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Method to add my own adverts in time square and maintain 3D space?
Hi from 21 degrees C about to rain, whatever happened to summer York UK 🙂
OK here goes…
I am going to create a time lapse video of a busy high street hotel and use the window frames as spaces to ad my own images, a bit like this:
But I can see a problem… In the lower windows of the hotels objects will naturally pass infront of the windows, cars, people etc. I want these objects to still appear infront of images i add in the window frames.
Put another way the following image is a grab from a time lapse video.
In the above image, theoretically if i wanted to add my own times square add to Time lapse footage and fake the appearance of objects still walking / passing infront of it is Mocha the key? Just after some guid lines of how to tackle this please.
Realise Ive waffled so hard to explain visula effects sometimes 🙁
Any insights welcome 🙂 -
7 Replies
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What you’re looking to do is called rotoscoping. You can use masks or the rotobrush in After Effects. Either way it will take a good chunk of time. If you need to do motion tracking or camera tracking, that adds another layer (pun intended) of difficulty. I suggest learning the basics of rotoscoping first, and then deciding what is worth it to do. Unless you have a big budget of course; then do whatever you need to. 😉
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The huge challenge I see is the fact that this is time lapse footage. Take, for example, the couple next to the NYPD patrol car: they are very blurred, which is generally the nature of moving object in time lapse, due to longer exposures. I would normally suggest a corner pin (since the perspective is pretty simple – so Mocha would be overkill), then use the Roto-Brush to mask the people passing in front of the composite.
I would suggest trying the Roto-Brush with a heavy feathering on the mask, and you might be able to pull it off, and have it look real. If you have the option to shoot the time-lapse yourself, I would suggest doing a short test at a few different shutter speeds. Find the shortest speed which gives you the image you want, but also puts less of a motion blur on moving elements in the scene. Then add the Roto-Brush (do the tutorials on it before just jumping in) to the moving figures. Then, if you want the blurred motion look, you might use RSMB (ReelSmart Motion Blur) to add back the motion blur artificially.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
1) You might be able to pull a key for the windows — totally depends on the footage.
2) Given that it’s timelapse, you probably won’t need to rotoscope a single object consistently over multiple frames. That means you can be a bit sloppier and still get very good results because you won’t have to worry about edge consistency from frame to frame. You could get a lot done with simple masks or paint.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
You’re right Walter! My first thought was bringing in the timelapse frame by frame to a video comp, then using the Roto-Brush. But won’t the masking in each frame be likely to result in a choppy look in the final render? I’ve tried retouching video, for example, frame by frame in Photoshop, and I’ve never had a result I liked as much as having worked with the AE tools. This may be a learning experience for me…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Joseph W. Bourke] “But won’t the masking in each frame be likely to result in a choppy look in the final render? I’ve tried retouching video, for example, frame by frame in Photoshop, and I’ve never had a result I liked as much as having worked with the AE tools.”
It’s a timelapse, so unless the temporal resolution is very high (in other words, unless the pictures are taken one after another really quickly), you are not likely to have too many moving-but-persistent objects across frames.
In other words, someone walking on the sidewalk may appear in frame 1, but will be gone, or at least significantly further through the frame, by frame 2. There’s nothing for roto-brush to do there. A timelapse is more a series of stills than a moving video, so you don’t need to worry about chatter or boiling edges so much.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Thank you everyone for giving me an approach i can follow, I’m going to have a crack at this realistically next week as I’m capturing the time lapse this week.
Will update with progress here when ive got something to show 😉
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As I can see there is a high contrast between the board and the subjects that move in front of it.
Maybe you dont need rotoscopy to do it.
Maybe if you increase the contrast and make use of some keying, like linear color key, etc and some smart refinement of the mask, you can generate a matte for your custom image that will autmatically cut out the subjects in front.
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