Hasta La Motion!

Hi guys,

I’m planing to shoot a car-scene. we decided to do it on greenscreen as its the easiest and cheapest way for us we think.
Problem is, that I’m not experienced in whats important to make it feel right.

I would thank you so much, if one could share some experiences with us.

The car-drive will be through open landscape as well as through a bunch of trees and forest.

– What’s the best way to create the shadows on top of the actors for the forest scene?
– How are the reflections usually created on the windows? Background-Plate mirrored with a screen-merge-operation?
– What’s the best way to shoot the background plate itself? Filming out of the car while driving? What are common problems? What do we need to prepare? How is this usually done?

I hope these aren’t too many stupid questions and someone is willing to help me with it 🙂

I thank you in advance! I know you guys are awesome 🙂 Thank you.

Hi all,

Newbie to Nuke, but going through the DigitalTutors and FXPHD lessons, so I’ve got a basic understanding.

I’m trying to clone paint over a moving tracking marker (using the same source footage), but can’t seem to get the clone stroke to lay over the marker once I track it.

I’ve tracked it fine, and created an initial clone stroke that covers it on frame 1. Set the clone lifetime to ‘all’, and made sure I’m working on the clone stroke layer, not the ‘root’ layer.

When I try to copy the animated track keyframes over to the clone stroke transform, the stroke tracks the movement fine, but resets into the upper right hand corner of the screen, so it’s offset the entire time. If I try to adjust the ‘center’, I still can’t get the close stroke to overlay over the marker correctly.

I’ve actually got 4 tracking markers (will have eight in some scenes) that I’ll need to do this with, each with their own individual clone strokes.

Anyone know how to correctly track a clone stroke over a tracking marker? Obviously the clone ‘source’ pick will need to track with it.

Trying to do this at least once so I can apply to the others.

Any quick help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks much!

Hi there,

I’m a long term motion graphics hobbyist and now venturing my way into VFX to take me away from the daily office blues…

I’m currently using an FXPHD copy of PFTrack 5.0r8 via VPN and was wanting to try a little project of my own to test my skills… I have a concept but then I’ve hit a snag 😮

Basically I’d like to have a person walking around doing every day actions, and have a beating heart I’ve rigged in C4D beating in their chest, viewed like an x-ray and matching their movement of the screen, which could involve rotation and stretching.

Now I’m fine with the visual side of things – but as I’ve only just entered the realm of VFX, I’m a little confused as the the best approach I should take with the tracking and don’t want to charge along down the wrong path.

Would object tracking suffice for this sort of thing – or would the movement of clothes and limbs throw everything out of whack?

What do you feel would be the best workflow for this sort of FX shot?

Thanks for your help and input!

Hi. Im putting together a pitch for a job and wanted to see if I was proposing the right sort of techniques.
The director wants to have 1 shot where an actor exits a car, but is made to look about 2 decades younger than he is. The actor in question is in his late 40s, and we have reference of him from 20 years ago.
The director has seen Tron and thinks doing a CG face replacement would be the way to go (as opposed to make-up or a younger double).
Im terrified as I know this is one of the hardest VFX things to achieve. Its for a TV production so wont have movie budgets, and as I said is for 1 shot so cant be a too complex.

I considered doing just 2D beauty work in comp, but its going to involve not only smoothing out his skin, but lifting jowls and a slight double shin using warping techniques, so this could get very complex.

My next instinct would be to do a 3D matchmove of the actors face on the plate, use a UV unwrap technique (similar to work I saw on Where The Wild Things Are) so that the texture of the face is all coming from the actual shot footage. Then do paint / beauty work on the unwrapped texture and reproject it onto a slightly facelifted version of the same 3D mesh.

The next option would be to create the face model / texture from scratch using reference photos, and try to matchmove / light it to match the scene. The actor is not going to be talking or anything – but he will climbing out of a car so there will be a decent amount of motion / lighting to get right.

The final option is getting a head scan of the actor and doing the same thing, but I think this is just going to get too expensive.

If anyone has experience of trying to achieve this then I would love some advice. I think doing beauty work on a female actor would be easier, but this guy certainly has the telltale signs of his age in the overall changing shape of his face and its texture.

Thanks in advance.