably a handheld feel).
Well, that’s about it.
Chris
Hey Everyone,
As noted above, this week I photo modeled the environment and projected the image onto it, built the road in 3d, animated the camera, and went ahead and put the mile markers back in.
Here’s a pic and a link to a movie showing the camera move.
[color=White]The link to the movie…
There is some patchiness in the foreground grass that I’ll take care of in the post. Still to come is the tree and grass replacement for wind and obviously the tornado, which is still in testing. The final project will be in 2.35:1 aspect at a pixel resolution of 1280 x 544.
Goals for the upcoming week:
Create and animate the car driving down the highway, work on glare for the headlights, and do some Maya fluid stuff for the mist that’s getting kicked up from the car as it passes.
That’s it.
Chris
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Yeah,
Basically I take the photograph, split it into two pieces for this shot. Then set up two cameras in Maya and use each respective image as an image plane for those cameras (moving the cameras so that the image planes match up).
Then I use two view panes to match model geometry for the ground, road, etc.
Then I project the image through the cameras onto the modeled geometry, making it stick as a texture to it. Then when you move the render camera (within tolerences), it looks like you’re moving through the still photograph.
Heres an image from the first projection cam with the match modeled geometry overlayed.
That’s it. Rudimentary photogrammetry. Because most of my camera movement is nodal point, I can get away with quite a bit. And any stretching issues can be handled later.
Chris
Wow that look great!
Do think that, that type of camera projection can be done in other software? I.e, Photoshop/After Effects…
EXCELLENT WORK !sounds similar to camera projection mapping, I have been trying to experiment with that recently but get no love 
when this is over me and you should talk 
Im also planing on having a car in my one as well but that may be a bit to complicated for me.
Wow, thats amazing. I wish I knew enough to understand how this is being done. Is the black pole geometry? I see it in the picture, but did you add another for the shot? If it is geometry, that adds so much to it, because you see the background move behind it, showing that there is layers there as in real life, rather than a flat surface.
If the pole is just part of the picture(s)… thats just crazy…
Edit: Could you maybe post some other shots within the scene that arent taken at eye level, so that we can actually see whats going on there? This is awesome
Hey,
Yes, it can be done in After Effects, by importing a Maya camera (render camera) into After Effects and then cleverly texturing primitive planes–all in AE. There well be some limitations to that, but I’ll bet you could reproduce this shot that way.
Yeah, we should definitely talk. I have some tricks for getting it to work well that I’d be happy to share with you. As for the car, it’s going to be traveling fast in my scene so I’m not going to sweat every single detail…my schedule doesn’t permit it.
Yes, the black mile marker was painted out and then built in 3d and placed back in. When I do my weekly update next week, I’ll do screenies from another angle so you can see how it’s built.
Take it easy,
Chris
Cool, I can’t wait to see the other shots. I see now that you mentioned the milemarker earlier, but I hadn’t watched the movie yet so didnt put two and two together.
I would be extremely interested in seeing a further explanation of this. As I said, I know very little, but I can see that this is an amazing technique, with a priceless value. The technical aspect of it is far from simple, I’m sure. But the concept is outrageously simple. You’ve just taken a flat image and turned it into an actual environment, fooling even the sharpest eye into thinking you’re either a god at modeling, or you went out and captured some great footage, both costing time and money.
The possibilities there are endless. I’ve seen similar things, where people project images onto geometry to add some depth and make them look 3d. I seem to remember a tutorial with images that gave an overview of the process for a shot in AVP (I think). But I’ve never seen a camera actually look like its moving through an image like that.
Or at least I don’t think I have. I guess people have been doing their jobs well =P
This conversation got me thinking about my first camera projection project back in 2003-2004 (sometime in there). I blush a little to put this up now because there are some things I’d have done differently/better now. But that’s all I knew then, and that’s cool.
In this example, we have one image and a live action plate of a car in the foreground. Because of the overlapping happening due to the parallax in the camera move, there were 12 projection cams. Knowing what I know now, I could do it in about 3.
Here’s a pic and a link to the movie.
Link to the movie…
Fun.
