Stitching Frames Together

monte

monte

Bag of Douche
I'm working on a project where I will have multiple (4/5) still (locked down) shots of something goin on - what I would like to do is connect all of these, and pan the camera around in a circular fashion - in post, or in other words, make an electronic pan after connecting all the images.

I've looked and I've seen references to it being called "stitching" hence the title of this thread

Thanks guys
 
If these were shot as stills for a panorama with overlapping ofthe images there are programs that can stitch these together. Some camera software (such as Canon) come with software to do this. Do a search in google for panorama or stitching sofware. Once combined as one image you can take into AE or editing program and create a move.


If these are independent images that you just want to line up and move on in AE you can
creat a wide composite with a layer for each shot.
Create another composite the size you want the final output and put the previous composite in this (nesting) Now you can move the group of images around as one.
 
if these pictures were not shot with a pano head you probably wont get a perfect stich.[pano heads allow you to rotate a camera around the nodal point in the lens] they will probably have ghosting in them caused by paralax. stitcher is probably the best program for this. its pretty easy to use too. i think photoshop cs2 might have a stitching tool also.
 
Well, every "frame" is going to be a stop motion animation - one frame will be tables moving around, the next one will be a door doing stuff, the next one will be something else... etc..

What I'm hoping to do is set the camera up on a tripod, do one part, then do the next part, and the next part and so on

Then take those into vegas and animate each one into a little sequence

Then take the sequence for each side into AE and stitch them all together, and make an electronic pan move around the room so we can see all this stuff as it's happening

Can you describe how I would achieve this in layman's terms (I'm an AE nub)

Thanks

Edit: Lloyd - what exactly is this pano head in reference to? Perhaps this:http://www.stereoscopy.com/jasper/panorama.html ? I haven't shot anything of importance yet, just little tests
 
As long as you lock down your pitch on your tripod (and it is centered perfectly), you should be able to simply line them up. You would take each file, load it as a layer in After Effects, position them to overlap, and either precompose them or drag that comp into another one and use the x position to rotate it. If needed, you could use masks and feather the mask edges to taste to blend each overlap.

You will not be able to actually have something which is a true stitch (where it would essentially be a contiuous 360 degree canvas), rather you would have a long straight file behind your composition. You could apply the optics compensation filter which would slightly bend the edges of the layer to give the impression of a bent layer though.

What I would do would be to create a round canvas in a 3D program, flip the polys so they face inward, and texture them with your finished After Effects movie in its entire width. That way, you would be moving the camera in the 3D app (which would be inside the circle), and you could control IT, rather than the one in After Effects. You would be using after Effect to generate a moving texture only. That is a bit of a workaround, but would probably give the best results. Also, you could use the 3D program's own motion blur effect to create even more realism.
 
How would I go about feathering the edges - I got the other stuff figured out for the most part - I got them sitting along side each other in 3d space -

The thing is - you said it was impossible to have it go in a good 360 type of loop? Is there any way I could render a 3d camera with a really wide view lense that would capture the whole thing, then I could put that next to the first layer and then keep layering them, so the camera can be moving along the strip one way the whole time

Does that make sense?
 
monte said:
How would I go about feathering the edges - I got the other stuff figured out for the most part - I got them sitting along side each other in 3d space -

The thing is - you said it was impossible to have it go in a good 360 type of loop? Is there any way I could render a 3d camera with a really wide view lense that would capture the whole thing, then I could put that next to the first layer and then keep layering them, so the camera can be moving along the strip one way the whole time

Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

Say you were putting each overlap on the right side of the frame. To feather the edges, you would make a mask with four points which would be larger than the frame, and move it so the right side of the mask rests anywhere from 5-20 pixels deep into the right side of your layer. That way, when you apply a feather, although the entire mask would be feathered, the only portion of your layer where the mask is in frame would be affected.
I said it was impossible to have a 360 canvas. WHen you are working in AE, you cant bend the layers along the Z-Axis, which you would need to do to make a round canvas. You could continue to overlap layer after layer to the width you need for the length of time you want it to play, but it wouldn't actually be "around" the camera.

What you would not bea able to do it attach the right edge of the last layer in the chain to the left edge of the first. And if you use motion blur, you wont be able to quickly zip it back in 2 keyframes, as you will get a nasty blur. You could do it without motion blur, but then the image would be static and would not look like the camera is panning.

I suppose you could render out an image sequence the length you need and delete the frame with the huge blur, but you would get a 1/30 of a second hiccup. It might be fast enough no one would notice.
 
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