Motion Track an effect to a scene

[Walter Soyka]

[Joseph Wu] “Is there a way to motion track the shattering glass effect to the whole video?”

Shatter has an option to use the comp camera. If you use a 3D motion tracker like Syntheyes or CameraTracker to solve your camera move, you can have Shatter react to the comp camera as if it were really an object in the scene.

Shatter is very cool, but it has some limitations — it’s 8-bit only, and its texture and light options are limited. For more realistic-looking glass with refraction (i.e., the glass bends light that passes through it) and reflection, you’ll have to use a real 3D application.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “This kind of stuff is best done as a practical effect, and not with AE. You get the necessary realism because it’s… well, real.”

Dave’s right. I tend to think on the post side of effects, because I usually get a bunch of files and a brief, along with the expectation that I can make it work — no matter what. Sometimes I can pull a rabbit out of my hat, but sometimes I have to scrap the effect and suggest alternate strategies, because there’s no budget for a week’s worth of post to fix what would have taken a couple minutes’ worth of prep time on the shoot in the first place.

Since this hasn’t been shot yet, and since you’re shooting it, you should absolutely do as much practically as you can. Nature renders glass better and faster than your workstation does.

The other piece of advice I’d offer is this: for whatever effects you choose to do digitally, shoot tests and rough in the VFX before you bring your entire cast and crew in for the real shoot. You want to uncover any difficulties in photography or any problems in your workflow ahead of time.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kevin Camp]

if you want to do some tests with shatter, shatter does have a corner pin setting in the camera settings, so you could try to track 4 corners of a window, apply those to nulls and use expressions to link the corner pin points to the tracking nulls.

that would probably give you the best ‘registration’ for a moving shot.

it may not give you the realism that you may need, but it may be good enough to enhance a shot, but you should do some test shots to see the limitations and to better plan your real shoot.

if you need cheap glass, try craigslist… you can often find cheap/free old single pane windows or even furniture that has glass doors that you can use. note, that it may or may not be safety glass, so you will not want talent anywhere near it when it shatters.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Ryan Hill]

Dave, is there somewhere I can see a list of all your stock answers? 🙂

[Shawn Miller]

I think you bring up a great point, Kevin. One of the biggest advantages VFX has over SFX is safety. I have worked on a few projects where actors have been injured by glass, simply because the proper respect wasn’t paid to saftety. IMO, you either spend a lot of time testing practical effects and making sure that they’re safe and look good (on film/video), or you spend a lot of time testing VFX and making sure they look good (on film/video). Either way, the point is the same; make sure you know what you’re doing WAY before you start shooting. 🙂

Thanks,

Shawn