possible to do Matrix camera effect?

[Steve Roberts]

The effect is commonly called “bullet-time”, and in the first Matrix movie, it involved 180 Canon EOS still cameras if I recall.

Forget software for the moment — it’s a small part of the process. If you’re talking about a real person, and you want to see her from the front, back and side … where are you going to get those images of the model from those angles?

I’ll assume you don’t have a 180-EOS rig. If you have access to a dolly track, you can track around the model to go from back to side to front and get your images. Keep in mind, the model can’t hang in space as you do this unless she’s rigged for it. Once you have the images, and they’re sequentially numbered, you can import them into AE and speed them up, slow them down, whatever.

My point is: if you want to do it old school like Matrix #1, with real people, and you want them to float or freeze, you have to shoot with the multi-still-camera rig, or a special ($$$$$$) film rig that does the same thing. Software can then be used to fill in the spaces between the cameras, turning 180 cameras into 360 or 720 and allowing for slo-mo. AE might be able to do that with a plugin such as Twixtor.

If you want to do it new school, you need 3D animated characters, probably motion captured and a 3D animation app to pull it off. That’s how they did the burly brawls in Matrix #2 & 3. Once you do the 3D animation in the 3D app, you can bring the animation into AE for compositing, but AE wouldn’t really have anything to do with the bullet-time effect.

In short, “no”. 🙂 AE can only do this if the model is a 3D object created in Zaxwerks Invigorator, text created with the shatter effect, or maybe a sphere, cylinder, particles or a stroke created with Trapcode’s 3D Stroke.

For more info, Google “bullet-time”.

Steve

[Jimmie]

thanks for the reply.

I’ll seek more info at Cinema 4d.

[Chris Smith]

You can shoot your model on greenscreen turning on a large turntable. Then animate your background (made in 3D in AE or in a 3D app) you can link them with an expression so they stay in sync.

Watch this , it will give you a hint of the potential (press ‘view movie’):

https://belief.com/process/index.php?theme=dream&section=process&project=02.Zoom%20Network%20Launch&id=02.Behind%20the%20Greenscreen.400×300.mov

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Isaac]

guys i just went to that beliefs site… it is awesome. i saw them do the green screen and say they had to crush the black out of the green screen… how do you do that….

[Chris Smith]

A typical part of the keting process is to clean up stray bits in the matte created from the key by using levels on the matte to clip the whites a touch and crush the blacks a little. Obviously this is done to the matte only and not to the greenscreen itself before it’s keyed.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Isaac]

the way your post reads… it sounds like you separate the matte from the footage. i usually for cheapsake, use keylight in after affects to key out green. from your post it sounds like you separate a matte by itself to key out… is this correct? how do you do it.

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.

[Chris Smith]

Keylight is an excellent keyer. I haven’t used it enough to know all of it’s parameters, but many keyers have matte cleanup tools which include some kind of levels. Keylight may have parameters to crush the blacks and clip the whites they just aren’t labeled that way. But it’s very typical for keyers to have lev els built in to tweak it’s matte.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Dotan Baytman]

HI
the link to the movie isnt working any idea why?
thanx

[Dotan Baytman]

Never mind i found it

[Luke Swain]

What program do you use exactly to get those (correct jargon?) interpolated frames?

Because in the Matrix they didn’t start out smooth, it was still pretty stuttering until they did post computer work on the shots.