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Earth zoom in from space to street level
I work for a small post production company and a client wants to do a slow zoom in on the earth from space to ground level for a 30 sec spot – Ive done a couple tests with tiling google earth images but not only is this tedious but by the time i get out to the city level the resolution demands cause my computer to really drag – When this effect is done on tv, it’s usually very fast to hide the transitions but this needs to be a 20 sec slow, smooth move – can anyone offer any insight into a clever solution – or really your thoughts on any solution at all?
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5 Replies
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this was actually just discussed in the basics forum here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/202/875152?pview=t#head
but i think your right about the slowness of the move. you may be able to use the method described in the previous post but with more layers. you also could try one of the non-free versions of google earth or find/pay someone with curious maps, new versions can use images from microsoft live (google maps rival) for satellite imagery.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
You know that you are commiting a criminal act by infringing their conditions for use, do you? That aside, most likely you simply need a few good aerial shots to work with in the finer zoom levels (along with properly licensed satellite imagery for the farther out parts) and those don’t come for free. Other than that there’s no general recipe. You will definitely have to make some corrective warping/ morphing part of your plan to line up items from different resolutions. Because of the polar distortion of the images along with lens distortion you will always experience jumps and “swimming” of one or the other item. The only tool that would be able to do this in an acceptable manner is of course RE:Flex and it’s not cheap as is the imagery. So unless our client is really willing to pay a lot of money, I’d try to convince him that all this is a bad idea. An alternative would be to approach this on a more abstract level and make use of tools such as Courious Worldmaps.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thanks for the feedback – I’m aware google earth is copyrighted , but I needed a way to test out the theory just to see how plausible it was – satellite imagery will be another cost passed on to the client – sounds like my approach was the right one although it will still be a bit of a nightmare and like you said Mylenium – very expensive for the client so I’ll try and sell the producers on a lower cost alternative – and out of curiosity – how is Curious Worldmaps more abstract? I was under the impression that they pulled satellite images on the fly – so that program would almost be a perfect solution for this problem, although a cost prohibitive one –
thanks guys -
[travist] “how is Curious Worldmaps more abstract? I was under the impression that they pulled satellite images on the fly – so that program would almost be a perfect solution for this problem, although a cost prohibitive one -“
No, for the most part not. It is fully database-based, meaning that each part of it is defined as a separate tile/ element that is assembled on the fly, e.g a tile contains all the roads on one layer, the height info on another, borders on another etc.. Based on the rules you define for the coloring and look, it will then be assembled as needed. The parts themselves are elaborately prepared very much like e.g. the USGS prepares it’s data, meaning that most surface points primarily exist as an abstract coordinate point with associated info. It is possible to overlay satellite imagery, though, but usually it looks better without it as the sattellite photos often have a lower resolution then the database. I didn’t mean that you need to get a license of the product yourself, but if you are living in an area with a halfway large city and associated TV station, there is a good chance you can find a service facility associated with the TV station that have one and you could ask them to create a fly-in for you… It would definitely be cheaper than the days you would spend yourself on trying to bring together other stuff from different sources.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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I haven’t read the other Basics thread but we’ve always inserted a cloud or fog layer to help hide drastic steps in the flight path. You have to be careful not disrupt the illusion, just takes some practice and tweaking of the cloud fractals. We have also resorted to an image of an airplane (or balloon, bird, winged monkey, ite) flying in front of the camera to mask a transition.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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