Camera Tracking Test

[Pete Paterson]

Just testing out a tracking test with syntheyes, LW and XSI for compositing. Main purpose was to practice my tracking skills. Fury model from Fabio. Few things I've noticed from the off...

1. Missed the transparancy/reflection pass of the glass

2. If I want to cast better shadows then I need more than a simple ground plane shadowcatcher, I would need to build an approximation of the garden chair the Fury flies over at the beginning, perhaps add some displacement to the shadowcatcher to match the grass, paving slabs etc.

3. The footage was shot without stabilisation in Syntheyes and without a diy camera-steady.

4. The Fury animation is pants and very little thought was given to it other than geting it in the scene.

[Escelce]

Hi pete. Great to see your tracking. I think the LW scene and the footage are offset by 1 frame. When you scroll through the frames you will see that the LW object shifts over 1 frame before the footage does. The reason is Lightwave scenes start on frame 0, where as Syntheyes and Boujou start on frame 1. So when you bring the scene into LW its offset. Try going into the image editor and setting the start frame for the background footage to 1. That should sort it for you.

-Steve

[Pete Paterson]

Hi Steve. I think you're right about the offest, while aware of needing to have this set the same on export and then on inport in LW, I think I reset syntheyes and lost my user preferences export.


It was just a test and I'm already thinking about the next wee project to learn from...thanks for your feedback, appreciated.

[Rigel]

That looks pretty good Pete. I think the lighting on the model needs some tweaks; it doesn't seem to entirely sit in the background.

[bmckain]

I couldn't have told the one frame delay sadly. I thought it looked pretty good but once pointed out, well. :) I do remember having to offset video when I used to pull it in for the advertising work I used to do so makes sense.

[Gordon Robb]

Just had a chance to look at it, and it seems to be comped well. (comments about timing aside). When you export, you can tell SE to use frame 0 or 1 as the first, just can't remember which you're better doing.

Two things for me. I don't think the shadow would be that noticable, you can't really see any other shadows as the light is so diffuse (might be the resolution though). Also, I don't think you need al that tracking tape. I am sure that SE would manage to track that show without you putting any tape out.

[Pete Paterson]

Gordon, yeh the shadows, was thinking that the lighting was so diffuse that they were almost not there...more restraint the next time. The tracking tape was an experiment too..syntheyes autotracker didn't even consider it...my manual trackers aside.

Rigel...the lighting could be better, whole new territory for me, background rad pass from a still of the footage with a rawRGB + diff/spec pass layered afterwards. I did colour correct the footage [not sure if I can really use the word "correct" :)] so that it sat better with the Fury...but again all new stuff and I'll need to chunk down and refine my learning.

Cheers, Bob.