To Track or to apply in a 3d package as a Texture?

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone! (sorry for the long subject)

Talket to a client about a musicvideo he wants done but im not sure if i can actully achive the things he wants, so i said: “let me think about it and i’ll get back to you when i’ve talked to a bunch of people” – The people = you guys/girls a.k.a “the experts” heh

I really need some advice! (sorry for the bad English)

The facts:

The Clients idea: Make loads of boxes in a white space, make them reflect eachother and put the band members “in” the boxes (like there reflections from somewere but cant be seen). Have moving cameras go mental. Done in 3d package. The video will be shot on HD and 100% “greenscreen” to later be added to the objects in the video.

My problems/questions:

1. Everywere i turn people say “HD+Chroma key = Big no no” But the client really wants it to be shot on HD (not sure why, cheap maybe?)
– Can a good key be pulled from HD?

2. I made a quick render of what i thought he wanted, sent it to him (big mistake). At the time i thought the cameras would be static..
[ http://hem.bredband.net/b407189/Images/NothingSpecial.jpg ]
– he liked it. And he would love a small “preview” of what the shot could look like with people “in” the boxes.

How would “you” do this? How would you get the keyed shots onto the obelisks. Reminder: Cameras are moving.
I pretty sure he wants more objects with more crystal like formations.
Would “you” apply the shot’s as a texture in the 3d app? or try to track a few of the objects? Adding them in the 3d app would be the easyest way but having to do with moving cameras and closeups…not to sure.
Try to track these objects might work if i render each one separate (?)

The tools I have at my disposal:

3d Package: 3dsmax (not sure about the version, im not in charge of the 3d)
Compositing tool: Combustion3 (hopefully upgrading to v.4 within a month)

Regards,

Kenneth

[Keyser_Soze]

HD video is not ideal when shooting blue/greenscreen. It’s not impossible, it really depends on what kind of material you are choosing… if it’s a lot of fine detail like hair and closeups, don’t go there. But if your material is going to end up as reflections you might get away with video.
Film is always the way to go but it costs money. But it can be well worth it. Nothing is uglier than a bad key. And if you go for video… make sure the team knows what they are doing when seting things up (exposure, evenly lit greenscreen bla bla. If you search fxguide you’ll find more info.)
When it comes to applying your reflections i’m not sure. Sounds to me that the best way would be to stay in max. But I know max can export 3d data to combustion (camera path and renders with 3d metadata)… it might be faster if you have to render a lot of versions for your client. I don’t know enough about that to be able to help you. Don’t track in combustion, the tracker sucks!

cheers

[Anonymous]

The Combustion have a tool (Texture map) that allows you use a imagelike a map in a object rendered ( this tool require special information, see the help), but this tool in irregular objects it can create resulted undesirable. I believe the best option is map the video in 3D application or use planes to reflect the video in the boxes, a crazy idea. The tracker of Combustion sucks? I thought that it was equal to the existing one in the FFI

[Keyser_Soze]

Vympel wrote:

The tracker of Combustion sucks? I thought that it was equal to the existing one in the FFI

I’ts not even close. The code written for FFI and combustion can’t be the same. Stuff that would have been easily tracked in FFI can be impossible to track in combustion. (sorry for the off topic)

[Anonymous]

Keyser_Soze wrote:

Vympel wrote:

The tracker of Combustion sucks? I thought that it was equal to the existing one in the FFI

I’ts not even close. The code written for FFI and combustion can’t be the same. Stuff that would have been easily tracked in FFI can be impossible to track in combustion. (sorry for the off topic)

Don´t know about this fact 🙁 . for being possible to export from combustion to FFI (despite this not saying much thing this 🙁 😈 ) and for being both of the Discreet

[Keyser_Soze]

Vympel wrote:

Don´t know about this fact 🙁 . for being possible to export from combustion to FFI (despite this not saying much thing this 🙁 😈 ) and for being both of the Discreet

Well the fact that you can exchange tracking data between FFI and Combustion (as you can do with other software like Mokey) doesn’t mean that the actual tracking part/code have to be the same. It just can’t be, I’ve compared the same material in both apps and a track that works just fine in Flame is completely off in C.

[eltopo]

What 3d app do you have

Maya Ultimate and XSI (full version can’t remember the name) have compositing integrated to their package.

Also I don’t know what software are you using, because it seems that this is a work for nuke and their 64-pass openEXR film (plus importing opengl models cameras and so on.

http://www.d2software.com

[Keyser_Soze]

eltopo wrote:

What 3d app do you have

Maya Ultimate and XSI (full version can’t remember the name) have compositing integrated to their package.

Also I don’t know what software are you using, because it seems that this is a work for nuke and their 64-pass openEXR film (plus importing opengl models cameras and so on.

http://www.d2software.com

If you took some time to read the thread you would see that he used 3dstudio max and combustion 3.
Open EXR and Nuke seems to be a bit overkill for this project. It’s a music video, probably lowbudget. Max and Combustion will work just fine. No need to spend money on something like Nuke.

[uwe_wiesemann]

HI all,

I would probably shoot the footage on film, making sure I get as little grain as possible, transfer that to digibeta and prepare the shots. This would include the keying and colorcorrecting. I’d key them either on black and export them with the alphachannel (premultiplied) or key them onto the average bg-color you need later.
Those prepped shots I’d put onto the cubes/objects within tha 3d-package.
Just in case you have to change around something later you can render a pass as rpf, including object-, render-node and/or material-IDs. This way you can acces the textures in Combustion for further treatment.

I would definitely not try the tracking. You dont need to. You can even get the cameramove from the rpfs.

Best regards, let us know, how you decided.

Uwe Wiesemann

[boomji_vb]

Keyser_Soze wrote:

Vympel wrote:

The tracker of Combustion sucks? I thought that it was equal to the existing one in the FFI

I’ts not even close. The code written for FFI and combustion can’t be the same. Stuff that would have been easily tracked in FFI can be impossible to track in combustion. (sorry for the off topic)

i’m with keyser…the tracker in flame simply seams to STICK. 8)
the marketing people keep showing that bull in your face about the code being same…bollox.

as most others have said you would want to embedd the UV channel info from 3dmax into your RPF.

b

[Author]

Posts