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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

A little match-moving

ZachBG

By ZachBG
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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That's cute. Are you going to rotoscope his head back in over Shaggy?

If I can, yeah. There's another 8 seconds of footage that's matchmoved, so there's more to come, but I have to figure out a "story" first.

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strohbehn Prolific

strohbehn

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Looks like fun, Zach. How long did it take you to camera-match this scene, just out of curiousity? Also, would you be interested in doing some camera-match-for-pay (or trade... i.e. models, rigging, etc.) work at some point? Some contract work would help you recoup some of your costs. I don't currently have any projects in mind, but am very interested in this type of work and don't have much interest in learning yet another piece of software (not to mention shelling out $399). ;)

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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How long did it take you to camera-match this scene, just out of curiousity?

Not too long. Less than a day; probably two or three hours at most.

 

Also, would you be interested in doing some camera-match-for-pay (or trade... i.e. models, rigging, etc.) work at some point?

 

Yes, yes, o yes.

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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that is so cool, how'd you do it?

I have no idea how one would do it manually. I used SynthEyes.

 

In a perfect situation, you just load a movie into SynthEyes, hit "Go," and export a Hash project. In reality it takes a bit more than that, especially for a hand-held shot like this one. You need to identify a few easy visual points in the film that you can follow throughout the scene (or at least through most of it). In this case, I chose the corner of the trash can, a point where the grass met the sidewalk, and a few light spots in the grass. After I told SynthEyes to track those points, and tweaked the tracking so the software didn't lose them, I ran the auto-tracker to add whatever points the computer could find on its own. Then I told the computer which point I wanted to be the origin, which points were on the floor, etc. and solved the camera matching. And that's basically all there is to it.

 

With smoother shots, you don't even have to do the first step of manually tracking points.

 

Then, you open the project in A:M, and animate away.

 

Unfortunately, I can't at the moment render front-projection in A:M with this project (I've got a Report in the system about it), which is why I haven't masked out my son's face or the foreground tree yet. So when I want to render it, I do an alpha pass and a shadow pass and composite them in Quicktime Pro. (I wonder if one could do it with the new Composite feature in AM? Must try that.)

 

I've attached the project file output, straight from SynthEyes, for people to play with. Note that it's 60 frames per second, since I was using interlaced video. I haven't included the movie file because it's huge. (If enough people want it, I guess I could post a compressed version...) Also note that there's one glitch--it's around frame 705 at 60fps--which I had to get rid of manually in AM. Which just goes to show that nothing is perfect.

long_library_forhash.prj.zip

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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And here's the latest animation. Probably the last update for a while, because if I don't get back to work on Tin Woodman Martin will kill me. Well, hurt me anyway.

 

Comments on the animation are now heartily encouraged, though there's a bunch of stuff I know I want to fix anyway.

 

http://www.hash.com/users/zachbg/GiantShaggyDown.mov (1.7 MB, ~15 seconds)

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Slipin Lizard Journeyman

Slipin Lizard

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Nice work, I actually appreciate that we're getting to see it as it develops, much more informative that way.

There was mention of how you do it manually. I use After Effects quite a bit, and with that program you use motion tracker to track the motion of the layer you want tracked, in this case the kid running from the library, select a point to track, track it, and then apply the motion track to the layer you want, in this case the giant shaggy. It's pretty straight forward, and the nice thing is that its all keyframed, meaning that if one part of the track is good, but another starts to drift, you can keep what's good and just re-track the part that needs fixing.

 

Looks great!

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robcat2075 Animation:Master

robcat2075

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Hey Zach, cool shot.

 

I think we need to be clued in on the helicopter/bomb thing sooner though. Any chance of having the helicopter approach more from behind rather than from the left so it can be seen earlier?

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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There was mention of how you do it manually. I use After Effects quite a bit, and with that program you use motion tracker to track the motion of the layer you want tracked, in this case the kid running from the library, select a point to track, track it, and then apply the motion track to the layer you want, in this case the giant shaggy. It's pretty straight forward, and the nice thing is that its all keyframed, meaning that if one part of the track is good, but another starts to drift, you can keep what's good and just re-track the part that needs fixing.

But that would only work with 2-D tracking (like when the camera is locked to a tripod), wouldn't it? Or am I missing something?

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gschumsky Mentor

gschumsky

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There was mention of how you do it manually. I use After Effects quite a bit, and with that program you use motion tracker to track the motion of the layer you want tracked, in this case the kid running from the library, select a point to track, track it, and then apply the motion track to the layer you want, in this case the giant shaggy. It's pretty straight forward, and the nice thing is that its all keyframed, meaning that if one part of the track is good, but another starts to drift, you can keep what's good and just re-track the part that needs fixing.

But that would only work with 2-D tracking (like when the camera is locked to a tripod), wouldn't it? Or am I missing something?

Not necessarily (though I'm no expert and I could be way wrong). There used to be a pretty cool demo with AE with a Brazilian (?) soccer team, and the camera following the action (from what I remember). Anyway, the shot was changed to have them running around carrying bags from a certain department store, and what was cool was the bags were moving in sync with their arm/hands, etc. Never figured out how it was done, but that was way back in AE3.

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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Another slight update. Animation-wise, I tweaked the fall a bit, but more obviously, I added PARTICLES!! They cut out toward the end because my computer was estimating 48 hours to render 2 seconds, and I didn't want to waste that time on a test render.

 

Enjoy...

 

http://www.hash.com/users/zachbg/GiantShaggyDown_v3.mov

 

(Could this perhaps be the first part of an epic? Stay tuned!)

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ZachBG Mentor

ZachBG

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Can't you do it straight out of A:M?

 

I thought i have seen people doing that strictly using A:M.

 

Not sure what you mean... the only thing for which I didn't use A:M was the actual match-moving of the camera, which I haven't a clue how to do manually.

 

But yes, it is possible to do CG+live action directly in A:M, especially if the camera is locked down.

 

I should say that, for now, I'm not using A:M's front projection abilities, because I'm having trouble rendering with an image sequence camera rotoscope. (AMReports knows about it, but if anyone else wants to try...) Instead, I'm rendering out Shaggy and the other CG stuff alone, as well as a shadow pass, then compositing everything in Final Cut Express.

 

Zach... That rocks! Looks like you are goin to town with Syntheyes, the CG looks quite at home with the live-action.

 

Thanks! I still need to "grain it up" so it's not so pristine...

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NancyGormezano Animation:Masters

NancyGormezano

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Whew, just as I remember - Shaggy is invincible.

 

fun stuff.

 

1 crit - (but you're probably doing something about it anyway) - is that the hold after he gets up seems too long - perhaps he should shake his fists & head a bit before starting his frankenwalk - as if to say - "ah ha, you miserable humans! You can't stop me with your silly puffy missiles"

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arkaos Craftsman

arkaos

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that new yeeargh clip is AWESOME. I think the turbulence effect on the smoke should be left in, Zach. Photo-realism is not always a necessity. It looks cool and passes as a good artistic way of mixing things up. It's fantasy, anyway. Good job.

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