Just Looking for Tips

[chrallyo]

Basically im looking for tips and hints about how to blend live action video with 3d animation, or any special effects for that matter. I use lightwave and am only ok working with it. Id just like some insight on how to get my objects to blend in and look more natural with my videos. ok well any and all thoughts welcome and appreciated.

[Anhar Miah]

Firtsly this is huge topic itself, there are some tips online I've seen in the past, best bet would be to google for it, eg "3d Compositing" "3d intergration" etc

Well I'm no expert and have limited experience in doing CG intergration, but from what I hear some things helps to sell the shots are:

(1) Use HDRI from the scene that your inserting the CG
(2) Render out in passes, include shadow pass etc
(3) Use a LDR reflection map from the real world scene, this helps with reflective/refractive objetcs.
(4) Try to figure out the source of lights in the real world and match them in your 3d scene
(5) Match the colourspace of both Video and CG
(6) Re-create some of the geometery from the real word in your scene, it does not have to be detailed, but helps with the way shadows will fall.

And a ton of other stuff, some members here with more experience would be able to fill in you with more details.

[chrallyo]

thanks Anhar some good info there. I know its a large topic and im looking any where and everywhere i can to learn more about it. Im going to add another question, any one know of any quality books that deal with this subject?

[Mark Johnson]

Go to Amazon.com and check the USED prices for Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film. I saw it for under $10 the last time I checked and it will be an enormously helpful book for you. As you acknowledged, your question is so broad it is difficult to cover as it is. It sounds like your biggest benefit would be to get your compositing skills honed (thus, the book I suggest). Of course, if your 3D work looks like crap, all the great compositing in the world won't help you. The biggest obstacle for most people involves proper lighting and you can pick up a used copy of Birn's Digital Lighting & Rendering for about $10 on Amazon.com as well. It's got some useful material that is worth your time.

Of course, then you get into all sorts of other areas such as move-matching blue/greenscreen techniques that are essential if you are serious about integrating 3D into film/digital video. I would recommend that you join www.cgtalk.com (its free) and spend part of every day reading through the LightWave forums if that is the application you wish to make your primary 3D app. You'll find a huge amount of information and also be able to post individual questions yourself and will learn more than most college courses will ever teach you.

You can also find a fair amount of stuff here on this forum if you know where to look. I posted quite a bit of information on the VFX I created for Jack Stanley's short film REKINDLED during the DVXUSER horrorfest. You might find it interesting to check out my "VFX notebook" which you'll find the second icon down on this page: http://www.lodohappyhour.com/

Also, if you PM me I will be happy to give you access to the VFX section of our preproduction site for the short film THREADING THE NEEDLE we are going to be completing in January. We've assembled a kick-ass team of 8 effects artists and five of us are DVXUSER members. We're going to be doing a pretty slick effects climax using a mixture of 3D, 2D and real footage and you can audit our website and see how it all comes together and possibly pick up some useful techniques. From your standpoint the only negative would be that we've chosen to use MAX for the 3D aspects of this project but most serious VFX artists are comfortable working with multiple software platforms.