Hasta La Motion!

###The challenge:

I used to be very much into the CGI 10 years ago (yikes!) so I would appreciate your CG advice/wisdom of what is easily doable with today’s tools.

The goal is to take someone’s logo or text, and make a photorrealistic image (ie. average person in the street can’t tell it’s CG) of the logo/text as a sign in a real room.

End result something simple like this:

Or this:

###My assumption:

One can create the 3d shape/text, give it basic metal/brass texture, render it high res, and integrate it into an office photograph with Photoshop.

a) is the assumption of the process correct or am overlooking major complexity?

b) how many hours would an experienced designer take to go from start to finish given the complexity of the first examples?

c) any other comments or remarks I should take into account? (ie. best 3d software for this)

Thanks a lot!

So I did a panning shot from a balcony down on a parking lot. I opened it up in Boujou and tracked the features.. even managed to find 4 gold points that would stay in the entire shot.
However, even after doing the nodal tutor included with Boujou, I find it hard to get a solve that is accurate in Cinema 4D.

Are there anything specific I need to worry about when tracking a panning shot that is filmed downwards on a plane surface?

Would I be correct in assuming that when filming downwards and the camera point is directly on the plane in 3d view, then many of the points are supposed to be below the plane?

Any other tips that could help me along? 🙂

Appreciate it…

Torben

FRONT
LEFT
TOP

TURNTABLE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpNkqUf8LOs
DOWNLOAD MOV

material settings

there are 3 spots light and hdri for a bit of reflaction
thank’s 🙂

So its my first time posting and hopefully someone has the answer 🙂

In regards to compositing, either 2 separate videos or with cgi, one thing that has me stuck is when there is some sort of interaction.

What I mean is when something for video 1 interacts with video 2 thats been masked in for example. Say when someone hands someone something. How is it made to look 100% spot on?

If you take a look at this video and go to the shoot from 1:50

you can see how its not perfect but close, but then in the final shot, when he hands him the stick and hat its 100% perfect.

So what is being done it to turn a "almost there" into a perfect fit?

I’m needing to roto a woman out of a wooded environment, and then place her onto another background plate (another wood). The footage was shot in DVCPRO HD. The challenges I’m running into are:

1. It’s hard to roto something you can’t see the outline of! The hands/fingers turn into a blurry blob every few frames, and the individual fingers are such a small part of the shot, it’s hard to see enough edge detail to trace even when they are somewhat distinguishable. So I go from lots of points around fingers, to not knowing what to do with all of them when they turn into a blob.

2. Fluffy hair. Is it even possible to roto it? I’ve been warned that I’ll run into "fluttering."

I’ve posted screenshots (per above) of my roto attempts here. If anyone has suggestions, and is willing to share, I’d be very grateful!

Thanks!!!
Therese