motion tracking test....input needed

[chris f]

here's a rough version of a motion tracking composite of a television show on a flat panel monitor: https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/cafranci/Comp%201_3.mov

I think it looks pretty good, but wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions for making it look more realistic?

[ryan brown]

Looks good. at :02, there's a small glitch.

If it were me, I'd add just a tad of noise to the comp. It's clear, and the rest has a bit of noise.

Just an idea...

[Matt Grunau]

Looks good. at :02, there's a small glitch.

If it were me, I'd add just a tad of noise to the comp. It's clear, and the rest has a bit of noise.

Just an idea...

I agree to a point. If this were something filmed primarily on a monitor, the noise (from being underlit) would not be as noticable on the computer screen, as it is giving off more Luminance.

The jump at around 2 seconds looks like a result of having the monitor being almost full frame, and then going partially out of frame, throwing off any tracking.

The color is slightly off as well, but that is an easy fix.

Try pulling back slightly so the entire monitor stays in frame.

Another thing that is off is motion blur. The camera seems to have more than the projected footage. Add motion blur to that layer and it will look more realistic.

[bmistudiob]

Are you using After Effects or Motion, etc....


How long did it take you to do it?

Regards,
Mark

[oneinfiniteloop]

To add to the great advice above, here's what I would do...

Tracking starts slipping a little at the end, you can see it at the top edge of the footage going slightly over the bevel.

Try doing the slighest bit of vignette in the corners...those Dell monitors have a small touch of it. The key is to make it really faint because it's not like a wideangle lens or anything.

Next, I would try to toss a grad over it, maybe use some blending modes at an ultra low opacity, to fake the viewing angle...LCD's go slightly off color viewed at an angle...again, this would be a light touch, but would add to the realism.

Matching the grain would help as well, along with moblur, but one big thing that I noticed is that their is no light coming from the screen. Like Matt said, monitors are backlit, so there will be some inevitable light around the bevel of the monitor. Keep in mind that the natural/key light in the room is strongest on the bevel closest to the viewer so there will be less intense light from the monitor on that particular bevel.

Like all compositing, the details are what sells the shot.

[chris f]

cool, thanks for all the tips. i'm not a visual effects guy at all, but i'm going to the computer lab tomorrow to try and improve things for the final cut. I don't have after effects myself so I have to transfer my files to a PC at school (booo). If I don't have better luck tomorrow, I don't suppose there's any volunteers on here that would like a crack at it in exchange for visual effects credits in my short film (the longer cut of Ecclesiastes)....

[oneinfiniteloop]

What kind of timetable do you have on this project? I could probably knock it out pretty quick, but I don't want to make any promises if your timeline doesn't agree with the schedule I'm on...

Maybe we can trade and you can track this shot that's killing me :)

Just kidding...it's a 3d track and needs lots of manual love...no fun.

[markcheng]

that was the fakest looking thing in the world. it was sooo obvious that that dude wasn't really on the monitor!!!

Just kidding!!! i thought it was awesome. on the file you had, i wouldn't have known that it was a composite. plus your clip was 18 seconds long. if it was a shot in a narrative film, i'd expect it'd last all of 3 seconds before you cut to the person viewing it, or a full frame of the footage to focus on the speaker... i've definitely seen less convincing monitors on broadcast television.

good job!

[chris f]

took some of your guys' advice.... here's the new composite: https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/mzwiesle/for_dvx.mov

[oneinfiniteloop]

Looking good...the shakes in the tracked footage (during the interview) and the shakes in whole shot are a little strange, but that could happen in real life. I would add some light spread/blooming around the edges and be done with it.

[chris f]

I would add some light spread/blooming around the edges and be done with it.

any suggestions on how to do that? (sorry I'm not a visual effects guy)

[oneinfiniteloop]

There are a couple of ways...I would dupe the footage and use an inverted alpha track matte of itself scaled up a little and blurred around the edges and use a screen/add mode with a lowered opactiy.

Here are the steps:

1. Duplicate your tracked footage in the timeline, duplicate it again and then set the bottom duplication to use the the inverted alpha of the layer above it.

2. On the top layer, which should now have it's visibility off, apply a fast blur to it and add some blur, somewhere around 5-12 pixels should do it. This will blur your alpha matte a bit to soften the edges.

3. Scale up your bottom layer a little, which should spread the softened edges over the bevel of the monitor. You want to make sure your anchor point is dead center for all your footage layers, and you only have to scale it very little.

4. Now you need to precomp the two layers that make up the light spread/track matte, then you need to dupe your original footage and use that as a track matte to cut a hole in your light spread precomp. Change the blending mode and opacity to taste.

I'm not in front of AE right now so this is all from memory...I do most of my compositing in shake, but this method is pretty generic. There are different ways to do this with less steps using the stencil alpha blending mode, but I like this method because of teh control you have at each step, and I can't really remember the other method...

[chris f]

i tried to do what you just mentioned (couldn't get it exactly) and this is what I came up with, tell me what you think:

Shot1:
https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/cafranci/Comp%206.mov


Shot2:
https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/cafranci/Comp%202_2.mov

[Arson]

I would also add some kind of reflective hot spot or gradient to give it at least some indication of lighting. Even a fully lit monitor will reflect some light no matter how subtle. Some really high end tools like Mokey will extract the reflection out of the original but you'll have to fake it.

[oneinfiniteloop]

It looks better but the you need to get rid of that harsh edge. Light intensity falls off in accordance with the inverse square law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_square_law), so the falloff should be smooth and gradual. Also add the gradient like Arson said since it does look to even and that is a dead giveaway of a comped shot.

[chris f]

thanks for the input, i'll make a better gradient and see what I can get when I'm back in the lab next week. I'm assuming it would look better if there was a gradient making it darker on both sides of the image? sorry for all the questions, im learning as I go

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

Chris, what is really going to finish this, and sell the effect, is if the screen emits some light itself, thats how monitors work in the real world, so thats what people are used to seeing.

To do this, duplicate the layer, put it on top, using Levels, bring the whites up, until they are just blown out. Then, change the transfer mode to screen and lower the opacity to around 40% or whatever looks good to your eye.