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3D animation that needs an element removed
Here’s good one…I’ve been tasked with removing a telephone from a 3D animation (provided as .tif files). The shot starts wide with a person lying on the floor, the countertop with the phone in the background, and zooms past the person to ease in to a much tighter, higher shot of the phone. In the background (and here’s the rub) is a set of slat type wood window shades. Given the 3D camera angle and FOV (which seems to me to be a wide angle – I don’t have access to the original 3D to find out), the blinds are slightly shifting in angle and when I create a mask to drop them over the phone (which I’ve animated, and it’s locked in), the shifting parallax makes it painfully obvious that they’re not quite right.
I’ve tried retouching frame by frame in Photoshop – not quite right – too much jitter frame to frame. I’ve tried tracking the 3D camera in AE, which nails it, but once I start moving the blinds cutout (with Pan Behind) inside the tracked mask, it really doesn’t work at all. There’s got to be a simpler solution – or even a more complex one which works, but I haven’t hit upon it yet. I’ve also tried pick-whipping the position of a second, masked copy with the blinds moved down to cover the phone, and it’s close, but shaky. Might there be an expression that might make life easier? Thanks…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
6 Replies
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You need to post the shot. And in all likelyhood pay someone to do it who does this stuff day in and day out. Someone like myself.
My Work:
https://www.morecompletefx.com -
Not seeing the shot it’s hard to say, but it does sound like a job for Mocha.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Thanks Matt and Ted –
I’m pretty close to getting it, and Matt, I do this stuff day in and day out – I don’t need a sales pitch. I was just looking for suggestions. But thanks, anyway.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Its not a sales pitch. You asked for suggestions and free advice without even a still to show the shot.
What else would you propose I suggest in that situation?
I would also suggest that you dont do complicated roto and painting out on a regular basis or you wouldnt be asking these questions.
No need to be bitter.
My suggestion remains the same.
My Work:
https://www.morecompletefx.com -
Maybe it would be easier to replace the whole blinds with a new 3D render – rather than just the portion that was behind the phone?
I can imagine the pain of all those horizontal lines :/—
David Chappell
Freelance Motion Graphics / 3D
http://www.IncidentalTrees.co.uk -
You know David, that thought occured to me a little while ago. The only thing that bothers me about it is matching the quality and lighting of the original render (or more correctly, the lack of quality of the render – it looks as if it might have been done in Truespace, or Lightwave, or just that the animator had no idea of how to create realistic lighting and shading). But of course I could fake that and then drop in a shadow layer to mask the inconsistency. I’m going to give that a shot – the parallax matching is driving me nuts! And of course the camera setting was fairly wide, so there’s distortion from that as well…thanks. That’s what I get for trying to fix someone’s bad 3D with a patch in 2D. But the reality is that the client has probably a 5 minute 3D piece here, and to recreate it just to replace a piece of equipment in one shot would be very costly.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com
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