Matchmoving My First Tracking

My First Tracking

Matchmoving programs are arguably the most important tools in a matchmover’s arsenal. They give the matchmover the ability to take nearly any image sequence and generate a “solution” for the camera’s movement and the positions of features seen in the images.

Boujou makes it easier to add 3D objects to live camera footage in your 3D animation package by creating a virtual camera that matches the physical one that took the shot. It does this by automatically identifying features in the scene over the entire length of the shot.

Click on above Image to Play the Video

Step 1: Click on the Import Sequence button in the toolbox. Browse for the image sequence/movie of your choice and click on the filename and then click on the Open button.

Step 2: The Import Sequence... properties dialog will now appear. Change the Mode Type to Free Move or Nodal Pan. Set the Start and End Frame of image sequence you want to track and Accept the default values for others and select OK.

Free Move - Shots in which movement is not restricted. With these camera moves, the objects that are closer to the camera move faster than those far away, and that means they’ll exhibit more parallax. You’ll often see these referred to in the various matchmoving programs as Free Move or Free cameras.

Nodal Pan - Nodal Pan shots are pure rotation and so they contain no parallex (read june issue). Foreground objects do not appear to move relative to background objects and so there is no way of knowing the positions of these objects in 3d space.

Step 3: If you know the correct Camera settings then double click on the camera in the artifact tree view of taskview and enter the correct settings otherwise leave default. Same for the focal length.

Step 4: Click on the Track Features button in the toolbox. Accept the defaults and press Start in the Feature Tracking Properties.

Feature tracking progess is shown in the Status bar just below the main image window.

Step 5: Now click on the Camera Tracking button in the toolbox and press start with default settings. Camera Tracking progess is also shown in the Status bar just below the main image window

Save the project when tracking is complete.

Step 6: You can check the status/location of the prediction points in the 3d view of the boujou by pressing 3d button in the top toolbar.

Red line in the above images is the camera movement in your image sequences. And others are the prediction points in your image sequence. Yellow color predictions are available in whole image sequence and blue color ones not available in full sequence. If you select them then selected one change to green color.

Step 7: Now add the Test Objects in the scene for veifying the quality of matchmove. Select some predictions on the ground in front of the house - they will turn green when selected.

Click on the Add Test Object shortcut in the Toolbox. In the Test Objects dialog make sure that Ladybird is the selected Type. Select Orient and Move from the Alignment drop-down list. Choose Plane through selected predictions from the Align to box.

When you click the OK button the dialog will close and the Ladybird test object will move to the area of ground. Play through the sequence – the Ladybird will appear to be stuck to the ground

Export the camera points by pressing Export Camera button in the toolbox and select the package in which you add 3D. For 3ds Max the file has the extension *.ms. To run the script go to [MAXScripts->Run Script] in 3D Studio Max. In Maya file has the extension *.ma. To run the script go to [File->Import->mayaAscii] in Maya. For now That’s all folks.

Bleach Bypass

Most videographers don’t have the luxury of spending money on film to achieve this look, they usually turn to mimicking the look in post. The bleach bypass process (also called skip bleach) is a process during film processing where silver is not removed from the negative. Essentially you end up with a black and white image superimposed on a color image. The end result is increased contrast and reduced saturation.

Step 1: Import and place your footage in your composition.

Step 2: Apply Effect > Color Correction > Levels on the footage layer.

Step 3: Increase the Input Black setting and Decrease the Input White setting for higher contrast and brightness. You can also achieve the same effect by apply Brightness and Contrast Filter and increasing the values.

Step 4: Duplicate the footage layer and delete the effects from this layer. Change the mode of the duplicate layer to Color and voila... you achieve the effect that we are looking.

If you want you can achieve same effect in one layer too. Just Apply Effect > Channel > CC Composite and change the composite original to Color.

In Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan, the bleach bypass method of treating film gives a very unique look to a project.

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Ragdoll and Reactor Water

In this tutorial will teach you how to use Ragdoll and Reactor Water for floating above water effect.

Step 1: Create a water object from the reactor toolbar in the top viewport and make the subdivisions to 50 x 50. Increase the Min ripple and Max ripple values to higher number, I choose 30 and 500 respectively. Turning on depth is not necessary for this tutorial but if you creating a wakes from a moving boat then its good that you enable the depth.

Now if you render water then you can’t see anything in the render because this is a space warp and space warp can’t render. So create a plane in the top viewport, increase the number of width and length segments and bind with the reactor water.

Step 2: Create a ragdoll. In the utilities panel, click the maxscript button and then click Run script button. Now search for the ragdoll script (rctRagdollScript) in the 3dsmax/scripts folder and click open.

Step 3: Now Ragdoll dialog box will open. Click the Create Humanoid button and a piped shaped character will create in the viewport. Now click the Constrain Humanoid button in the dialog box and this will create constraints between the parts of the character.

Step 4: Now click the reactor button in the utilities panel and increase the number of end frame to around 00 and done same for the timeline. Now press Preview in Window button and play the animation in the reactor window. If you like then you can give a different mass to the parts of the body. For fun remove the RagdollCsolver and play the animation in the reactor window. Now parts of the ragdoll are not connected so some of them will go down in the water and some starting to float like boxes.

Step 5: That’s all. Click on Create Animation in the reactor toolbar or button in the utilities panel.

Reactor will ponder your animation for awhile. Sometimes the only problem is, the ripples are barely visible. Select the WSM Binding, and increase the Scale Strength until you get the effect you’re looking for.

For fun, you can add a Displace modifier and use the Waves procedural map. Make some materials, and voíla!

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