Peasant Village, Visual effects in live action
Peasant Village - Object tracking and Body double
This is a Maya Playblast (NOT render) from my object tracking scene (added some motion blur). I felt I was on a roll yesterday, tracking stuff, so I went on and tracked the object I’m holding in this shot (I created it from a black candle and some white pins). I used Syntheyes once again and the whole process went very smoothly. I imported the meat snake to the scene and constrained it to the tracked object, just to see if I was going in the right direction. This is just a quick test - and I noticed some problems right away. For example, I am not reacting to the shifting weight when the snake moves. The actual tracking object will be easily removed in post, it looks kind of weird now when it’s visible behind the snake…
My plan was to roto my fingers in post to make them appear to be on the meat snake. Now I think I will create simple finger meshes with projected textures instead.
I also created a body double. We will use this in one shot, and it will replace the Doctor for maybe 15 frames or so. In the shot it will be kind of small and moving at great speed - so it’s really low poly and has a very simple rig (we’re going with FK only). Some clusters can be used to animate the coat.
- Haha, the picture at the end there, classic. Love it. Oh yeah, and nice job on the rest.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/14 at 01:13 AM
- Haha, nice work man. Really interesting to follow your progress.
Posted by Mikael Andersson on 02/14 at 05:35 PM
- Heh! Thanks a lot for the encouraging words guys! I try to make progress reports often, so that anyone who's watching can follow all the steps. :)
Posted by Christoffer Lindvall on 02/14 at 05:51 PM
- Good progress guys. I love the picture at the end as well. :)
As you've discovered, it's hard to react to the weight when it's not actually "there". The film crews often use what they call "bucks" - or stand in green/blue objects to give the actors a better reaction.
The worst I had was a group of people watching a CG vampire explode on Blade 2, and they barely even twitched!
Dayne
Posted by Dayne Cowan on 02/15 at 01:02 PM
- Thank you for the comment Dayne! Yeah, next time I will definitely think about reacting to what will actually be in the final shot... Looking back, I could have used a hollow tube with a moving weight inside. Maybe even attach thin wires to the tracking object that someone could suddenly pull.
By the way, love all the exploding and disintegrating vampires in Blade, heh :)
Christoffer
Posted by Christoffer Lindvall on 02/15 at 01:36 PM
- Thanks!
It was amusing.. a vampire explodes and everyone just pulls a face. We then got the inevitable "oh, can you guys make the actors react more in post?".. hahaha...
Posted by Dayne Cowan on 02/15 at 01:39 PM
- Haha... classic. -Yeah sure, we'll just execute the "make crowd react to exploding vampire" script. No worries! Easily fixed in post! :D
Posted by Christoffer Lindvall on 02/15 at 04:35 PM
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