After having created a number of models with Photofly 2.0 I thought it appropriate to start looking at various real-world applications for Photofly. A few jump to mind like game asset creation, architectural visualization, historical preservation, forensics and so on. But I think the really fun one is Visual Effects so I thought I’d start there.
In a traditional visual effects work-flow your goal is to add CG elements to a live action plate. Or in some cases completely create an environment for actors shot on green screen etc. In all cases matching camera position and tracking camera movement is key, additionally you will need to create matte geometry to represent certain elements in the shot such as existing ground cover, buildings, furniture or what ever your CG elements may need to interact with and therefor cast shadows on, receive reflections and or Illumination, particle sims and so on.
To start this process you typically run an image sequence of your shot through a 3D camera tracker like Matchmover, PFTrack, Boujou or SynthEyes. From there you would have an animated camera with correct focal length as well as a sea reference points representing 3D positions of various objects or features in your shot. Then you would most likely start modeling you matte geometry using those points to determine scale and depth within the scene. It’s that bit there that I think Photofly could be a huge time saver. Since it too solves for camera position (not animated mind you) and creates reasonably good models it seems likely you could get your matte geometry for almost free and have a reference camera position and focal length to match against your 3D camera solve!
I am currently working on a tutorial on how to do just that with Photofly, Matchmover, Max and After Effects. I thought in the meantime it might be fun to post my finding thus far on the usability of Photofly for VFX. One cool little thing I discovered making this test scene was that you could potentially use the mesh from photofly as a detailed depth matte allowing you among other things to change the focal point or DOF of the entire shot! (Note the original shot needs to have a wide DOF for this to work). Take a look and I think you’ll see the potential!
BTW if you haven’t seen it check out IV Motion’s amazingly creative work with Photofly on the music video for Hunz new single “I get chills”. You will.
I’m impressed! I tried using Photofly, but I wasn’t getting very good results. How much poly editing are you doing, if any, to the mesh?
Thanks Bobby! Initially I had trouble getting decent results out of Photofly. It loves textural objects with equally textural backgrounds to separate the subject from. The lighthouse shot actually come out much better then I expected. As for poly editing what you see is unaltered aside from deleting mesh errors in the sky. Photofly didn’t like the overcast sky though ironically it’s ideal for neutral lighting on the subject. For creating models of objects I suppose one could create new topology at a lower polycount and project normal maps etc to create a really efficient and detailed model. Folks already do that with 3D scans for say character design etc. I plan to do more shooting and compile a do’s and don’t list from my results as I have time. Just itching to use this in production on something!
Amazing stuff!
I just curious or concern about the technology that we’re getting hands on. How long it’s going to be free? Do believe that autodesk is doing great job, but they are simply testing out these things =) and when it will be production ready..think it will be costly =) But, i could be wrong..
Anyway, for now it looks amazing tool for interesting work to be done =) looking forward for more from You, Samuel.
Thanks for sharing!
Sinc.
glimps
Thanks Tom,
I also wonder how this lab experiment will transition to the marketplace. As of late Autodesk has been releasing free tools like 123D, so I think it’s possible Photofly end up being free. They seem to be pushing the simplicity and ease of use of the tool rather than presenting it as a full featured app for a professional 3D audience which leads me to believe they don’t intend to sell it for lots of $$. Instead maybe the cloud service is subscription based on some other revenue stream. It will be interesting to watch what happens.
Certainly one should not get to comfy using a tool like this for production only to have the services and app be discontinued. Though in the long run I think whether it be Photofly or something else this type of tool set will come to market so always good to look ahead at what tech can make life easier on an artist.