• Adobe After Effects

  Advanced mesh warping

  Posted by Lauri Astala on December 12, 2014 at 9:54 am

  Hi,

  I’m working with a very large scale project where I have to stitch together twelve 5K videos together to a 360×180 degree video. I’ve tried PTGui to stitch them (just still images for trying), but there are limitations both in overlapadjustments and quality of morphing, so I cannot do the project only in PTGui. I made a grid layer to all of the stills (camera angles), so I can make a rough estimate of the final morph via PTGui when it renders out the morphed image with the grid.

  So, I’m trying to use AE Mesh Warp to warp the videos based on the morphed grid from PTGui. However, there comes so numerous patches that make the process enormously laborous. The result needs to be very accurate, because I need to use partly transparent overlappings from one image to another.

  In Mesh Warp, there seems to be no options for automation of the patches (or the bezier handles). If I have a dense grid of patches (due to need of accuracy), adjusting patches and bezier handles for each one is an enormous task.

  So, I have a bit map of both the original rectilinear grid and the morphed grid. My question, I suppose, is if there would be any way to somehow automate this process – reading the bitmap grids and make an adjustable mesh warp based on them?

  Any help would be highly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

  (AE CS6, Mac OSX10.7)

  Lauri Astala replied 11 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Matthew Woods

  December 12, 2014 at 3:04 pm

  Have you tried using the puppet tool rather than mesh warp? I use it to fine tune projection mapping, and I find it very helpful because you can put pins exactly where you need them, and only where you need them.

  -Matt

  Need a quick break from motion graphics?
  Try my game Constellation at:
  https://www.paperdragongames.com
• 

  Lauri Astala

  December 13, 2014 at 4:31 pm

  Hi Mathew,

  thanks for your reply. I think it does not work for this kind of large size project, because all the image has to be warped/morphed throughout the whole image area, and the triangular mesh would not be accurate enough (there seems to be a low limit to the amount of triangulars). I noticed it would be very practical, as you say, for fine tuning an image – but morphing drastically a whole image seems not working accurate enough. (Also, there would not be any automatic detection in the mesh pattern.)

  If you or any others would have any other solutions, please let me know.

  Thanks!

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