Human Displacement Bump Map

[Steve Roberts]

Here’s a thought: shoot an dancer in a full gray leotard, standing, on a greenscreen background. Light that dancer from both sides so the body’s edges are white, but the center of each body mass falls off to black. Choreograph the dancer’s movements as if on an invisible vertical bed. This is why I suggest a dancer — they can be imaginative with their bodies.

Key out the dancer and use the resulting video as the displacement map in a real 3D app, or AE CS5 with Forge Freeform. You might have to invert the map.

It might work … I’d test it with a mannequin or action figure first. No, you can’t use my Franklin Delano Roosevelt action figure.

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Similar to what Steve was suggesting, I would try to put a person to move face down on a bed and cover it with a white sheet. This way you can get nice fold detail also and not just the person. Light the sheet from top making sure that there’s a nice falloff to black to the sides. Shoot from the top, straight down. Invert the final result. This way you may be able to get a animated displacement map.
Of course- do a test first.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist
Bucharest, Romania
http://www.ennstudio.ro

[Steve Roberts]

Ah, yes. Folds around the person. Good idea, Ted!

[Mark Hatch]

Those are good ideas, guys. Thanks for your help.

Mark Hatch
Cosmic Pictures

[Mark Hatch]

One last thought. I tried just using the outline of some keyed footage of a person. Then I added alpha blur to feather the displacement map. It worked great, but the body is displaced the same amount regardless of whether it’s the hand or the leg. Is there some type of way to have an alpha blur, or any other blur, account for the thickness of the area around it? Or perhaps a combination of filters? I’ll keep working on this, but if anyone has any thoughts, let me know.

Thanks.

[Steve Roberts]

The torso needs to be blurred more than the leg, right? If the leg is 40 pixels wide, and the torso is eighty pixels wide, then a 20-pixel blur would be right for the leg, but not the torso. Also conside that the amount of blue needs to fall off in proportion to the shape of the body part. That is, if you have linear falloff from 0 to 100 for a “cylinder”, you are indicating to a displacement map that the cylinder is square, like a 4×4 turned 45 degrees, no?

Another way to look at it: the falloff would be different for these cross-sections: circular, elliptical and diamond (or rotated square). Using Curves can affect this (make the curve match the contour of the imagined cross-section), but you’d need a different falloff for different body parts. Too complicated.