Animated Background Videos

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Animated Background Videos // Tutorium Requests

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Post by elxyer // Oct 12, 2008, 8:58am

elxyer
Total Posts: 9
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Hi everyone I've seen some videos with real life videos and animated characters in them. And I was wondering how to do that so I can put my own model in with a recorded video such as with this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uocO56FhbyE. Any help would be great :) Thanks

Post by RichLevy // Oct 12, 2008, 10:27am

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Total Posts: 1140
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A program that can "track" the camera moving for the scene and than take that information and bring it over to TS is all that is needed. Well, you need a 3D application and a camera too assuming you plan on creating these scenes yourself.

This program works with the older side of TS, I'm not sure about the newer side.http://www.ssontech.com/


Fun stuff, there are also at least one free piece of software and several that are a tad bit more expensive... Look at MatchMover, Boujou, and PFTrack. They tend to be more expensive though, syntheyes has some nice tutorials on their site that should help you understand the process better, they also have a demo version to play around with...


Good luck.


Rich

Post by elxyer // Oct 12, 2008, 12:33pm

elxyer
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Thank You :jumpy:

I appreciate the help.

So I can't make my own video with a camcorder and insert it into truespace as an animated image as my background and then place the model where I want it to go in the video?

Post by RichLevy // Oct 12, 2008, 12:56pm

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Total Posts: 1140
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Yes and no. You can do it, but you will need to match the camera position from our camcorder to the camera in your scene... the easy way is to use software that can calculate this for you than save the camera track to a file so that you can load it into your 3D program. The harder way is to do it by matching by eye and guessing.
I have done some simple ones this way and it worked ok... something along the lines of shooting a desk or table and do not have the camera move, than use the video as a backdrop in TS and match your 3D object to the scene as best you can by trial and error...
There is a free opensource program floating around that does what syntheyes does, though it is not as full featured and I think that exports to maya... one of the forum members make a neat little utility to convert ma files to cob...

You'll have to do some looking though and see what you can come up with.

HTH

Rich

PS, this is the case of almost all of the 3D applications, some have rudimentary features to handle this, but almost always people that do this for a living use dedicated software to track the cameras.

Post by elxyer // Oct 12, 2008, 1:03pm

elxyer
Total Posts: 9
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Thank You for all your help.:)

I actually think I am going to try out SynthEyes and see if it works.

Thanks again.:D


-elxyer

Post by RichLevy // Oct 12, 2008, 2:06pm

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Total Posts: 1140
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Tip:


When shooting video try not to pan and do not zoom, they are the 2 big no-nos.


Good luck!


Rich

Post by RichLevy // Oct 12, 2008, 3:20pm

RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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Not sure about this program PFHoe can track also, PFTrack is the real deal commercial program, it's used in many studios, but it costs thousands of dollars too... PFHoe is the very affordable version about 100.00 USD or whatever the UK transfer is for 49.00 pounds now. Syntheyes has some great features though and is worth it just for some of those...

http://www.pfhoe.com/hoe.htm


Rich

Post by elxyer // Oct 12, 2008, 3:35pm

elxyer
Total Posts: 9
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hmmmm...

I'm having a bit of trouble exporting what I want to Truespace.

Any ideas?:o

Post by RichLevy // Oct 12, 2008, 3:58pm

RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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what are you exporting?


Rich

Post by elxyer // Oct 13, 2008, 8:57am

elxyer
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I think I got it :) I needed the proper file type.

It seems like a good software. Have you done anything with it?

:jumpy:

Post by RichLevy // Oct 13, 2008, 12:31pm

RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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Only a couple of tests with the demo, I have Boujou and access to MatchMover. One of the things that may/maynot interest is you can do a low dollar mocap system with it and mocap facial animation. That was a year or 2 back that I helped with that project though so I am not sure what the program does anymore. That is a very good skill to get up to speed with, most of the Hollywood movie special effects shops use tracking and rotoscoping as entry level skills to get in the door. If you decide you like doing special effects it is a very big plus for your resume.


Good luck!

I'd love to see what you come up with as you progress.


Rich

Post by mrbones // Oct 13, 2008, 12:35pm

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Heres one,


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCAYRSddwfw



I think I got it :) I needed the proper file type.

It seems like a good software. Have you done anything with it?

