Tracking using 5D

Hi Guys another question here, I know the other side of the class had some major probs tracking 5D shots so here goes... A friend of mine is going to purchase a 5D and wanted to ask if I could track some night time footage he is going to shoot. The 5D has had a firmware update so it can shoot 25 fps now. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Shader Probs

Alright guys just wandering if anyone can help me achieve a shader im after, its not quite as simple as it may look. But if anyone has any ideas such as layered shaders etc. would love to hear em.

Heres my Vimeo if anyone wants to see what Ive been up to.. http://vimeo.com/user2908839

Cheers

Tom

stone tablet modelling issues

Hi Guys

I'm making a new shot in which I have some massive stone tablets in the park stacked together like dominos. The idea is i will push them and they will fall in a pattern, neat huh !

I'm having some problems with the modelling, being a pure low poly and non curves modeler this is proving difficult. If you look at my sketches you can see what I am trying to do.

Image 1 - top left

This is the shape i'm trying to make, I could make out of a square and then try and roudn the edges off but i'm thinking of a curve to get the exact shape and then extrude back. I've tried to make this but i end up with a tube shape without capped top and bottom. (I want this to be polygons as i prefer to uv map). You can see the depth in the image just to the right.

mage 2 - top right

When i can make this model stated above i can move on and make the more complex object on the top right, from there i should be able to make an edge for it like in image 3. Is this made by making the curve shape and extruding the profile aroudn the edge ?

If i can do this then I can make something similar to image 4 (bottom right)

The last task is image bottom left.

I want the US Army star to be cut into the stone, this must NOT be a bump or displacement but physical mesh, maybe boolean operation or can nurbs project it and delete one from the other. I'm trying to avoid nurbs though.

so i'll be most appreciative if you can help me out, cheers many thanks in advance

Seb

Season's Greetings

Hey everyone !!

Just wanted to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !! Hope it is a fruitful & healthy one with all of us landing our dream jobs :D .

Best wishes,

Aziz

Cola Sim

My latest project . Wanted to learn fluid simulation in RealFlow , so I made a simple clip .

Learning to create this sim , & preparing the scene , shaders & lighting took just one day ( I must add that I already made the glass a long time ago , & the can I got for free from the net , so modeling wasn't an issue ) . But the bloody foam took me two weeks !!! & I'm still not happy with it . I tried so many different things trying to make it look believable ( subsurface scattering , translucency , opacity maps , refraction ... etc ) , & in the end I settled on this .

Anyhoo , decided to move on to the next project . Hope you guys like it ;) .

Peace,
Aziz

Software used : Max 2009 , RealFlow 4 , Vray , AE

Shopping incident ...

Hey guys , check out my latest project . I shot it with my crappy Canon Powershot in one take ( brother & cousin were too tired for reshoot ) , but it did the job I guess :) . Comments & Critique are welcome :D .

Aziz

Serenity

Hey guys ,

Been a while . Hope you're all doing well .

So , my brother asked me to help him out with his art project . The theme was to use his body somehow as a tool for art . So we decided to make growing tattoos .

I had to track , camera project , model his body ( for geo tracking & projecting ) & the room ...etc . I only had my canon PowerShot to use ( the normal camera I had with me in England ) , so as you can imagine , it didn't shoot the highest quality of videos , hehehe , which was the trickiest part of this whole project . After many failed attempts , we ended up with only two days to shoot & get the job done . Also because the camera was bad , I had to stick relatively big tracking markers on my brother's body .

The hardest part of it all was removing the big tracking markers & putting his skin back on , especially since lighting was constantly changing on his skin while he was moving . To over come this , I had to build the areas that covered the markers , render to texture ( that means projecting my brother's skin with the markers on the geometry ) & remove the tracking markers in PS . Of course I had to do this on a few different frames throughout the shot & blend them together to match the lighting ( one frame just didn't cut it ) .

For tracking , I had to denoise the footage in After Effects , especially on the blue channel . I had to use relatively high settings , otherwise the track would keep jittering , which is why I used big markers in the end . Also , I used big white triangles sticked with normal glue on his back , as other shapes & sizes didn't give good results . I also tricked PFTrack into thinking that the geometry track was actually a camera track ( to get access to the smoothing of the curves & improving the solution options , which is not available for simple geometry tracking/motion tracking ) . Of course I also had to animate my brother's body geometry to go along with his organic movements ( spine bending & such ) . But if you concentrate , you'll still see a bit of sliding .

I used 3DS Max , PFTrack , AE & PS for this project . The tattoos are from the videocopilot's Evolution floursh collection ( but they can easily be done in AE from scratch should you choose to ) . In the end , I used soft light to blend the tattoos with the footage so it would catch the lighting of the environment .

So , without further ado , here it is ( sorry about the quality , I had to compress it a lot to be able to upload it to youtube ) :



Let me know what you think ;)