PFTrack Help

Hey guys,

At home my major matchmove software is syntheyes, and due to some staff cuts I am now doing some matchmoving with the house’s software of choice PFTrack. I have a strong understanding of it for a basic level, but there is one issue that I am having that I was hoping someone would be able to help me with.

I have an extremely long 1900 frame Aerial shot which I autotracked, cleaned up and added a few supervised of my own. When setting the scene orientation I align everything to the ground plane and all is well. Not quite… The solve goes smooth up until the revolution around the center of interest gets to the opposite side it started on. It is there that the scene orientation is way off target and is not even close to matching the ground plane.

What I am asking is how I would go about aligning the ground plane throughout the entire shot in PFTrack given the info I have shared. Sadly I cannot share the footage, but to give an example; "Large building on the left is center of interest and helicopter does a 180 around it with very little movement other than the general revolution.

Thanks a lot for your time guys.

cheers

Inkheart vfx

div xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmlpa href=http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articlesid=3888page=1Inkheart: Shadows, Twisters Inkworld, Oh My!/a, at VFXWorld./p/div

Senior Compositor

A German based studio is currently seeking a Senior Compositor who is experienced in Shake or Nuke to assist on a week long project at their studios in Germany. You should have experience of creating fire and explosion effects.

http://www.smoothdevil.com/index.php?page=job&job_id=777

closes: 28 Mar 2009

VFX Nexus Bring Shot Tracking And Collaboration to the Masses

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The folks over at VFX Nexus have nice little piece of code up that seems like a great all-in-one solution for keeping your VFX House in order. Aimed squarely at the indi-film and small studio market, VFX Nexus offers a nice suite of well designed tools (some in-house VFX tracking systems look like the control panel of Soviet cargo plane) that’s hosted off-site lowering software maintenance needs and enhancing communication between far flung artists and vendors. It even includes a “Knowledge Base” section so you don’t have to set up a separate wiki. Nice.

LINK to the VFX Nexus main site (make sure you check out the demo)

Share and Enjoy:

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Paper Animation Pt. 4

I pop up books hanno sempre affascinato i bambini ma anche gli adulti, sono un fantastico modo per creare ambientazioni fantastiche e surreali.
Lo stesso effetto strabiliante viene aumentato quando ci sono le immagini in movimento o quando le pagine del libro servono come transizione per l’animazione.
Su MG ci sono stati già altri articoli che riguardano i pop up books, ma qui voglio mostrarvi il making of del film Enchanted (2007 Walt Disney).
Lo studio Reel Fx Entertainment spiega come hanno prodotto le transizioni per il film e di come sia stato difficile concepire la struttura delle animazioni.

Clicca sull’immagine per vedere il video

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Il secondo video è di Asif Mian per il videoclip “Fast Cars” di Aesop Rock.
In questo caso l’animazione è a passo uno, molto più grezza e scarna, ma tutti gli effetti pop up sono stati fatti a mano e molti frames sono stati stampati e incollati sul libro che viene sfogliato.

Clicca sull’immagine per vedere il video

image01

Director: Asif Mian
DP: Valentina Caniglia
Art Director: Asif Mian
Producer: Chesley Heymsfield
Post Production: Evaq Studio

Articolo redatto da Stefano Paron

Any chance to change process priority?

Hi,

I’m currently (non) busy transcoding footage files with Compressor on my Mac (10.4.11, 5GB RAM, 2 *2,66 GhZ Xeon) and was wondering if it is possible to force OS to use more computing power. I got around 3 GB of unused RAM, CPU work load is around 40 %.

Is this possible at all?
Any pointers welcome.

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Hi,

I am looking for a trick or tutorial that shows me how I can create a grayscale or alpha smoke matte from actual footage.

Imagine video footage of something, and then there’s smoke entering the screen. Because I want to put a layer underneath the smoke, I think it should be possible to extract just the smoke.

In theory, I think stabilizing the footage and using a still from before the smoke enters the screen to ‘calculate’ what is smoke and what is back plate might work. Sort of like a difference key, except the smoke is supposed to be partially transparent.

Any ideas for an approach or does anyone recall an article or tutorial about this?

Afro Samurai : Resurrection, trailer 2

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Where artists can play games in their free time because all work and no play makes you a dull boy