Chris Smith
Forum Replies Created
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I suggest the cheap but brilliant “Syntheyes”. 3D trackers don’t need manual tracking (unless you decide to). But they do need as many cues on the walls and floor as possible for a realiable solution. A 3D tracker usually does several hundreds tracks on it’s own in a scene and decides (with a little guidance from the user) what the lens was and where it was at any given time. Once you have a good track and set the scaling right you export that data as camera info to a lot of standard programs.
If you can get away with not putting the camera over the talent or to the side of the talent, then you don’t need to track at all. Just key them and stick them in the AE world with their layer set to auto-orient to camera. That’s what most motion graphics houses have been doing lately. Especially music videos that are graphics oriented.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Also, a lot of people see ring lights like they do Swing-tilts, green telecine look, 8mm lenses and such as a late 90’s over used thing. A client asked me to use a ring light on a girl in a MetroPCS spot and I spent a while talking him out of it 😉
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
That would be a normal way, But I believe this tut method allows you to load the clips into the RAM preview for real time playback where the technique you describe will not be a real time scrub.
Or I could be wrong.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I think Steve nailed what they did, However I don’t think it was a ring light, you would see it in their eyes. My guess is some diffused Kino tubes above and below the lens.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Oh, and HD question. Since you are doing this for eventual output in NTSC, then I would shoot to HD Cam at 29.97 PsF. That way you have a frame per frame with no pulldown hassle to deal with and no interlacing.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I agree, test, test , test first. Now for some quick notes:
You haven’t described your camera motion. Is it nodal? Does it orbit? Is it a long lens thing or wide lens thing? What you are doing with the camera can change everything. If you don’t see the sides of your content, then you can just lock the camera, shoot the elements, then simply stick them in 3D space and set their layer to always face the AE cam. That way it will seem like they fit in the 3D world. But this has it’s limits.
If you are doing a medium to lens lens thing where the cam is on head of some sort, you can probably get away with AE’s 2D tracking.
If you are moving the camera in 3 dimensions and you see from all sides of your content or you are trying to stick 3D elements in the FG and still match your content, you should get a 3D track. I recently bought SynthEyes and did a few very succseful 3D tracks with it and it works great.
If you DO go with a 3D track, make sure you have tracking markers on your BG, but also in grid like arrays on the floor near where your subject will be. The closer to the subject you define the X, Y, and Z planes, the more accurate the 3D solve is.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Those presets are no different than the normal way of saving FX presets in After Effects. They will save your effect parameters and keyframes. I’m not in front of AE right now, but it’s right there in the menus something to the effect of ‘svae animation preset’. Check your manual for details as it can explain it the best.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
no, i dig that, been doing it for years. I want to know the math behind the adjustment layer. It is obviously doing something similar to a screen. I’ve always used it just as a device to stack effects I want applied to the layers below but not as a layer with inherent transfer properties that were any different than an ‘over’ function or what AE calls ‘normal’.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
If almost every question in this forum wasn’t asking how to do: Light rays, 3D lines, and growing vines then I would think you were prophetic 🙂
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I figured it had to be more than a simple cut. Going frame by frame, you can see that the wardrobe flies in from the bottom on the BG dancers.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com