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He's inside the computer!!

24

Coyhot writes:

Hi Everyone,

This is my first test using the new tracking tools developped within the Blender Tomato Branch.

It's just a first try (tracking, keying and rendering took me less than 1 hour for all) ... so there's still some issues. The character (in fact, it's me) is slightly sliding on the ground at the end because, i guess, of a wrong focal value (i've don't change the defaut values yet).

Two frames in the middle of the render has been skipped. I don't no why, and I have no time to re-render again. Remember, it's just my first test, so that's not the most important for me.

All you can see in this video is 100% made using Blender :

  • Tracking
  • Keying (with a simple home made difference keyer)
  • Compositing (really, really simple !)

The shadow near my feet are created using proxy objets with a 0 value Alpha, who contribute to Ambient Occlusion but are invisible.

I saw several pretty good tests using those tools where some guys try to integrate 3D objects into a real scene.

This time, I've try to integrate a real character into a virtual environment. My goal is to create virtal set (using "Cycles" for rendering to test it, too) using Blender for Broadcast productions.

Garbage Matte (for keying) is just created using a subdivide plane placed at the "same position" has me ... in 3D space. This plane is render and used has a mask to extract just the area for keying. If the tracking is good, you don't have to animate this mask ... because you "shoot it" using the 3D camera.

Many other things can be done for a good integration of the character into the set, such as reflection of the real character on a 3D virtual ground using projection in view mode, directly on the garbage matte plane, who can be used to generate shadows according the alpha channel created by the keying .. etc, etc ...

So, there's a room for improvements ... i just need more free time and less homework ... ;o)

Even if tracking tools in Blender are at an early stage of development , there's already wonderfull ! I work with 3D tracking for about 13 years using several software (Matchmover, Boujou, Syntheyes, ...) and for me Blender is really promising for 3D tracking tasks ... and photo-modeling too (thanks to the "Bundles to mesh" feature and camera mapping).

Here is some screenshots of my Blender during the work :

I'll try to upload a Timelapse from tracking to compositing very soon ... once again, I just need more free time.

Thanks to Sergey and the Libmv guys for their wonderfull work !

François "CoyHot" Grassard
Website : coyhot.com

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

24 Comments

  1. Can anyone go into detail on how the figured out what to use for their camera settings and how they found them.
    I was trying to use a web cam to capture the video but results never turned out correct.
    There should be a table of cameras / lenses and blender settings.

  2. There still is quite some sliding throughout the shot, even though it's quite low res.
    I'd be more impressed when I see a digital character or set extension.
    But good work so far!

  3. Is it realy "free ware"? Blender you seem a little obsessed with keeping humans inside!

    "-everywhere we are in chains.."

  4. yup that too --I would n,t make model animals (and give them away!) even unrealistic ones. There are alot of problems with keeping animals and we want to stop bad behaviour. Animal rights people will take action to stop you and I agree with them.
    Many years ago there was a Farm Incident- some sort of contamination problem-near Blenders shed and Blender got a video of the investigation which seems now to have been the concept material used to make the Deadcyborg game we saw recently.

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