Camera mapping itself is something most apps can do, and Cinema 4D had the one distinct advantage of being able to also paint in app (as well as better PSD support than most)
So Projecitonman doesn’t even offer any new “capability” over R10.5 in terms of camera projection, its a workflow tool and a huge one at that.
lets take a look at the manual workflow
You already place an obejct in position on your reference image and would like to create a projection.
1)create material
2)load image
3)apply material to object
4)change material projection to camera projection
5)create camera
6)link camera to material tag
Okay so thats your basic projection
In projection man, you right click on your object and choose load bitmap, 6 steps into 1.
now that the camera exists, anytime you want another object to use that same projection you just drag and drop it to that camera, so all the material creation etc is automated. This is even more advantageous if you use layered tiffs or PSD’s as each object can use the same projection and image but with different layers of the same image, so there is the added step of choosing which layers in that image. Stills that would then be 2 steps instead of seven. In a scene with say 20 objects, that’s 40 steps instead of 140, and when your concerned with painting taking out those tedious middle steps makes life a lot easier.
Where it becomes an even bigger time saver is with what are called coverage renders. Often in moving mattes a lot of problems come from when the camera goes too far to the side of an object and reveals stretching, or worse yet, gaps or wholes in a projection. With projection man you can be in your animated camera, scrub to the frame with the most extreme position and choose to do a coverage render to paint over that area. Lets again look at the workflow.
1)create camera
2)Render out current view as PSD or Tiff
3)start photoshop
4)Load image In photoshop
5)Create a new layer
6)Select area around the object you’d like to affect and create a layer mask
7)Paint, clone whatever to cover up that area
8)Save image
9)create material
10)Load image into color or luminance channel
11)load image into alpha channel
12)apply material to object
13)change material projection to camera projection
14)link new camera to material tag
Or
1)right click on object and say coverage render
2)Paint as needed
3)in Projectionman right click and reload texture.
this is even simpler if you are using Bodypaint as its juust create coverage render and paint as needed.
Beyond the much quicker and simpler creation on objects the later on management is a lot easier as well. Adding new objects to an existing projection is as simple add drag and drop of the new object onto the existing texture.
there is also the added benefit of being able to have animated projections. The coverage render can render out each frame, so whether the object is animated or the projection camera, you automatically get the whole sequence.
Its this simple workflow that leads to Sony doing entire 360 degree sequences entirely with matte painting instead of real sets, often using projections that were slices of as small as 5 degrees. It makes the setup process so thoughtless and seamless that you just look at a shot and think I need a new projection and then bam start painting one, instead of going through a huge rigmarole of setup before you even start to think about painting.
It also simplifies the process for those that create a complex matte in Photoshop, already in its separate layers foe each area, like each hill, each tower etc, and easily split those up onto geometry, again without all the process of making materials applying them setting up camera projections etc.
The one click command to send a file back to photoshop for editing is a huge workflow saver too.
