HVX200 3D Tracking test...

Greggl said:
Syntheyes, PFTrack, Boujou, matchmover and 3D Equalizer all have MAC ports.
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Yes, there's great variety on both platforms... one mention, the price of one seat of Equalizer or Boujou is equal to an HVX with 2 8gig cards! PFTrack has a "lite" version limited to SD resolution, if memory serves for under $500, and the best value is probably Syntheyes with no limitations.

One company I work with has several seats of Boujou, a seat of Equalizer and Syntheyes... they've found with that variety that almost anything is trackable without getting their hands dirty with manual alignment. Their workflow is to try Boujou first, if that fails Equalizer almost always works. As well it should for $10,000 US, IMO.

Jim Arthurs
 
Not off track (pun intended) at all... I forgot about this ultra "lite" version of PFTrack. The "guts" of this code is probably the same as the big brother, and several generations more advanced than Icarus, which was what I used to track Kaku's footage.

Somewhere out there is a review of it I remember seeing... maybe Creative Cow?

You could always do tracks on SD proxies of your HD HVX footage. It wouldn't be as accurate, but depending on your shot could work just fine. On the test I did, if the 3D object was in motion and not rooted to the pavement, you'd never be able to tell some slight slippage...

Jim Arthurs
 
Do you know how the motion trackers actually work? I'm always wondering what software is doing behind the GUI...
 
Jim Arthurs said:
Their workflow is to try Boujou first, if that fails Equalizer almost always works. As well it should for $10,000 US, IMO.
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Its an unbeatable combo though. On the last 'big' gig I did, we only had boujou
and I was forced to run two tracks through Maya Live and essentially hand tracked
em. I've been on the betas for most of the major apps and those two are the only
ones that I'd trust in a crunch... both from a software and a developer standpoint.
 
Greggl said:
and I was forced to run two tracks through Maya Live and essentially hand tracked em.
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Ah, but hand tracking puts hair on your chest and gives you manly stories to tell (not to mention carpal tunnel)!

I think everyone, regardless of their graphic careers, should be made to do these things to appreciate how good we now have it;

1.) Hand track a shot where the productions notes have no on-set camera info whatsoever.

2.) Hand rotoscope 200 frames of some slow moving object against a low contrast background.

3.) Do a bluescreen shot the old fashioned way, on film with an optical printer.

4.) dump a 900 frame CGI animation to tape, using a single frame controller to do one-frame-at-a-time insert edits on your buddy's borrowed betaSP deck. Nothing like 900 insert edits on 30 seconds worth of tape to show you mean business.

Jim Arthurs
 
Jim Arthurs said:
4.) dump a 900 frame CGI animation to tape, using a single frame controller to do one-frame-at-a-time insert edits on your buddy's borrowed betaSP deck. Nothing like 900 insert edits on 30 seconds worth of tape to show you mean business.
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Ah.. the good ole days.. I fondly remember that distinctive sound of a rented BVW-75
*grinding* away for hours with hundreds of those inserts :)

2D/3D integration has been my thing for a lot of years now. I think I'm one of
the only guys on the planet that actually likes camera tracking :)
 
Greggl said:
Ah.. the good ole days.. I fondly remember that distinctive sound of a rented BVW-75
*grinding* away for hours with hundreds of those inserts :)

2D/3D integration has been my thing for a lot of years now. I think I'm one of
the only guys on the planet that actually likes camera tracking :)
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... and then you discover a shift somewhere around frame 800 or so... and you start all over on a "fresh" area of tape... yep, that's fun. That and sleeping by the deck to make sure it finishes by morning.

I actually like tracking as well, very calming. It's as close to real film "magic" as anything in my mind. And of course, if done well, no one is aware of your work.

Someone else will have to answer Sean's question about the workings under the hood of tracking software. All I know is that it's based on machine vision code work and lots of Trig... two distinct processes in play; One is tracking visual points, either one at a time or many hundreds at once in a brute force automated fashion. The next phase is making sense out of this cloud of points, determining from a few clues very basic things like scale and up/down orientation, etc.

Jim Arthurs
 
I worked at Alias for 6 years and I still would not ever use Maya Live. I think Synth Eyes is the best deal.
 
Jim,

I've never played with tracking before... I suppose I always figured it was one of those things that you'd have to devote yourself to fully in order to become great at it (there's no time to be amazing at everything!), and as such, I don't know/understand everything that goes into the process. That being said, I thought your robot clip was phenomenal... I've watched it probably 50 times now (and I just downloaded the clip a half hour ago!) :thumbsup:

It's amazing to see what can be done these days on a "home PC" - not to mention in such short time. Really, I'm blown away. Your reference to ILM is, I think, more amazing than people probably stop to think about... look how far we've come in such little time... and then just imagine what's right around the corner. If this Red Camera delivers on even half of its promises, it's going to spawn a paradigm shift in filmmaking across the planet. What a great time to be alive.

Anyway, I don't want the unbelievable events of the future to overshadow the topic of today's post and your unbelievable work. I'm completely inspired! :)
 
Wow, Jim, I'm continually impressed by what you can do. Looked near flawless to me ... especially if more time was given to the model to make it more realistic.
 
uhg...i sometimes hate camera tracking...but its such a good feeling when you get it locked and everything sticks...

good track man! :thumbsup:
 
I like your short film Jim

What a roto nightmare!!!!

I love to watch what people can do with a small crew and some imagination. Your showreel is very impressive. The short with the running pumpins - is that another one of yours or did you just get comissioned to do some of the effects work?
 
Great footage Jim.

If people are interested i've done a bit of sniffing around and found this...

Icarus download;

osx - http://files.filefront.com/Icarus_Maczip/;4113431;;/fileinfo.html

windows - http://files.filefront.com/Icarus_209/;3922266;;/fileinfo.html

It appears as though Icarus was sold to (or became) Pixel Farm's pftrack. The links above are for the version that was publicly available but then got removed for download from their official site.

I've never done a 3d track so maybe someone can shed some light on the version on Icarus above.. but for now what the hell, lets all get some funky groovy 3d madness in our films.
 
Haakon said:
Your reference to ILM is, I think, more amazing than people probably stop to think about... look how far we've come in such little time... and then just imagine what's right around the corner.
Click to expand...

And if we take the time frame back only five years before Jurrasic Park or Twister, the shot simply couldn't be done by the best people in the field.

The only method would be to put out a physical model on a motion control stage, with the camera's video tap feeding a switcher live keyed over the background and endless test passes, and it still would never be perfect.


So, to recap the progress;

-15 years ago: ILM: "Tell the client it's impossible!"
-10 years ago ILM: "We'll put our best team on it, for $$$$ we think we can do it."
-Today: Guy in Basement: "Honey, I'll be up to watch the Dick Clarke New Year's thing in a minute, I'm messing around down here!"

Jim Arthurs
 
Envision said:
Wow, Jim, I'm continually impressed by what you can do. Looked near flawless to me ... especially if more time was given to the model to make it more realistic.
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Thanks, that's a stock model with a single uniform surface. The radiosity lighting gives it the feeling of some shading detail. Again, I was just going to throw up a simple grid but got caught up in the moment...

Jim Arthurs
 
Darkline said:
The short with the running pumpins - is that another one of yours or did you just get comissioned to do some of the effects work?
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That was a spec proposal for a Halloween special I wrote called "The Little Pumpkin". It was going to be full CGI, then Stop Motion, and now I'm thinking about minature sets with CGI characters... if it ever gets going again, that is.

Thanks for the kind words!

Jim Arthurs
 
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