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Compositing moving footage into a rotating TV in AE
Hi, been into AE for a while, but only getting more full on it with it recently… just wondering if anyone knows how to / has experience on comping in moving footage into a rotating screen?
I have been doing it manually but it is painstakingly slow and the scale / tilt etc make it very difficult to get right.
The situation is:
There is a product shot that the TV starts facing you and then the TV starts to rotate (spin around).
I have a footage I want to put / composite onto the TV whilst it is rotating.
Have tried a basic 3d effect which helped somewhat, but the angle is still not 100% / I need to scale it up later on to make the whole frame fit into the TV etc..
In FCP I was able to distort the image and do this manually but it produced some jagged lines along the footage sitting in the TV – so didnt look to smooth.
I figured AE could do a better job.. any help would be fantastic Cheers!
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5 Replies
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To do this well it will require a few different approaches. If you can get away with motion tracking a perspective pin on the footage, that will get you part of the way there. In that process, make sure that the footage extends beyond the frame of the TV.
Then you’ll want to matte the footage so that it only shows through where the screen is. This will be easiest if the screen was turned on and put on one of the ‘video’ channels that turns the entire screen blue, there are any number of ways to create a matte from that. Alternatively, if the luminance of the screen is different enough from its surroundings you could pull a matte that way as well using curves to boost the luminance of the screen and pull down the luminance of its surroundings. This will probably be the most involved part of the process.
Finally you will probably want to distort the image near the edges and affect it with some filters to make it look more like it is composed of discrete pixels and is emitting light.
Each of these steps can be fairly involved. If you’re having trouble at any particular stage, let me know.
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Hi thanks for the response!
I am a bit uncertain about what matte to put on the footage – as the tv is a product shot and has been shot without anything on it (entirely black / turned off) with some lighting reflection on it during the later part of its swivel. Unfortunately re-shooting isnt an option… so Im stuck with what I’ve got! (if it was on an AV channel that wouldve made things 10x easier – I wouldve keyed my heart out!)
I haven’t played with motion tracking a lot – if you could elaborate on how to set it up ? I didnt think the 3 Dimensional swivel of the TV on the footage would work with motion tracking?
thanks for any help u can give!
cheers
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This would be a snap with Mocha… if you can’t get a copy of that, and motiontracking doesn’t get you there, use the Corner Pin effect and eyeball it… if the motion on the TV isn’t that complicated it shouldn’t take that long.
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[Charles Xa] “I didnt think the 3 Dimensional swivel of the TV on the footage would work with motion tracking?”
It won’t work well as the TV’s screen turns closer to 90° away from the viewer, but it should work to get things 80% there. Probably the most important part of motion tracking is picking good track points, here are some quick tips:
-Only track physical objects. This one is fairly self-explanatory, don’t track reflections or shadows.
-Pick an element that stands out in luminance or R, G or B value. To check your luminance values apply the Color Correction > Tint effect temporarily. To check RGB values, press opt-1 for Red, opt-2 for Green, or opt-3 for Blue (opt is alt on PC).
-Choose a feature that has a distinct shape, but don’t track to the edge or corner of a geometric shape! This one is sometimes hard to follow. Basically if you track to the edge of a square your track point will probably slide along the edge (as each point along the edge of the square probably looks very similar). If you track to the corner of a square (or other shape) you are a little better off, but you still are risking the tracker moving off the corner and making a run for it along one of the edges. If you can fit the entire shape inside the feature of the tracker (look for a small one!), you’re better off.
Can you provide a still image of the TV? I’d like to see your options for matting =)
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Sounds to me like cornerpinning frame by frame is the only solution here. It doesn’t sound like the tv has any trackable features.
This is something that should have been planned for before shooting. Tracking points would have helped some, but once the tv reaches a certain perspective, the markers would no longer help, and you would be back to hand-positioning frame by frame.
The best way to do this effect – in a 3d program with a model of the tv.Joey Foreman
Editor/Animator
Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA
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