tracking help

saurabh_taurian · 05-12-2009, 02:23 AM

Hi guys

We're currently working on a animated movie and we're stuck at a problem.

...The thing we want is....there's an animated character and and we want to track his eyes and replace it with eyes of a live character. I'm totally confused to how to approach this

...what could be the possibilities to overcome this problem?? Do we need the live character to act out the same way the animated character has been done?? And what if there's a camera movement?? please let me know the solution asap.....thanks

sajeelshukla · 05-12-2009, 03:06 AM

well it sounds very tricky as your character is already animated and I assume it was not motion captured well i would say your best bet is make a photo real eyes in 3d insted of using live action acting as it will never matchup with the character you see you can track live acitona and get camera data into 3d but if you wish to do it viseversa you would need a hi end camera rig but this only solves the camera probelm now actor cant be perfect mactch no matter what he/she's human and we are flawed

so ur best bet is make photoreal eyes if you need help with that go on 3dtotal.com there's a gr8 tute on making photorealistic eyes

-sajeel shukla

saurabh_taurian · 05-12-2009, 08:51 PM

Thanks for the reply sajeel shukla

Exactly!! Camera problem can be solved by tracking and importing the solution but it's going to be very tough to make the actor act in exactly the same fashion. That's nearly impossible. Somehow due to clients demand we can't make a realistic looking eye that would have solved it. Motion capture could solve this problem i guess but you know that's too too costly. Any other alternatives??

saurabh_taurian · 05-12-2009, 08:54 PM

Can you please let me know....how motion capture works?? I mean once we get the actor to act with track markers on his body how that technique is used to give animation to the 3d model??

sajeelshukla · 07-12-2009, 05:46 PM

well thier is one alternative for your shoot but again your costs will rise as you will need a camera like red to shoot a 4k or 8k plate and shoot the actor and try and some how comp in with your character still the results wont be good

well about motion capture you get sepcial setups you cant jsut put markers on a person and shoot it I belive you get some sort of infared cameras or some thing that calculate makrers in 3d space and the software that comes along with the rig will do the calculation for you ofcourse you will still have to celan up animation data after the mocap

sajeelshukla · 07-12-2009, 05:48 PM

oh why didnt i think of this before hers your solution for yes

shoot an actor just the yes very close range and at a hi ressolution straing head on as if you were looking from front ortho view

mask out things you dont need eg his face and projection map it on to the eys of your character and just animate the eyeball movie that should to the trick

saurabh_taurian · 07-12-2009, 06:49 PM

Hey thanks for the reply

...We have tried that projection method it didn't work out perfectly. One more thing about the projection thing was camera angle, I mean it has to be exact for a projection to be good. I am confused about it coz I will have to track the live footage and use that camera data in maya to give that same movement to CG character. But the good news is we'll be doing all these shots on still camera. I'll try that camera projection thing again coz I think the problem was the CG character and live character were of different size adn that way every thing was coming of. Thanks for your suggestion.