Even More of Requiem for a Padawan: A Jedi Apprentice Fanfic

Jedi, I am not sure if Lightwave allows you to do that. I have never used that software, but I would imagine it would. I know that MOJO and his team use Lightwave for all the Star Trek ( Voyager, DS9, B5) 3D effects, so it a pretty high end piece of softwave. The learning curve for it is pretty hight I think, though some would disagree ( Don't get you keyboards in a frazle Lightwave Lovers) Sorry I don't have an answer for you Jedi, but I'm sure there is some feature like that on it. Maybe check out the lightwave FAQ at http://www.newtek.comwww.newtek.com Best of luck

 

Ok, well you got the first part down-making .avi the background image, now you simply need to make a camera that is in the same perspective as your original camera was.Then make a "virtual set". You make a box, or plane for the ground, and apply a matte materials to it. Be sure to tell it to receive shadows. This make's your video footage map to the plane, and receive shadows like your 3d objects are really there. Then just add your CG elements and lights to appear like they are there. If an object has to hide behind another, just make a basic geometry to fit the shape, sphere for circle, box for square objects, and place it about where it would be in your virtual set, and apply matte texture to it, and when you move your 3D mesh behind it, it looks like it is behind the video object. This might sound confusing, but after you try it out this makes scence. If you have done this before you know what I am talking about, and maybe you could word it diffrent. I did some movies doing this @ http://www.geocities.com/mistrfinga/movies.htmlwww.geocities.com/mistrfinga/movies.html

 

I am currenltly working on a fan movie and I'm making extensive use of live footage and 3D models made in MAX.

If you have a fixed background, lets say a photo, you need first to place a camera matching the location of the camera which made the picture. To do that you can use a MAX feature called Camera Matching. There is a good tutorial included with the MAX 3 release, and also a tut can be found at 3D Cafe. The main idea is to have some reference points within your picture, and measure the actual distances betweem them, you need around 6 or 8 points, at different planes to have reasonable results. You put the picture in the background (using the environment) and you create CAM points giving them the actual coordinates on place them (with the camera Matching utility) top of the reference points. MAX calculates the position of the camera.

Next you need to place lights in the proper places, and if you have for instance a building whichs shadows a part of the scene you create a box of the same size and assign to it the shadow-matte material. You can create the same way the floor, etc, etc. As MiSTRFiNGA said.

If you have a video, then the procedure is wuite similar, but you need to do this for every frame. Fortunatelly, MAX has another feature, Camera Tracking, which tracks for you the reference points. There are also some tuts over there. Important, USE a tripop, look for reference points which are visible most of the time and which can be tracked easily (i.e. bright points, very dark ones, etc), and MEASURE !

The results are amazing. Up to now I have placed naboo fighters in the parking lot, with R2 moving towards them, and later taking-off as the camera moves following them.

After Effects could be used if you want to made more sofisticated things, like viewing things behing a window, where you need more complex masks, or if you need several layers of real and CGI stuff.

Hope it helps

Jose

 

Up!

 

Geez... I know I saw this story before.. So why the heck didn't I reply to it? Oh well

Fantastically written story! cool.gif tongue.gif
top!

[This message has been edited by Katri Tai (edited 06-22-2000).]

 

Up again.

 

And because you can't have the first part without it's ending....up!

 

Dude...

 

Dude?