Chris
Great use of camera mapping there Chris. The camera focus really helps sell that its a real shot too, a small detail, but really worth it. How did you get this camera movement? Was it all hand animated or did you matchmove some hand shot footage to drive the camera movement? It looks really naturalistic!
If i was entering this challenge i would probably have gone about it in exactly the same way as you have chosen to do, so its cool to see someone else actually doing it! How are you planning on doing the moving trees?
Also, when you said about having 12 projection cameras on that first ever projection you did, is that because you were duplicating your camera and projecting from the same place but a different cam for each layer? Or did you literally have 12 cameras patching the shot from different angles?
Thanks, and really looking forward to seeing how this comes out!!
Nick
Hey Nick,
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it’s hand animated. Some of the jitter is from an expression (the tiny bumps). I did actually think about taking my dv cam and just shooting and tracking, as you mentioned, but I really wanted to hit specific marks and liked the extra control hand animation provided (I could have blended the track with hand animation as well).
As for the trees, well, I don’t know what I’m going to do…hahaha. Honestly, I have a couple of ideas, but I don’t know what’s going to work yet. When I find something successful, I’ll keep in mind that you were interested, and I’ll try to be specific about the methodology in my post.
As for the 12 projection cams, it was because of the multiple layers of overlapping geometry. The cars, statue, lamp posts, subtle building parallax, etc. It was, as you said, just one camera duplicated 12 times for each projection. Really the trick in that shot was all the painting that was necessary. Each layer that had a cut out had to be repainted in with imaginary stuff. That was the hardest part of it. That and trying to push the camera as far as possible without breaking the illusion.
Take care and thanks again,
Chris
Yea i gathered that was probably the case. When im doing my projections though, i do all of the projections from the same camera, rather than having a seperate camera for each projection. I only have a seperate camera if i need to patch up stretching from a different angle. Is there a benefit to duplicating the camera for each projection?
As for the trees, yea id definitely be interested in your methodology. Are you familiar with Vue? You can get some really nice wind through trees effects there, and because none are very close to camera, they should be quite easy to comp back into the shot. Just a thought tho, will be interested to see where you take it!
Watching this thread closely! Keep it up, its coming along great! And thanks for the long reply 
Nick
Hey Nick,
Your way is cleaner. I just trade parsimony for a little more control inside Maya. If you have an isolated element, take the statue in my multicamera post above, and you want to move it to the left a bit in Maya, you can simply constrain the geometry to the camera or vise versa and shift it without anything else moving, which as it happens is exactly what I did in that scene. Some pieces can’t move for perspective or other visual reasons and can and probably should be under the same camera.
Vue looks fantastic, and I’ve been a fan of the visuals for a while now. I don’t have it, but what I’ve seen of the wind feature looks quite good. I’ll likely give it a go in Maya, but I’ve wanted to play with Vue; maybe I’ll swing by the e-on site and see if they have a demo version. I love enviromental stuff, (Vue, Terragen, etc.).
One of my favorite digital pieces ever was the opening shot (I think it was the opening shot) in The Ring where we fly over the ocean, onto land, over the lighthouse, fields, etc and then meet up with a live action plate of a truck on the road, Matte World Digital’s work, if I’m not mistaken. Fantastic.
Chris
Completely agree, that is a great shot. And matte world digital do fantastic work! Thanks for the info on camera projection there, it never occurred to me to constrain geometry to a camera and be able to move the object slightly through the shot. Very cool!
As far as Vue, i am in the same boat, i love some of the functions like the wind through foliage, but have yet to actually sit down with a copy and really try and learn it. There is a trial version on the e-on website. Mine expired a few months ago without me really having chance to test it out lol.
Anyway, im sure you can get some cool effects in Maya, so good luck with it, and ill check back here often!
Nick
Wow, really good work! Looking forward to seeing this shape up! I think I just stumbled on one of your tests on you tube 
Tristan,
Thanks, I appreciate that. At this point I’m most concerned about finding the time to work on it. I love seeing the progress everyone’s making, yourself included. Very inspiring.
Chris
I second that request for a tutorial. If your final particle work is half as good as your camera mapping we are all in trouble…