Hi Coldwave.
Na i will not need it i dont think. As the computer shots are only going to be stills.
I dont use maya tracking but rather setup locators and objects in the scene, and key frame the camera movements. Most camera movements are pretty simple to duplicate and can be very accurate.

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There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.

Heres a test of some camera tracking. It was hard to get it right because of the low res camera. (mobile)
Im pretty happy to get the high def footage done now.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbH49iSKPEI

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There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.

That was really fast, I had to replay a couple times, seems fine though. I still can't help but think the reflections on lil guy's body are a bit too sharp, almost mirror like.

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- Genny
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::|| My CG Blog ||::
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Thanks Gect. Yea i will drop them down a bit. Trying to keep the chrome look. Hey while we are on the topic. Any idea how to render reflections out, in like a window behind the object ?
There problably a simple way i just cant think of it at the moment.

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There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.

Check out render passes.

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- Genny
__________________
::|| My CG Blog ||::
::|| My Maya FAQ ||::

yea i did, but have seen nothing in there about reflections.

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There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.

i think you need to work on your lighting and compositing.

Originally posted by hammer.horror
i think you need to work on your lighting and compositing.

Originally Posted by

...ever so helpful... :p

antiant, you can make the geometry to replace the window and make it mirror like, then just render that as a reflection (through the render layers), then you should be able to composite it onto the window (in theory... when i did that my reflection pass didn't have an alpha channel even though the picture format supports alpha and the master beauty had alpha....)

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

so sorry for not being so thorough chirone how about an extended response...

i'm shocked that the track actually looks quite solid, 'm surprised it worked so well.
what i mean by work on your compositing and lighting is that your computer sticks out, and not just because its dancing.

the reflections can be done by as chirone said replacing the window with geometry and rendering out the reflections.

if you stop the video on 3 seconds you will see that the shadows under your computer are not the same as the shadows under the real computer.

and chirone i didn't think my comment was unhelpful. imo those are the areas that need a lot of work, but.... i think filming and with a camera phone and trying to produce some good vfx is a bad idea to start with. it will just be an uphill struggle.
i would suggest borrowing a camera and filming it in HD then using camera tracking software to match the focal length. also filming/photographing a matte grey ball and a chrome ball at the same time as the filming, and maybe even thinking of making an HDRI of the entire scene (equipment permitting).

ps- just rerender your reflection pass again, it should be as hard as hitting batch render! besides you could use your existing renders and just render an id pass using maya software (this should be really quick) then use the alpha from the ID pass as the alpha for your reflections. job done.

hows that for ever so helpful!

oh i just thought maybe he might not know how to improve the lighting, so i was just asking if you could give any suggestions
didn't mean to imply it was unhelpful

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Thanks for all the input.
This footage is only to practice camera tracking primarily. So i havent really taken too much care about lighting and shadows. As i dont want to spend hours on something thats not going to be used.

I have a HD camera that i will be filming with, so the track should work spot on after that. I figured if i could get it to work with a 640x480 res, high def will be easy.

Thanks for the ideas about the reflection, i pretty much thought that this was the way i would do it, although i think last time i looked i didnt see a reflection pass. But i belive you that its there

I would love to use HDRI, but like you said, i dont have the equipment.

Thanks for all the advice.

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There's nothing normal about normals. In FACT i think the are abnormal.