Tony Mullen reports that the makers of the Hollywood Camera Work DVD series have put up a bunch of high quality green screen plates for anybody to download and work with for free.
People interested in compositing should definitely check this out, because this kind of stuff can be very difficult to get your hands on for practice.
The Hollywood Camera Work DVD sets are also well worth checking out, although they are a bit expensive for hobbyists.
From the Hollywood Camera Work site:
* YOU MAY: Use the clips any way you want and post the results anywhere. But let us know if you do something cool!
* YOU MAY: Use the clips to make instructional videos or teach a class, as long as you mention us. You may even include a few original clips with our permission.
* YOU MAY NOT: Host the clips yourself.
* YOU MAY NOT: Link directly to the clips. Link to this page instead.
IEALLY IMPORTANT!
45 Comments
Is there a Blender tutorial that describes in detail how to use these to create something like the F15 fly-over video ?
I assume Voodoo could be used for camera tracking of the green screen markers, although I'm not sure how it would handle the person ?
Tonurs: About your question on Voodoo, what it does is basicly tracking the camera movement. The person, is in that "Space", so, why would you need to track the person too ? The markers give enough information points, so the camera movement can be understood and translated in other software, such as, in 3d.
What I meant was that the person needs to be removed from the tracking.
sounds great for getting a hand into green screen compositing.
Does anyone know this?
And when i render scene in HD, i see a grey color on the top and bottom part. i mean in left part. grey look bad . So how can i change that color to black or something that i wish . i try wiki but couldn't find it there.
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Just fo be fair the plates are part of the VFX for Directors Series.
I have watched most of them so far and would highly recommend them to anyone who is trying to understand VFX.
It is an excellent series. If you have not bought Hollywood Camera Work Masters Blocking Class I would do so.
Enjoy! :)
syntheyes is about the best tracker to work with blender.
Syntheyes is $400, Voodoo is free
One of the examples is a pair of glasses on a green screen, with green showing through reflections on the transparent lens. Another is a car with green from the screen being reflected on it.
From what I can see, using Blender's chroma and difference nodes don't handle these directly, or at least simply ... can anyone provide any hints please ?
You are crazy!!!
Thankyou man!
Is it possible to use Shake (Apple) with Blender? As in to do the tracking with it and export all the camera data to blender because I am considering purchasing Shake.
how do i find voodoo ? you can't google it because it is too common of a word. can someone post a link?
google 'voodoo camera tracker'
http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html
I am using a Mac so I can't use Voodoo. And I want to use tracking for commercial projects so Icarus is not an option. It is either Syntheyes or Shake I guess. Though I am more interested in using Shake. If anyone can tell me if it is possible to track with Shake to Blender?? I would be very grateful.
P.S
Voodoo I've heard is a great tracker.
I've been playing with the green screen example of the hand and glasses, with the Blender Sequence Editor RGBscreen1.5.dll . It seems impossible to eliminate the green screen bleed (spill) onto the hand and at the same time maintain the transparent reflection on the glasses.
Does anyone have a solution please ?
Really cool resource!!
@tonurs
You could try to do this with multiple passes. Garbage-Map the other part to protect it from becoming ugly, run your screening, do the other part. I did this a couple of times in AE back then. Worked great. If I remember correctly there was a garbage mapping / rotoscoping tutorial here some time ago.
Christian,
Garbage mattes won't help on the actual object.
I think it may be impossible to distinguish between transmitted green light as on the spill and green that is seen through the lens of the glasses.
Fiddling with settings either makes the spill partially transparent on the hand, or the reflection on the lens ... I can see how to make the hand totally opaque and the lens partially transparent.
Still, RGBscreen1.5.dll is much easier than playing with nodes and possibly just as effective at reaching a compromise on the above.
As ccherrett mentioned and as you can see from the website, the plates are primarily intended to go along with the Hollywood Camera Work DVD training set for effects. I haven't had the chance to watch these DVDs yet, but I do have the set and it really looks fantastic. Their other training DVD set is for blocking and camera movement, which I wrote about on my (not very well maintained) blog a while back:
http://tinyurl.com/hollywoodcamerawork
It's great of HCW to make the plates available to the public, but I also agree with ccherrett in highly recommending the DVD sets.
Unfortunatly only german, but with many pictures, so everyone can follow this tutorial.
http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_Dokumentation:_Composite_Nodes_Matte
VooDoo is rubbish!!
Take this for professional results: http://www.3dequalizer.com/index.html?site=products&id=080430_02
tonurs,
Yeah and voodoo sucks!
On your first job you will find out why syntheyes is so cheap and can do so much. It is simply awesome!
Really voodoo sucks and is a waste of time.
@TonyM
thanks for sharing. very usefull.
@Sirius Black
The Shake manual doen't mention any camera tracking exporting facilitites, but only import of camera tracking in .ma file format (Maya ACSII).
@TonyM
thanks for sharing. very usefull.
@Sirius Black
The Shake manual doen't mention any camera tracking exporting facilitites, but only import of camera tracking in .ma file format (Maya ACSII).
BTW I love your blog!
