3 Segment Live Action Shot

[ddustin]

Hey,

Here is a 3 segment shot I just rendered out. (about 5Mb)

http://www.dustinproductions.com/files/Dustin-3-views.m1v

 

It shows the same virtual scene from 3 different angles (actually this is the first time I have been able to get more than one camera in a live action environment to work).

 

Of course after is been rendered I see all kinds of flaws, but knowing the keen eye here on the forum, I thought ya'll could tear it apart for me and point out the things to fix.

 

Things I know are wrong.

1. Truck is too large

2. Car is too small.

3. Too much lean on the car going through the corner.

4. Seems to be on small deviation in the path (horizontal) about 3/4 down the segment

5. Seems to be a dip in the path close to the end of each segment, even though the road doen't dip there.

6. There is a place where the road geometry is exposed and looks out of place (Last segment where the vehicles are coming toward the camera.

 

Feel free to be direct with your crits, that's what I want.

 

Thanks,

David

[markeh]

I think you've already got quite a keen eye as it is. That must come from doing what you've been doing for so long. If I had to really reach for a crit it might be that the car looks like it follows the movement of the truck too much. I had to watch it several times to even come with anything at all. I think it looks great. The drivers of those vehicles are a couple of real nobodys though eh?

 

Edit: Also it looks to be an overcast day. It looks like your shadows are quite soft as they are. I'm just wondering if they should be even more soft. There isn't a good object in the background to reference the shadows. Here again this is really reaching. They might be correct but just something to take a look at.

[KenH]

I didn't notice no. 6 till I looked real hard.

What's the idea here? Are you trying to make them look as real as possible?

If so, here's some things I noticed:

 

The vehicles are too bright. Colours too saturated and no dirt on them...esp the tires which are too black.

The shadows are too even. There should be darker shadows underneath the vehicles.

Some motion blur might aid the effect.

 

But it's pretty good as it is....

 

Edit: Some more came to me:

 

Change the speed of one vehicle.

The car is abit too close to the truck. Unless that's the idea.

[ddustin]

I think you've already got quite a keen eye as it is. That must come from doing what you've been doing for so long. If I had to really reach for a crit it might be that the car looks like it follows the movement of the truck too much. I had to watch it several times to even come with anything at all. I think it looks great. The drivers of those vehicles are a couple of real nobodys though eh?

 

Mark,

There is only one path and both vehicles are constrained to it, so any imperfection and it shows.

Thanks for the compliments.

 

I laughed pretty hard at your comment, yes they are quite the air-heads aren't they

 

Does the lighting look right?

It was a slightly overcast day, so that's the look I was going for.

The final accident scene is going to be a hum dinger.

The green car gets slammed head on and spins 1-1/2 revs then goes in the ditch.

The pink spot in the middle segment is the POI (point of impact).

 

David

 

 

 

I didn't notice no. 6 till I looked real hard.

What's the idea here? Are you trying to make them look as real as possible?

If so, here's some things I noticed:

 

The vehicles are too bright. Colours too saturated and no dirt on them.

The shadows are too even. There should be darker shadows underneath the vehicles.

Some motion blur might aid the effect.

 

But it's pretty good as it is....

 

Ken,

Yes I agree with you, the vehicles are too clean, I have to think about what I can do to dirty them up some.

 

I also agree about the darker shadows, I have images of vehicles traveling down the road and the shadows are darker.

 

There is motion blur on already, I actually sped this up to 90 frames a second (in after effects as otherwise they traveled very slowly), so I may not have seen as much benefit of the MB.

 

Thanks for the crits!!!!

 

David

[robcat2075]

I don't know what the standards are for accident reconstruction but it's a good looking shot.

 

the truck seems to slip sideways several times

 

Why did you speed it up in AE rather than animate it at that speed?

 

the sharp shadows are uncharacteristic for such an overcast day. real objects in the scene have no distinct shadows. This is a job for... V13 Ambient Occlusion! Or maybe just a fuzzy kleig light.

[ddustin]

I don't know what the standards are for accident reconstruction but it's a good looking shot.

 

the truck seems to slip sideways several times

 

Why did you speed it up in AE rather than animate it at that speed?

 

the sharp shadows are uncharacteristic for such an overcast day. real objects in the scene have no distinct shadows. This is a job for... V13 Ambient Occlusion! Or maybe just a fuzzy kleig light.

 

Actually I'm finding that this type of approach is way above what is common now.

 

I found a few places where the path deviated some causing the truck to look like it was slipping.

 

Actually the shadows are still a little darker than the first example (other photo's I have from same scene and tripod location).

 

I have Yves' light rig in here as well as 1 sun.

How do you do a fuzzy klieg? Is that anything like fuzzy dice (sorry couldn't resist).

 

Thanks for helping out.

David

[ddustin]

Here is the latest version (fixed the link).

 

http://www.dustinproductions.com/files/Dustin-3-views-b.m1v

 

Also attached is the real image of the road. The angle of the sun is different, but I still need to calculate the correct angle when I'm done.

 

 

Most of the issues have been addressed.

 

The most obvious one to me now is the perspective on the last segment.

I can't seem to get it right. The vehicles look much smaller than they would actually be in this position.

 

The focal length in the scene is set to that of my camera.

 

Robcat, you asked why I sped it up in AE.

The scene played too slow, but the wheel rotations were right so it was easiest to just speed it up (run more frames per second) in AE.

 

1. Does anyone know if AE can handle open EXR images?

2. Any suggestions on how to "dirty the vehicles" ?

3. I think there is a frame missing in the last segment where the vehicles jerk, not a big thing now, but I'll need to check in the future.

