groveChuck
U-matic Member
Pretty freakin' cool... :shocked:
Jonas Naimark, the motion designer at Teehan+Lax who developed the idea and created the video:
The idea was sparked from browsing Vimeo and seeing how people were pushing timelapse in new directions. I thought maybe Google Maps and Street View could be used to make my own hyperlapse video.
The first step was finding locations on Google Street View that worked well for the video. There were several things I looked for: beautiful locations, long stretches of smooth road, and consistent imagery that was captured by a single Street View car. It was difficult to find locations that met these three criteria. It turns out much of Street View is a mish mash of imagery taken at various times by different cars. Many routes were unusable because the images would jump around to different time periods ruining the effect, or the road was simply too bumpy.
After finding a suitable location I used software our Labs team built to plot camera animations and capture the Street View imagery. From there I assembled the image sequence in After Effects and stabilized it, added motion blur, cleaned up any artifacts and color corrected the footage.
VVS: How did you make the transitions between the different locations so seamless?
Since the camera is moving so fast I knew the transitions had to be seamless for the video to work. I built it like a roller coaster, so that one shot lead to the next creating one continuous path for the camera to move along. I also tried to match the horizon lines between shots to make the transitions smooth. I built the video linearly, so at the end of every shot there was a certain horizon line I tried to match with the next shot. Locations that had flat horizons were easy to match and transitioned perfectly. Some locations, like urban or mountainous areas, had horizons that were impossible to find perfect matches for. What mattered most for maintaining smooth transitions was having the camera always facing and moving in a consistent direction between shots.
VVS: The video had an excellent sense of motion — how did you simulate the flips and twists of the camera?
The software the Labs team built can rotate the camera along any axis or pivot around a point of interest. Basically I set a start and end point, then the camera animates between them. I also animated some shots, like the jets flying overhead, by hand. I taped a tiny dot to the middle of my monitor, lined it up with the jet, captured the image, moved forward one step along the road, and then realigned the dot with the jet again.
VVS: The Hyperlapse website is so simple and fun and really very beautiful — why did you decide to create the tool to let others make videos themselves?
Once the Labs team had an early build of the tool and we started playing around with it, we quickly realized people would want to make their own hyperlapse videos. We enlisted the help of a designer and front end developer and began work on a website that could let anyone create their own Street View hyperlapse.
https://vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/403/creator-qanda-google-street-view-hyperlapse
http://labs.teehanlax.com/project/hyperlapse
Jonas Naimark, the motion designer at Teehan+Lax who developed the idea and created the video:
The idea was sparked from browsing Vimeo and seeing how people were pushing timelapse in new directions. I thought maybe Google Maps and Street View could be used to make my own hyperlapse video.
The first step was finding locations on Google Street View that worked well for the video. There were several things I looked for: beautiful locations, long stretches of smooth road, and consistent imagery that was captured by a single Street View car. It was difficult to find locations that met these three criteria. It turns out much of Street View is a mish mash of imagery taken at various times by different cars. Many routes were unusable because the images would jump around to different time periods ruining the effect, or the road was simply too bumpy.
After finding a suitable location I used software our Labs team built to plot camera animations and capture the Street View imagery. From there I assembled the image sequence in After Effects and stabilized it, added motion blur, cleaned up any artifacts and color corrected the footage.
VVS: How did you make the transitions between the different locations so seamless?
Since the camera is moving so fast I knew the transitions had to be seamless for the video to work. I built it like a roller coaster, so that one shot lead to the next creating one continuous path for the camera to move along. I also tried to match the horizon lines between shots to make the transitions smooth. I built the video linearly, so at the end of every shot there was a certain horizon line I tried to match with the next shot. Locations that had flat horizons were easy to match and transitioned perfectly. Some locations, like urban or mountainous areas, had horizons that were impossible to find perfect matches for. What mattered most for maintaining smooth transitions was having the camera always facing and moving in a consistent direction between shots.
VVS: The video had an excellent sense of motion — how did you simulate the flips and twists of the camera?
The software the Labs team built can rotate the camera along any axis or pivot around a point of interest. Basically I set a start and end point, then the camera animates between them. I also animated some shots, like the jets flying overhead, by hand. I taped a tiny dot to the middle of my monitor, lined it up with the jet, captured the image, moved forward one step along the road, and then realigned the dot with the jet again.
VVS: The Hyperlapse website is so simple and fun and really very beautiful — why did you decide to create the tool to let others make videos themselves?
Once the Labs team had an early build of the tool and we started playing around with it, we quickly realized people would want to make their own hyperlapse videos. We enlisted the help of a designer and front end developer and began work on a website that could let anyone create their own Street View hyperlapse.
https://vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/403/creator-qanda-google-street-view-hyperlapse
http://labs.teehanlax.com/project/hyperlapse