Tonurs, first read the hints that go along with the footage they will help. Then look up how to setup a color difference key, there is no built in keyer node that works as well as custom setting up your own node chain. The color difference key works by finding the difference between the green channel and the red(or sometimes blue channel). I have a great book that talks about how to set this up with basic math nodes, can't think of the name right now but I will post the name of the book and an example node tree when I am at home next.
Anyone compared Syntheyes with Mocha? A version of Mocha comes free with the latest version of After Effects (CS4). It seems like I heard that the version that comes with After Effects only works with After Effects, so it might not be as useful for Blender users, unless maybe there's a way to export tracking from After Effects to Blender. It seems like there must be a way?
Interesting comments about Voodoo ... it works well for me.
The book I was talking about earlier is Digital compositing for film and video by steve wright. To setup a basic difference key take the source -> seperateRGB -> curves -> math(subtract) use the curves to set your input and output levels math should subtract the red from the green this will give you a nice matt with soft edges. you will not be able to fix bad spill without roto or multiple keys depends on the footage.
@3D Animator: I've used Mocha briefly, it's not really designed for 3D matchmoving, since it's a planar tracker. It's mainly for logo or screen replacement. And the version for After Effects only exports to After Effects. No 3D cameras either.
tonurs,
It fails when it hit a certain point. There are shots that voodoo cannot handle. It has little to no tools to refine a shot if it fails.
It is not a professional solution.
http://www.blendedplanet.com/?SFX_Tutorials:The_Ultimate_Keyer
This is a good tutorial
Thanks, that really is a lot of great practice material!
This should go really well with Roger Wickes' book on compositing in Blender.
http://www.blendernation.com/2009/07/13/foundation-blender-compositing/
Hmm... I'm afraid I still don't understand what this is or exactly what it's for.
ccherrett,
What sort of shots does Voodoo not handle ? I know that it does have difficulty with small camera movements ... it's better to either use a tripod and select fixed camera location, or alternatively to move the camera larger distances.
The tutorial is very interesting.
3D Animator,
Mocha looks like a motion tracker rather than a camera tracker ... and it doesn't look as though it works with Blender.
Is there an open source motion tracker for Blender ?
tonurs,
If you try to solve a lot of shots with it you can tell me.
Try syntheyes and let me know what the difference is. It won't take long to figure out.
ccherrett,
I've been played with the blend file in the green screening tutorial
http://www.blendedplanet.com/?SFX_Tutorials:The_Ultimate_Keyer
... using the hand and glasses example.
I can't seem to get a result as good as the Blender dll. Have you used the "Ultimate Keyer" approach succesfully ?
tonurs,
I used the approach that was one version behind the ultimate keyer and it worked awesome.
The trick is to understand what he is doing at each pass of the node tree.
I will try it out and get back to you.
ccherrett,
Thank you. What wasn't clear at all from the description in the tutorial, how to set up the spill reduction ... and that is what worked least well.
I had also had a play with blender's standard spill node on the same image ... it reduced the spill but left a hard, ugly, miscolored edge.
tonurs,
Same here. It looks like there would be another few nodes needed to create a good spill suppression there. That is some nasty spill on that image.
I will watch the video and see what he did.
tonurs,
Try this patch of graphicall build:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=141438&highlight=greenscreen
I have been playing with it and must admit it is 1000 times simpler and comes out with some stunning results!
As for the glasses green screen plate. I think it is just so much spill that is will be very tough to get good results from.
In the exercise on the site they are focusing in getting rid of the reflections in the glasses.
ccherrett,
It certainly sounds impressive ... I use windows so I'll probably have to wait for 2.50 to see it.
The use of a "screen correction" with an empty platte also sounds very useful (especially with poor screen lighting) ... it might be a bit tricky if there is a video with camera movement though.
My point about the glasses was that I can't see how it's possible to remove the green in the reflection to give transparency and at the same time remove green spill on the hand and get opaque hand color.
I've used the greenscreen plugin with great success:
http://paprmh.googlepages.com/greenscreen
The author of the plugin believes that nodes could do a better job, but not as simply.
Statik
Statik,
A good result. Is the dll you used an earlier version of RGBscreen1.5.dll ?
For a real test, try it on the example of the hand holding the glasses.
Hi,
I downloaded the free green plate "Embassy Shootout" in SD.
http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/greenscreenplates.html
When I run Voodoo, I can track many points. I exported them to Blender and realize, that in the example the moving character (mainly in the frames from 210-300) cause the tracking to wiggle and do not match anymore the original camera movement.
I tried to start to eliminate the tracking points placed on the character and it is a veeeeery time consuming task. Is it possible to:
a) create some exclusion area, or
b) delete easier many points, instead of clicking each single one and to say "delete all"
c) to reduce the amount of tracking points per image, because the greenscreen offers already a good markinf, and therefore many tracking points
Perhaps you have a good idea how to do it the best way, without spending hours and hours (which I already did Wink
Greetings from Germany,
Tom
Yes, it looks like an earlier version IS what I was using. I didn't see him update anything. :)
I did some posting in his old greenscreen thread here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91028 and most of the videos and source are still available, I believe.
Now I have to go play with the new one!
Statik
Cyrr,
In Voodoo, "Max. Corners" sets the number of points. It also looks like you can make multiple selections and deletions using the modelling tools.
It looks like Voodoo has gone commercial. The last free Voodoo version is .95
http://www.voocat.com/