Thanks,

 

David

[MMZ_TimeLord]

What robcat means by a fuzzy klieg light is that you replace your 'sun' light with a wide klieg. (I'm pretty sure that's what he means)

 

When you do that you can experiment with the width of the light so get your shadows softer around the edges and darker under the vehicles.

 

Robcat, please correct me if I'm wrong here.

[Shelton]

I think the look is wonderful. As a claims adjuster in my real job, I have not seen this level of detail in the reconstruction of an accident. Most of the time it is modified blocks running into each other. Anyway great job. Here is a link to adobe page for AE

 

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331305.html

 

It states it will receive open EXR.

 

Great job

 

Steve

[Stuart Rogers]

2. Any suggestions on how to "dirty the vehicles" ?

Diffuse maps! Find yourself a nice greyscale grunge map and apply it to whatever parts of your model you want muddying up. For a quick and dirty but inaccurate grunge map, use the Filters->Render->Clouds filter in Photoshop (or PS Elements). For a more accurate diffuse map, you'll of course have to create your map to appropriately match the grungier parts of your models. It might be a good idea to also create a specular map (and reflection map if you wish) based on the diffuse map - that way the grungier parts of your models will be less bright and shiny than the cleaner parts.

[ddustin]

I think the look is wonderful. As a claims adjuster in my real job, I have not seen this level of detail in the reconstruction of an accident. Most of the time it is modified blocks running into each other. Anyway great job. Here is a link to adobe page for AE

 

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331305.html

 

It states it will receive open EXR.

 

Great job

 

Steve

 

Steve,

Thanks for the compliments.

Most of what I've seen has been just that level.

Is there a way to get access to claims adjusters to present this type of recreation?

You could earn a commision ($ cha-ching $)

Thanks for the link too.

 

David

[Drakkheim]

this is really nice i just hope we get to see the big finale

 

I did notice that perhaps some of the reason that the cg cars seem too clean is that they're too bright compared to the rest of the image. And the blacks are too dark. maybe the red label on the door is a bit too saturated as well.

 

in seg 2 compare the side of the cg white truck to the side of the white van in the background..

 

[attachmentid=14375]

 

I played with the levels of the photo a bit so the photo's light to dark range fits more with the cg elements

 

 

[attachmentid=14377]

 

its no where perfect but the cg-ness stands out less.

[pleavens]

Several suggestions.

 

Try a test render in ver 13 using image based lighting and ambient occlusion. The AO will handle the soft shadows, as well as giving the vehicle surfaces a non-cg surface look and the IBL will provide the enviroment color variation needed to make the vehicles look like they "belong" in the scene.

 

I would guess that render times may be fairly reasonable if you use a low AO setting and smooth it with motion blur. (in comparison to using a light rig) The only light you would need would be a "shadow only" light.

 

Careful to use a copy of the set if you do this, ver 13 projects will not load in 12.

 

------------------

 

Question, do you have an enviroment map material on these models?

 

Phil

[ddustin]

Several suggestions.

 

Try a test render in ver 13 using image based lighting and ambient occlusion. The AO will handle the soft shadows, as well as giving the vehicle surfaces a non-cg surface look and the IBL will provide the enviroment color variation needed to make the vehicles look like they "belong" in the scene.

 

I would guess that render times may be fairly reasonable if you use a low AO setting and smooth it with motion blur. (in comparison to using a light rig) The only light you would need would be a "shadow only" light.

 

Careful to use a copy of the set if you do this, ver 13 projects will not load in 12.

 

------------------

 

Question, do you have an enviroment map material on these models?

 

Phil

 

Phil,

I'll probably avoid V13 for a while as I just upgraded my render farm to V12. It looks like there are lots of cool things coming in the near future.

Ya'll are the adventurous types playing with the new versions, I can't risk my production work, in fact I'm a very slow adopter of the new versions.

There is no environment map on these. I thought about it, but figured no one in the target audience would appreciate it anyway.

 

How's business in your end of the country?

 

David

[entity]

It still looks very good to me, but only if you want to push it beyond what you have, you might want to consider these things as well:

I agree with the lighting tips... the truck is lighter than the sky- and the sky on an overcast day is your light source. Your sky "lights" should be the color of the sky... and don't forget to change to specular color to the color of the light source too... that will keep highlights in check. If you increase the ambience amount in the CHOR you will get rid of the high contrast look.

When I create the color for black objects I make them just below visibly "gray"... what I mean is, the object has some color close to black, but not "0,0,0"- something that allows you to still see the shadow... otherwise all that modeling you did goes to waste! You still want to see shadows on black objects, because that is true in real life. The same with white objects... no matter what you do, don't make it bland white... you should look at the temperature of the color you want or are seeing. Even though it's just white... it's warmed or cooled by edging it from gray based to blue/violet or red/yello based (based=hue).

That's just the way I do things... I know it doesn't matter when the clip is just going to be a few seconds long, but it can ground it even more in reality... or what we expect to see.

[KenH]

How's it coming David? With your render farm, you should be plugging out 10 a minute!

 

On the latest video, I'm getting some jerkiness in the truck advancement in the middle section. But it might just be Windows Media Player.

Just tried it in RealPlayer and there's more jerks in that, but I don't think it's in the truck action. It's more like the players are having trouble displaying it so fast....

 

PS Possibly a symptom of increasing the fps in AE?

[ddustin]

How's it coming David? With your render farm, you should be plugging out 10 a minute!

 

On the latest video, I'm getting some jerkiness in the truck advancement in the middle section. But it might just be Windows Media Player.

Just tried it in RealPlayer and there's more jerks in that, but I don't think it's in the truck action. It's more like the players are having trouble displaying it so fast....

 

PS Possibly a symptom of increasing the fps in AE?

 

Ken,

I only saw one skip during the last segment.

The m1v files don't play well with real player. I've seen it before.

The final frame rate was 30 fps.

 

David