:jumpy:

Post by elxyer // Oct 16, 2008, 12:44pm

elxyer
Total Posts: 9
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WOW...

thanks guys!! :jumpy:

I appreciate it.


--elxyer

Post by cirax // Feb 6, 2009, 12:39am

cirax
Total Posts: 8
use the video as a backdrop

hi guys

how can i set video as a backdrop?

I'm new in TS and i can't handle with this at all

Post by TomG // Feb 6, 2009, 2:11am

TomG
Total Posts: 3397
You can't set a video as a backdrop for tS's real-time, either an offline video or a real-time video stream, at least not right at this instant. You could set one as a background for making an offline render using Lightworks, by using a plane and painting the video on it using a Model side material - then when you rendered, it would playback the video on the plane.


Could you give some information on what you are trying to achieve?


Thanks!

Tom

Post by cirax // Feb 6, 2009, 3:22am

cirax
Total Posts: 8
Hi,Tom

Thanks for the quick reply


I was looking for option like in Poser where you can load a background movie and see where you place your animated character or you can use rotoscoping as animation technique.

I don't mind if there is a way to place image sequence in the background or as texture, but visible in workspace side because i like the new TS character rigging and animation with dynapose.


Regards

Post by TomG // Feb 6, 2009, 3:34am

TomG
Total Posts: 3397
Ok, now I see what you want it for :) No I don't think there is such a thing at the minute, unless someone has written a script object / shader for it. Could be wrong though, never looked into it - it might be possible from Model shaders even, but again not sure if the real-time display ever updated with a video, I dont think it did I think it was at render time only.


HTH,

Tom

Post by notejam // Feb 11, 2009, 7:16am

notejam
Total Posts: 191
The mx80 video effects editor has chroma key, and luma key ability.

With chroma key, you can paint areas of your video frame by frame with a color you want to become transparent, and allow video source 2 to show through. It blends two videos and one can be a background, that allows your 3d characters to show through, as foreground actors, in the areas you have masked with what ever color you are chromakeying on. You would need digital video editors that would allow you to get at each frame of the video, an art animation type program that would let you paint out the areas you wanted video 2 to show through video 1.


A method good for pc owners is to get some video overlay programs. With these you can combine video sources, and masking with art programs will likely be necessary. Both methods are not good if you want to change the camera angles later, so you would have to shoot each scene and scene to be blended with exact camera angles you wanted to end up with.


The overlay method is a lot cheaper than getting a mx80 video effects editor, do a google search on vidoe overlay will bring up a lot of programs you can download and try the demos.


Another method is the use of a gen lock, think those were mainly made for the old amiga computers, maybe you can get an amiga and some genlock for it, such as super gen.


These allowed blending of video 1 and video 2, with sliders that control which video seems in front of the other video.

The amigas had a second color for black, that would end up as transparent with a gen lock, but be black while you painted frames., and you would mask what you wanted of one video to allow the second to show in those areas.

They combined the video being imputed, with the computers generated video.



Another way, is to texture a rectange with an avi movie in model side, and do your 3d animation there in front of that rectange. To do this, go to model side textures, and use the file load option and load in a texture that is an avi movie. I do not have vray so do not know if it can render from model side, but there should be some render engine that can do it, as they were making rendered animations back when they only had truespace 6.6, whcih is what model side is.


Think there might be additional ways, as truespace7.6 has projector ability. I only played around with it a bit, so can not say its going to work, but think it might be something to check into as a possible tool to use.

.

A digital video editor will allow you to extract individual frames of a video, and a program like dog waffle, an art and animation program will allow you to assemble those frames, make a short animation of them, paint the masks etc.

But it only allows short animations of 30 frames at a time, but can loop the animation non stop, if that is a workable method for you. It is a free program and find it with a google search.

Post by cirax // Feb 16, 2009, 1:06am

cirax
Total Posts: 8
Thanks for the ideas, Notejam!

Post by v3rd3 // Feb 16, 2009, 1:41am

v3rd3
Total Posts: 388
Here is a great freeware video editor to get you started .... http://www.debugmode.com/wax/


An open source solution that may help is .... http://www.virtualdub.org/ there are a number of amazing plugins for virtual dub that you can search for around the net.


I just recently picked up Pinnacle Studio 12. Have yet to do a lot with it but I liked the price and the feature list.
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