Special fx and tracking

[Jeffrey Eidell]

I'm working on adapting this short story into a short film and a lot of emphasis is placed on the main characters eyes here is an excerpt from the story "Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I've had them altered in some way, they suggest I've tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs; they're not from some optometrist's bag of tricks not the result of surgical mayhem." Included is a picture I threw together on photoshop as a basic idea of the effect i want to achieve. I want to know if its feasible to create this in AE or Motion. Currently there are no FX contacts that offer any results similar to this picture. any help you guys could offer would be great. Thanks.



-Jeff

 

[msorrels]

Define feasible? AE with mocha most likely can do the work, though specific shots might very well prove to be near impossible. But it would mean every single frame the actor is in would have to have VFX work. If those hours of work are reasonable to you, then sure it's feasible.

VideoCopilot has a eye replacement tutorial, the methods he uses would also work for something like this. http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/eye_replacement/

No matter how quick you are, these kinds of methods can really add up the hours though.

 

[Jeffrey Eidell]

Thanks Matt this is exactly what I needed. I wouldn't call the work reasonable but a necessary evil to create the distinct feel of the character and the story. I appreciate your help.

-Jeff

 

[Chris Adler]

Maybe you need 3D Tracking Marker contacts that have little crosses in the corners and in the middle. That would rock for this kind of job.

 

[arniepix]

this is really a job for Nuke along with Mocha or PFTrack. Also, to really sell the effect, you need to match the motion of the crystal not to the movement of the head, but to the movement of the eyes themselves. When we look right or left, up or down, our heads follow our eyes. The movement can be pretty complex. It will be hard to track in medium & wide shots.

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

Here's what you're up against. First off, you have a lot of tracking to do. You have to track the new eye to the movement of the original eye, then you have to track the movement of the eye to the movement of head. You can probably use tracking tools for the movement of the head, but the eye would be much harder since there are less trackable features depending on how much reflection/glare/etc you get in there. Those type of things can be a real pain to automated trackers. If you're going to track the movement of the head you'd probably need to put some tracking dots on the person's face, with a marker or whatever. Without that you'll be hard pressed to find decent trackable features through an entire shot.

So…if you get that far, then you have a bunch of roto/paint work to do. First you'd have to paint out the tracking markers, then you'd need to roto out the eyeballs to replace them with the new eye, as well as roto'ing every single blink.

So once tracking and roto is done you have to start with the compositing, adding reflections back in, lighting the new eye appropriately, color correcting, etc. Then you have to do this across every shot you have.

 

[msorrels]

I'd bet it's not quite as bad as all that. In all likelihood anything but a close-up the eyes are going to just be points. You can most likely do them with just a single point tracker (though I'll bet you have to hand keyframe it a lot). Put a little tiny blob with some image filters maybe a lens flare toned way down and you're done.

Shots with the eyes full on you'll have to do real image tracking, but you'll have enough image for mocha to be able to pull it off.

It's still a lot of work, especially wide shots where the eyes are only a few pixels. Colored contacts might work better for that. Only swtich to the heavy VFX work when the eyes are really visible.

 

[handsome pete]

It's still a lot of work, especially wide shots where the eyes are only a few pixels. Colored contacts might work better for that. Only swtich to the heavy VFX work when the eyes are really visible.

I second that. Save the VFX work for the closeups. You'll never see the detail in the wide shots so why go through the trouble. Stick with contact lenses for those.

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

You'll see the detail in medium shots, two shots, cowboys, medium wides, and pretty much anything but a wide. So that's going to leave a lot of other shots where you will see the detail.

I know this because we just shot a commercial, a mix of CU's, mediums, and wides and needed to have VFX work done to the eyes/area around the eyes and the quotes were very high in dollars and hours. We had top, big name VFX houses like turn down the work because they couldn't do it in the timeframe we had available. That should give you some perspective on the complexity of the work.

 

[msorrels]

Oh yes, let me stress this is super painful time consuming work. Hours will flow like water. But I doubt you need real 3d tracking, face markers, Nuke, etc. Normal roto and tracking should actually work, but nothing automatic or easy, no shortcuts here. Every blink, every twitch you'll be tweaking the path or the shape. Every shot will need a lot of babysitting. But as long as the effect recipe isn't something insanely complex (a real 3d model with complex angle-based shading) this is something you could do with AE and mocha.

You might want to consider having the character wear sunglasses most of the time. It wouldn't be hard to make something like that part of the story and save the eye effects for specific high drama moments. One of the strengths indie film making has is that it can trade insane hours for amazing footage. I'd recommend shooting a test scene, with what ever shots you'd normally use and processing it. Then make changes in the script and how you shoot.

 

[Jeffrey Eidell]

Thanks for the input guys i really appreciate it. The sunglasses thing I have already fooled with and I also considered having him not blink throughout like lloyd the bartender in the shining. I think it'd add to the eeriness of the character and the film and would save a lot of time in post. I'm also planning on shooting this with RED so the amount of data will be much better then with my DVX-100.
Thanks again

 

[Michael Carter]

I'd really think about the shades - you could write in that sensitive eyes go with that phenomena, and use removing the shades as sort of a dramatic "reveal".

Make it easy on yourself, it's stunning how many hours can get blown when something that sounded awesome suddenly has to be produced.

there are few things as grueling as non-automated frame-by-frame tracking and roto. It's miserable work.

 

[Jeffrey Eidell]

the problem with using the shades all of the time is that the main character is a traveling hypnotist/con man and for his performance to have him wearing the sunglasses would be awkward and unseemly. As well as when he is speaking with the host who has hired him for the evening. I don't think there is an easy way around it writing wise.

 

[msorrels]

Shoot a test with the DVX-100. Ideally with an actor but even you as the character can work. Then start working out your workflow on the effect. See what works and what doesn't work. Testing and refinement is the only way your going to get this to work.