help with compositing coins

R

rdgartist

New member
Take a look at this short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP6yp3aGFaA

I want to add coins spilling out of this box when the side opens up. My idea is to shoot actual coins and composite them into the shot.

If this were your assignment how would you go about doing this? Chroma key? Rotoscoping? Both of those options seem very difficult. 3D computer modeling/animation is not an option since we don't have the budget to farm it out and we don't have the software inhouse. Do you have any ideas, tips, suggestions?

Thanks!!
 
Either do it practically, basically open the box on set and have coins come out.

Real Flow 4 or Maya (using dynamics) could do this. It is relatively simple going through Real Flow. However, as that is not an option, you would need to do this practically or rotoscope it. Yes, it is difficult, but it doesn't sound like you have another option.

Cheers,

Matt
 
I agree with Matt, this is a practical shot.
You're planning on shooting the coins anyway just shoot the whole tamale.
Put a bunch of coins in a box, roll tape, drop the box, stop rolling, check playback and go home early because you're done.

If you spend your time carefully lighting the scene you probably won't need to bother with the hassle of roto. It depends on how the final piece is supposed to look. It's also worth mentioning that doing practical shots is a lot of fun - it beats the heck out of being glued to the workstation all the time.
 
I'm not sure I understand why you would want to go the route of filming real coins dropping and go through the hassle of filming real elements with all the headache that comes with it. You are using a 3D program already, so your best and easiest thing to do would be to model a couple of coins, texture them with photos of coins, and then set up an emitter in your 3D app, and tell the emitter to spew objects instead of simply texturing particles. Then you have all the control of the emitter properties and effectors at your disposal. And, you can texture everything in the scene white, and get a pass just for coin shadows, texture everything normally again for a pass of just the box, one for just the coins, and composite that.

That would save you a hell of a lot of effort, and for what you are wanting, would not be that hard. I have Particle Illusion with a few coin presets in libraries that spew coins, and I could always whip up something with an alpha channel you could use.

Personally, I'de model them and use them with an emitter.
 
Matt, I appreciate the offer. The box was created and animated in AE. I'm not familiar with Particle Illusion. But I'm kind of familiar with particle emitters. I'm looking for the coins in the box to spill out (not to spew out) onto the surface the box is sitting on. This would require a 3D animation program with collision dectection and rigid body dynamics -- all of which I know very little about. After a quick search on Google to see what Particle Illusion is capable of, It doesn't appear to do what I need it to do. A program like Maya is really the tool that would do the job.

So, thanks again for the offer, and your advice, but it looks like I'll be rotoscoping.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I don't use Particle Illusion. Real Flow 4 is something totally different, which is great for dynamics and collision detection. It is a different thing unto its own. Pretty fancy program, does a great job with fluid dynamics. :)

Best of luck.
 
Oops, didn't realize there were two Matts in the list. I was responing to Matt Grunau. I looked up RealFlow -- wow that looks great and would probably work for what I need but I don't have it, can't afford it and would probably take too long to learn it well enough to complete this job.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top