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Simulating reflections on fighter pilot helmet visor.
I also posted this into the “art of the edit” section, I hope this is not an infringement of some forum rules. Just looking up for more feedback. However, is this is not ok, one admin could delete the “art of the edit” version of the post.
Thanks.I’m currently preparing to shoot a short movie (probably using ad Panasonic DVX100) just for flexing my muscle and keeping my neurons in shape. I will not insist too much on the idea but basically I’ve got a character wearing a fighter pilot helmet (took me some effort to obtain it but right now I have it on my desk) that sees some things, basically fallout / apocalyptic landscapes. 80% of the short will containt face closeups, lips, reactions etc. while the character is describing what she sees. Secondly, I also want to have reflections of those landscapes in the helmet’s visor. The thing is that landscapes will mostly be mattepaitings affter effects and 3D stuff that I will make *after* the shooting. Initially I considered making those before and projecting them from a screen on the helmet’s visor but as I calculated (and confirmed just a few minutes ago) even a 24 inch monitor is not enough to cover the reflection surface due to the convexity of the visor. I think I would need a screen of about 3 or 4 meters.
My intention is to simulate the reflections on the visor in post by precomosing the digital landscapes, bring them as a separate layer into a composition containing the footage with the “pilot” and the helmet and then somehow distort them and blend them over the visor.
I would very much like to know (if this is not too much to ask) what approaches would you guys use. I’m pretty much into doing this myself (along with some friends) but at the same time I’m interested in different opinions.
Thanks,
CB -
15 Replies
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Well, here is what I would try. Of course, I haven’t seen this helment so I am visualizing.
You will need to create a MATTE for the helment in AE. And that matte must track with the helmet movement… as the pilot moves his head.
To assist with the trak you could place tracking markers at the 4 corners of the visor… but you will have to paint them out later sinc eyou are doing a refelction and not a total replacement.
Or you can hand roto every frame and adjust as needed. The more movement the more adjustment.
I would make your matte-paintings large enough to give you room to work… are you shooting 16×9 or 4×3?
Once you have your visor matte built you can use it to insert your reflection plates and adjust transparency. Done.
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Well, I’ll try to come up with some pictures of the helmet as soon as I can. Now, head movements will not be too violent. There might be some rather long shots with the pilots face / visor. Basically I also though of.. well… superimposing the landscape layer, and masking it to fit the shape of the visor. What I’m more concerned with, are the blending mode and opacity settings but I think this is an issue of trial and error.
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Oh, and yes. I will shoot 4:3. I’m gonna have lots of closeups as I said, panoramic would not help too much. Besides I think that shooting 16:9 is *generally* a nonsense as it means throwing away some image space from the already small PAL (in my case) frame.
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a bit Off-topic:
Well, I see how having a widescreen would not help in the framing of your shots,
But I’d just like to point out that in Widescreen PAL, you have more definition than NTSC, and more definitiona than 4:3 if you have the right camera and TV.
My Canon XL2 shows me less ‘image-space’ when I switch to 4:3, but sadly with most cameras it’s indeed the opposite: the top and bottom of a 4:3 CCD get cached instead of the sides of a 16:9.
Hope I’m not ranting.BTW: do some test-shots or photos with your helmet by reflecting some lines or gridpatterns on them, so you see how they’re distorted in the reflection.
If you’re just going to make an image of a “landscape on fire”, then cachee it into the little visor-window with a mask, it will look pretty unrealistic without distortion.I think that’s going to be the main challenge in selling the reflection.
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“If you’re just going to make an image of a “landscape on fire”, then cachee it into the little visor-window with a mask, it will look pretty unrealistic without distortion.
I think that’s going to be the main challenge in selling the reflection. ”
That’s exactly my point. What I intend to do is.
1. Not only crop the image into the visor shape but also distort it heavily using warp effects and/or some lens effects from Tinderbox for instance. I do agree with you. Realism will come in the first place from the correctness of the distorsion, I totally agree. -
I do have the option… I guess. To use either the Sony HDR FX1 (which I utterly dislike and also does the girl that will handle the photography) or the Panasonic DVX100 which I like. I don’t know much about the 4:3 mode on the DVX100 thouhg.
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Some photos done quick.
[URL=https://www.imageshack.us][IMG]https://img317.imageshack.us/img317/2245/00010cu.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D
[URL=https://www.imageshack.us][IMG]https://img317.imageshack.us/img317/1705/00023rd.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D
[URL=https://www.imageshack.us][IMG]https://img317.imageshack.us/img317/2641/00034de.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D
[URL=https://www.imageshack.us][IMG]https://img317.imageshack.us/img317/5467/00040pr.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D
[URL=https://www.imageshack.us][IMG]https://img317.imageshack.us/img317/7518/00056gv.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL%5D -
As far as the reflection effect, when we shoot reflection passes for glass doors and windows and such, the compositor almost always just simply mixes it in with normal transfer mode and drops the opacity low. Another option is to do the same but in SCREEN mode. The only other thing you may want to do is give the reflection layer a slight tint say a light bluish.
As far as the mask distortion. Well a mask is going to create the effect of a wide angle lens. If the actor is not moving much, I think you can create a shape using distort plug-ins, or better yet map the layer onto CC sphere and make the sphere big enough so that if the helmet mask wrapped in a full circle it would be the size of your CC sphere.
Then at that point you would do basic roto so that the CC sphere layer would only be seen in the mask. But to help make it more realistic, you would want to do a Fresnel effect. Which is the way that reflections are stronger near the angles that point away from the camera. Just use a radial grad as a track matte for your reflecction layer and make the center area slightly darker than the outer areas. Also the roto shouldn’t have to be too detailed, I would think you could have pretty soft edges.
Whether you have to motion track the CC Sphere layer to the helmet is yet to be known. I would think that it would be a detriment because when you move your head, a reflection doesn’t move with you, it just shows another part of the world around you.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Ok. Thanks Chris. Pretty valuable feedback.
I have the correct links for the photos:
https://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2102/00012ao.jpg
https://img31.imageshack.us/img31/7646/00056vi.jpg
https://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2808/00047nw.jpg
https://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2850/00027xg.jpg -
Here’s a thought that might be a little crazy, but might work for your project.
As far as the distortion of the landscape, yes, using CC Sphere is probably the best way to simulate the curved surface reflection. Placement on the helmet might be possible with a simple luma-key. You’d have to hand roto out any reflections you’d actually have on the visor surface, but it may well work, since the visor surface is so much darker than the helmet.
I’m a little unclear as to how you intend to see your pilot’s face through the visor. It looks pretty much black in these photos. Unless you’re planning on doing very close shots of her face without the visor down and just putting the reflection over these.
I’ll be interested to see how these shots work. I’ve been toying with a similar effect putting a human actor inside a CGI astronaut body. I’d been figuring on using the 3D reflections off the CGI model, but this might be a better approach for some shots.
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