[Mike Sevigny]

hey Mahesh,
What you’re describing is not an easy shot but is completely doable. It sounds like what you’re having trouble with is the animated camera.

The fist thing you’ll need to do is track the camera (matchmove). There are a number of software packages that can accomplish this task, including After Effects. To launch AE’s Camera Tracker, select the clip in the timeline and click Animation>Track Camera. AE’s Camera Tracker is fantastic for 95% of shots you throw at it.

In cases where the track is more complex, you will require a dedicated matchmoving package. For this, I recommend SynthEyes https://www.ssontech.com/ because of its ease of use, robust tools and price. When you track a camera in a matchmoving package, it helps to know what physical camera was used. Once you have the camera model, look it up on https://vfxcamdb.com/ and write down the ‘Sensor Size’ which is also known as ‘Filmback Size’. Together with the lens info, the sensor size will help track the camera accurately when using a dedicated matchmoving package like Syntheyes. Here are a few other matchmoving packages you can look into, PFTrack, 3D Equilizer, Boujou..

Once the shot is tracked: You can either add a 2D image of the desert where the ground plane is and roto the stadium back on top of it. OR if the desert asset is 3D, you can take the tracked camera over to your 3D package and render the desert from the tracked camera’s perspective. When you import that 3D render into After Effects, it’ll line up perfectly with the footage so you can roto the stadium back on top of the 3D render and composite.

It’s impossible to tell what the best method would be without seeing the shot. In some cases, using Mocha to track the ground and replace it with an image (of the desert) can also work without the need to track any camera. However, if there is parallax in your desert scene, you will want to use a 3D render instead of a 2D image.

Note: You used the term ‘Zoom’ but I think what you mean is that the drone is flying out of the stadium into the sky revealing the stadium exterior as the shot gets wider. Animated ‘zoom’ means that the focal length of the camera is animated which is more complex to track.

Hope this helps,
Mike Sevigny
https://www.torusmedialabs.com

[Mike Sevigny]

As of the latest version of After Effects, Cinema 4D is at version R16 (16.028) (Build RB113929)
After Effects should launch the Studio version if you have it installed but the Lite version included with AE is not the latest.

Mike Sevigny
https://www.torusmedialabs.com

[Mike Sevigny]

Hey James,
That does look like a rock and a hard place. I’m not sure how Mettle’s tools work but if your map assets are 2D cards in 3D space then you should be able to angle them correctly for each 360 still. I noticed that your horizon line is not a straight line, are you doing this in each cube face and then outputting from there, or are you working in a 360 comp (in the attached still)?

There is another 360 toolkit for After Effects you can try, Canvas 360 Pro.
You can get the (free) Lite version here: https://torusmedialabs.com/
Canvas 360 Lite has limitations but if you’re only using stills and a handful of layers in your composition then you should be fine (no watermark).

Here are some tutorials:
https://torusmedialabs.com/tutorials/
(scroll down and click on Canvas 360 Lite for the Lite tutorials)

Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

If you like to animate static images I would check out Mettle’s Freeform Pro:
https://www.mettle.com/product/freeform-pro/

It’s basically a 3D Meshwarp.

Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

Although AE’s 3D Tracker is very powerful, it has very few settings. I wouldn’t count on it for something like this, you’ll need an actual Matchmoving package like PFTrack, Boujou, Syntheyes or 3D Equalizer. Any of these will let you identify the distance between markers among other things.

Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

Hey Philipp,

I’ve done a few of these for corporate website ‘How-To’ videos. I tried several solutions including recording the screen in real-time. For this I found that ‘Snag-It’ (Windows) was the best solution, it gave me the best framerate (~10fps). Since I do a lot of screen capturing I’ve since dedicated a separate machine to do the capturing using a BlackMagic Intensity Pro. My main working computer has dual monitors (TitanX) with a 3rd output mirroring one of the monitor’s outputs into the Intensity Pro on the other computer which is recording in realtime. This allows me to record in 1920×1080 @ 23.976 with no dropouts whatsoever.

However.. I found that using video screengrabs was detrimental when making these videos because any changes had to literally be re-recorded and creatively spliced in. Since I was working on corporate websites things would change on a daily basis (new button, text body, graphic, etc).

I found that the easiest and most flexible way to achieve this was to create a library of stills of the website and anything I needed. This meant taking screengrabs of the website (in all states, like dropbox clicked & unclicked) in highres, piecing the different pages together in photoshop and downloading all the different mouse cursors I needed (from google). The benefit of doing it this way was more than just being able to swap the graphics easily, it also allowed me to dynamically animate the page with motion blur, really narrow down the timing, creatively animate between the pages and add custom highlights anywhere I wanted. It sounds like a huge undertaking but once you have all your assets ready to go it’s pretty straight forward and produces the best results in my opinion.

Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

We’ve successfully shot some stuff in a very dark space with a handheld camera using ‘throwies’. They’re cheap and can be painted out relatively easily (over black). Might be useful for some of your setups.
https://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Throwies/
Keep in mind that the light can bleed (slightly) into the edge of your subject if they cross in front of them. This can usually be handled in post but if it happens dozens of times throughout the video you might be kicking yourself.

Good luck,
Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

Hey Marcus, sweet spot.

The above suggestions are great but I’ll throw in a few more links for you to explore. It looks as though most of the projections are flat (2D) and that can be achieved relatively easily. 3D Projection mapping in AE is much trickier but can render better results. Have a look at these links..

2D Projection Mapping in AE:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_camera_projection/

3D Projection Mapping in AE:
https://vimeo.com/87376234

Here is an example of 3D Projection Mapping in AE:
Video: https://vimeo.com/152736382
Breakdown: https://vimeo.com/152088856
Password: tms2016

Hope this helps,
Mike Sevigny

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[Mike Sevigny]

Hey Yosha,
Your videos are down so it’s hard to see the seams you’re referring to but there are some known issues with 360 video in AE.

A) One of which is that glows and blurs will cause problems with the seams in your equirectangular (LongLat) output. I’m assuming that you’re using those for galaxy effects. This is the reason Mettle has released their Post Effects package that addresses this issue by allowing you to add seamless glows, sharpen, blurs, etc. directly to the equirectangular output.
B) There’s also issues with particular and other 3D plugins when the effects come too close to the camera. Those issues are with the plugins and not with Skybox.

I’m not sure if this will solve your problem but it’s important to know when working in 360 inside of AE. These glitches in the workflow will be addressed in the future but for now 360 artists still have the above limitations.

Mike Sevigny

[Mike Sevigny]

[mick dijk] “the ”fx”’ checkbox is gone”

I’m assuming you mean the ‘fx’ checkbox on the layer in the timeline. You should be able to ‘toggle switches/modes’ to reveal that checkbox again (keyboard shortcut F4 on PC). You can also click on the ‘Switches / Modes’ button at the bottom of the timeline window.

[mick dijk] “if i insert a effect in wont do anything with the text”

Some effects don’t have any result when the settings are default. Try to add a ‘blur’ to the text and crank up the settings. You should see the results. It’s hard to say what the problem is here without additional info about the comp and specific effects.

Hope that helps,
Mike Sevigny