Flying Shaggy

[williamgaylord]

Since I am working overtime on my "real" job, I don't have time for serious animation projects these days. So I thought I'd try a simple project to teach myself a bit about compositing in AM. I have some video footage shot out the passenger window of my car and thought I might composite this with a flying Shaggy, as though he were flying along side the car like Superman. Simple animation project that could be done in the course of a day or so. The attached image shows how simple the green screen setup is.

 

I've created a simple green screen behind Shaggy and will animate him bobbing and weaving in the air as though he were flying. Then I'll composite this with the video footage.

 

Here are the challenging bits:

 

1) I'd like to give him a cape of dynamic cloth and use dynamics to animate it. This will likely be the most challenging aspect.

 

2) I'll simulate shadows falling on Shaggy with a cookie-cut template. I'll animate it to pass by and then recycle to simulate shadows of trees to match the surrounding lighting. Lighting in general is always a challenge when you are trying to make it match the video.

 

If anybody has experience with using cloth dynamics on super hero capes I'd certainly appreciate any advice. Any advice or tutorials on compositing will be much appreciated, too.

 

Thanks!

Bill Gaylord

[williamgaylord]

I'm trying out John Henderson's SkyCast in AM version 12.0n for more realistic lighting, but I'm encountering some difficulties. For some reason the sky dome is being lit so intensly that it almost completely saturates even with only the SkyCast lights. Shaggy looks almost perfect, the leaves come out somewhat dark, and the box and sphere are a tad to bright for a medium gray. Also, the ground which should be brown is also too brightly illuminated so it looks more like a bright yellow-orange. You can download the project file, which should have everything imbedded:

 

Project file

 

If anybody can figure out what I might need to change, I would be much obliged.

 

Thanks!

Bill Gaylord

[nimblepix]

William,

 

Green screen is going to make you go through some extra steps.

If you do a camera projection of your footage right in A:M,

you can match his movements precisely to the footage.

 

You will also be able to match the shadows much easier.

 

Dan J

[williamgaylord]

Thanks Dan. I'm new to compositing in AM, so any such advice that can help me learn to make the most of AM's capabilities, is much appreciated! If there is a good tutorial or overview of the process, that would be very helpful.

 

In the mean time, here is test of my simple idea for moving shadows. I just painted a long strip of leaf patterns to create a cookie cut to run past the lights at a rate to match the motion in the video. Works pretty well. As this is a very preliminary test, all I did to animate Shaggy was to move him up and down, right and left like a little plastic figurine.

 

Shaggy on a wire: 2.4 MB, so right click and download if you have a slow link.

 

Bill Gaylord

[johnl3d]

Bill

why not change the gravity to be in the right direction ..the sample you shown that would be x and maybe slighly y and simulate.

 

 

Here is a joke I did flipping the camera 90 degrees and adding the fly action from the cd to shaggy simulated with shaggy standing then moved him to simulate flying ..obviously yours is much better

 

 

 

[attachmentid=11105]

 

 

 

[attachmentid=11106]

shagf.mov

shagf.zip

[williamgaylord]

That's a great idea, John! Thanks!