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Compositing actor to 3D virtual set
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That is not possible, since the actor layer is parented to the camera. It cant be parented to both.
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[Evan Robinson] “since the actor layer is parented to the camera. It cant be parented to both.”
WHy are you Parenting the actor to the camera??????????????
This is likely the cause of your issue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer -
Im parenting it so that the actor layer always fills the screen. Because it is a 3d layer, it moves around like everything else
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That layer needs to be filling the 3d camera, so i parented it to the camera. If i don’t, since the camera is animated, it moves around like the other 3d layers, but it does not need to since it already has real camera movement in real life.
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Well, either the track isn’t as good as you think it is or the location and orientation of the solid doesn’t quite match the floor.
Also the actor layer being 3D and parented to the camera may cause strange results in some cases. I recommend leaving the actor layer 2D.
Darby Edelen
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After reading the whole thread it seems to me that there is one major issue- why are you making the actor layer 3d?! You have a Camera moving in the “real world” shooting the actor- right? You are trying to match a virtual camera to “shoot” a virtual set with the same move and that is why you track with the 3d tracker and apply data to the virtual camera – this way the virtual move in the virtual set matches the one in the real world. So you do not need to make the actor layer 3d, parent that to the camera or anything else- it just needs to stay put as a 2d layer with a matte. If the track is good and the virtual set is correctly positioned in front of the camera, then your actor should “stick” to the floor.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
That’s exactly what i though, I decided that if i made it 3d,then parented it to the camera, I could easily shine a light off that layer and have the shadow cast on the ground. How do i get the shadow then? Here
https://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/vfx_sampleclips.html on the second clip, they talk about this topic. When they do that, is the actor layer 2d, Or is it 3d, and actually touching the virtual set? -
There are several ways of getting a shadow:
one is to actually get it from your chroma, the actual shadow of your talent- but that involves some good keying skills and patience.The second is to fake it using a third party plugin (Shadow from RedGiant Wrap, Boris…) or by duplicating your layer, making it 3d, changing the anchor point to the bottom, crushing all grey values to black, blurring the image, cutting a mask at the top with a feathered edge to create the illusion of the shadow losing intensity as it goes away from the subject and then positioning the layer in 3d to match the perspective of the floor and the bottom edge of the subject.
The third would be to make the actual layer of the actor 3d, position it correctly in 3d space inside the virtual set and shining a light on it to have it cast a shadow. In this situation though there should be no camera move to match – the only move should be the virtual one.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
I dont think you second solution would work. I think this would require a render of the shadow 2d motion tracked to the ground
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The problem with only parenting to the camera is that your actor layer will always be the same distance from the camera, which will not place it in the 3D scene properly.
You might be able to more accurately place the 3D actor layer using some of the track points, but in order to eliminate doubling up on the real camera move you’d have to use some heavy duty trickery, it may not even work. I’d start by trying to auto-orient the 3D layer to the camera, then I’d add an expression to scale the 3D layer to keep it the correct size. I haven’t tried this, and it’s likely that it won’t look entirely correct.
I’d probably use the 2D actor layer and create a 3D actor layer to cast shadows only. Of course, as described above, you’d have to figure out how to get this 3D actor layer to occupy the right space and orient/scale itself properly.
Darby Edelen
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