Mixing live-action and 3-D

[Gohanto]

If this isn't the best spot for this, let me know.

I'm currently a student director working with a computer graphics major who needs to have short film using 3-D animation before he graduates. The idea we're throwing around is making a live-action/cartoon movie similar to Roger Rabbit (animated characters in a live-action setting). Now, everything I do is in Adobe Premiere and After Effects, but his animations are done in a completely seperate program (don't remember it off hand, but similar to what early Pixar used).

Are there any good sources of information on the best ways to go about trying this? And do any of you have any suggestions on starting out?

Thanks.

[Greggl]

Do tests... start with integrating a bouncing ball onto a lockoff camera shot of
a table top.. then do one with the ball on the table with a moving camera.. then
have the ball knock something over/interact with something, etc.

Those few tests will teach you everything you need to know.. from there its
all attention to detail and refinement.

[Gord.T]

Yeah, basically you superimpose 3d cartoon images over the 2d background footage. I would think the 2d live stuff would be done first then the 3d stuff adjusted to match the perspectives. I suppose it could be done the other way around but does not seem very intuitive to me.

3dsmax, Maxon Cinema 4D and Maya have free 30-60 day try-out versions of thier software. You could download one of those and try one. Place a video or image sequence as the background enviroment and play around with some boxes or balls (spheres) and cameras. Anyone around here can give you more details on how to do that when you get specific software.

Oh, I'm assuming he's doing 3D cartoon images, not cell painting like old Disney. I suppose that is different.

After thought: The background video can still be still image sequenes. In fact that is all I currently use.
Any video can be dumped to an image sequence then touched up before/after in photoshop as needed.