Videotutorial: Camera Mapping In Blender

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CameraMapping.jpgColin Levy, the artist of “Handscape” and the caretaker of Icarus (and maker of it’s video tutorials) also has an unscripted video tutorial discussing camera mapping (a.k.a front projection mapping) in Blender with his brother Alex. Since it’s unscripted, let’s just call it “Camera Mapping In Blender With Colin and Alex Levy: Live!”

From his tutorial site:

Camera mapping is a really powerful technique that’s used extensively in movies to turn still photos or matte paintings into very realistic 3D environments. A texture is projected FROM A CAMERA onto the objects in front of it. It allows for some basic camera moves, like push-ins and pull-outs.

It’s actually a feature in most 3D applications, and so far is not available in Blender. This tutorial explains an unothodox way to get the same effect in the best free 3D application out there.

I’m sure you’ll find the video worth your time to watch. Especially because you finally get to use the “make sticky” button in the mesh editing panel!

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    • http://www.anicator.tk AniCator

      Well Colin you’ve now got it in the BlenderNation news(while it already has been a few months on you site)
      FOR THE ONES WHO WANT TO TRY IT:
      LISTEN CAREFULLY because I’ve got stuck by not listening too good!

    • David McSween

      Congrats to Colin and Alex on a very entertaining tutorial! It was cool to see someone demonstrating Blender much more naturally than those slick proffesional, easy to follow video tuts ; )

      I would really like to see more if you guys can be bothered.

      Thanks again.

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy (effstops)

      Thanks for posting this!

      David- I’m glad you find it entertaining! I’m sitting here watching it – I’m at 10 minutes and we haven’t covered anything! It does get better though. After we decide *not* to start over it begins to get better.

      Anyhow, I hope some of you find this helpful. I do plan on creating a few more tutorials so stay tuned! Hopefully I can rope Alex into it too. :)

      –Colin

    • WeWa

      Very nice tutorial. very home brew :P .

      I’ve been trying this out for the past hour, but i can’t get my camera at the right angle/lens strength. Anybody know where I could find some nice info on triangulating my camera position?

      thanks,
      WeWa

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy (effstops)

      WeWa, that can be difficult. We’ve always used the “Does it look good now?” technique. What kind of image are you trying to use? A photo? Are there geometric shapes and right angles?

      If so, you might be able to use a camera tracking program to figure out the camera position and focal length. If you can specify two or more parallel lines in your image for each axis – x, y, and z – it should be possible with Icarus. I’ve never tried to do it before so it could be hard.

      –Colin

    • http://www.konrad-haenel.de konrad8ha

      @WeWa: I had to match a detailed model to a scene of a lake once, and there really weren’t many clues as to where the camera might have been. In the end it was just a matter of patience till I found a working perspective. It took about three hours to get it right, but it was worth it. (Good I remembered this, I I’ll have put it on my homepage soon)

    • WeWa

      Colin, I’m busy trying out the math atm. I’m gonna link a picture in which I drew the height of the camera/horizon, and the vertical axis. I can’t remember whether or not the building in the picture is 90 degrees but i doubt it.

      http://www.angelfire.com/empire/wewa_juicyburger/images/lines2.jpg

      feel free to hit me at hotmail; thesaurie[leave this out]@hotmail.com

      thanks,
      WeWa

      P.S> konrad, my picture isn’t too complicated, but i just can’t seem to triangulate properly anymore…

    • WeWa

      copy+paste the link :P

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy (effstops)

      Yay! After 20 or so minutes of tinkering in Blender with the camera settings, I decided to try to use Icarus cause I couldn’t figure it out. It worked! Icarus was able to estimate the camera’s focal length, calibrate the camera, and then export to Blender all within 45 seconds. And the result is much better. Check it out: http://www.peerlessproductions.com/other/WeWa.zip

      –Colin

    • WeWa

      Pretty darn good. thanks man, i o u.

      Oh! icarus just finished downloading. I’ll be sure to read up on ur icarus tutorials then!

      WeWa

    • sovereignncc-e

      That was definitely one of the more entertaining video tutorials that I have watched; I liked the “tutorial by committee” approach:) Anyway, it was a very good tutorial. I had no idea that you could do anything like that and make it look good!

    • http://www.geocities.com/silgrin4d Silgrin4D

      Well, pity there`s no file download option. When I click the link on their site, I just have to open the movie… but the computer at work can`t handle QT. So how can I download the movie to watch it at home?!

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy (effstops)

      Hey Silgrin – if you scroll down in the window that pops up, you’ll see a link that you can use to download the tutorial.

      –Colin

    • Zaniocz

      I cannot unload the tutorial, does not exist the Link

    • http://we BArrYZ

      Very good tutorial!

      (but maybe better in explaning the texturing)

      I’ll try also with Woodoo Tracker to fined the camere settings (it’s a free and good tracker crossplatform).

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      Hi!

      Very interesting tutorial! Thank you for making and sharing it!

      I finally know what are the sticky coordinates used for!

      I hadn’t used them until now! I’ll try with a picture as soon as possible.

      Philippe.

    • http://www.geocities.com/silgrin4d Silgrin4d

      OK, the problem is that the popup window doesn`t display scrolling bar:O When you resize its contents, the link appears.

    • wvengen

      Maybe this can even be automated – http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dhoiem/projects/popup/

    • roofoo

      The link doesn’t work anymore…. :(

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy

      Hey roofoo, link should be fixed.

    • roofoo

      Oh wow, thankyou thankyou thankyou! :)