tracking object surface & replacement

#1

hi guys,

we’ve recently shot a commercial for a laptop company. basically, you see some people using the laptop on various places. The problem is, client wants the cover of the laptop to be replaced. Naturally that was unexpected, so we did not place any markers on the laptops.

Besides the painful agony of replacing the cover frame by frame, what do you think are my options? I have some basic pftrack experience, but i don’t even know if that’s possible.

I’d be glad to have some insight on the situation.

Thanks in advance.

#2

Tracking and roto…
you should be able to get a good track without markers. and if its for a commercial I would imagine the shots are pretty short and some hand tracking or at least manual animation will get you what you need.

#3

Yep, this is absolutely possible, and there’s as many different way to do it as there are artists in the world.

You could do it 3d with something like pftrack, like you mentioned, or you could go all 2d and just track and replace it with whatever kind of image you wanted.

Do you guys have some compositing software there? What do you use? It’s absolutely possible in every package, but we could give more detailed advice if we knew maybe what you have available.

#4

well, we use mostly after effects. I’ve done lots and lots of tracking in AE, but as the laptops we shot were carried, rotated, thrown to one another etc., I presumed AE wouldn’t cut it.

I will try to do it in AE, but in any case it fails, how this can be pulled off in pftrack? any pointers?

thanks,

k.

#5

Visual Effects for Directors shows how this sort of thing is done.

http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/vfx_index.html

As I recall, it replaces an iphone screen in a handheld shot. It doesn’t show details as in what software to use, but it does show how to do it.

#6

mocha for ae was born to do this kind of work.

#7

wow, mocha looks like it could do wonders! pity i’ve never heard of it before. Thanks very much :slight_smile:

#8

You can try Voodoo which feeds the tracking markers into Blender.

#9

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