I wonder if thats a Job for AE…

[Mylenium]

[karim] “Anyhow… First I wonder if 30 Minute Sequences 3D tracked are heavy stuff considering file-size and render-times.”

Takes a week to setup, a week to calculate and all the time you have to keep your fingers crossed nothing crashes. This is pretty heavy and I would even dare to say way beyond anything feasible. Most shots of this kind are no longer than 5 minutes and even those take days to get a halfway usable match.

[karim] “Second… when I track and get the camera-data (Maja I guess)I sure can import it in AE, but how do I place a layer with canals and buildings in my comp with the clip+camera movement so they fit in the picture.”

Most likely you’d have to place your stuff on 3D-layers in a sub-comp and than rotoscope/ mask that sub-comp in the main comp to get out the overlap of buildings, trees and so on. Yet even more work.

The whole project seems a bit out of league not only in terms of what AE can do but also how much work one person or a small team can do. You should look into other options. Personally I’d probably only stabilize the footage and then use it as front projections on simplified stand-in geometry in a 3D program. I wouldn’t aim at ultimate perfect matchmoving but rather create some nice camera moves that capture the mood and try to avoid “swimming” of the overlays as much as possible.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Karim Daire]

Thanks for the quick reply. Well I thought that this is a little to much for an AE-Intermediate.
Anyway, which 3D tracker did you work with and if I timelapse the clips (Material is already filmed with a stabilized camera-system on Betacam-SP) to 5 Minutes, would rendering then be in the range of possible?

And what to you mean by:

” use it as front projections on simplified stand-in geometry in a 3D program”

how is “front projection” meant? Just like running the clip in background and fitting your 3D perspectives into it by hand?

Karim

[Mylenium]

[karim] “Anyway, which 3D tracker did you work with and if I timelapse the clips (Material is already filmed with a stabilized camera-system on Betacam-SP) to 5 Minutes, would rendering then be in the range of possible?”

Well, I do not do the tracking myself (as we so rarely need it, we outsource it to anothe company), but I have had a chance to test pretty much all available tools and personally I think Matchmover is a good combo between acceptable speed and good results. PFTrack seems to be even better quality wise, but is pretty slow and requires a lot of manual intervention.

Speeding up your footage won’t do much good, it will only make the results less precise. Unless you intend to use such sped up clips in the final videos, I’d stay away from this method – you’d end up with data that equals a linear and thus jumpy camera track once you stretch your tracking data to the full length again.

Front Projection is a method to use photos or live video in 3D programs – you model simple geometry like cubes and project your footage on them as seen from the camera. This will make the geometry effectively “disappear” but since it gives you obscuration, you can e.g. still have an airplane fly behind a mountain and get the correct look.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Steve]

I dunno if this could help, but maybe you’re looking at this the long way, how bout just freezing the frame where you really wanna focus the canal or the buidling, maybe only keep a few seconds, a minute at most, I mean you’re going to fly over it either way. Wouldn’t this keep the effect you’re going for and ease your workload?

[Mylenium]

Yeah, I think that would be a very sensible compromise and second that suggestion.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Karim Daire]

Thanks a lot for your comments. It looks like this is way too much for us. We had a version proposed where I worked with still pictures to include the details.
The thing is that our client keeps telling about a planning-bureau where they showed the aerials and marked objects which were tracked realtime. Is there any special software or must that have been kind of pre-tracked?

Anyway, I will cut down on this before my head explodes! 🙂
Thanks again,

Karim