Set the shards behind the post to match the Depth of field in the footage aswell as adding grain to sit in the footage better. I've used Reel Smart Motion Blur to add motion blur quickly based on pixel motion. This is a really quick way of adding realism to 3D renders rather than use the very slow and unreliable motion blur within C4D's render engine. Colour graded to look quite vibrant and similar in pallete to the first shot. I've boosted the exposure for the post using another iteration of the track matte object buffer to add to the focus in the foreground and emphasise even more the depth within the shot.
Shot 2 build and composite
Brought the tracked data into C4D and positioned the flying shards in the shot.
Rather than mask in after effects where the tracker isn't particularly good I added some cylindrical geometry within cinema 4D to use as a mask for the shards. Because the camera oves then once the geometry is positioned over the shot with the same size and diameter of the lamp post then it appears to take it's place believably while the camera moves around it.
Adding an 'object buffer' to this (used for compositing, for example usually to isolate parts of a render so layers can pass infront/behind in after effects). Rendering the buffer/matte gives a black and white .mov to use in after effects as a track matte layer with the rgba render of the shards.
Here I've turned on the matte's visibilty to 50% to show how it masks behind the post. I've also added a small amount of blur to the matte so the edges are a little softer when masking the 3D layer.
Shards now appear to fly behind the post. I will now add some depth blur and motion blur to the geometry and colour grade to get an idea of how the shot might look as a final render.
Rather than mask in after effects where the tracker isn't particularly good I added some cylindrical geometry within cinema 4D to use as a mask for the shards. Because the camera oves then once the geometry is positioned over the shot with the same size and diameter of the lamp post then it appears to take it's place believably while the camera moves around it.
Adding an 'object buffer' to this (used for compositing, for example usually to isolate parts of a render so layers can pass infront/behind in after effects). Rendering the buffer/matte gives a black and white .mov to use in after effects as a track matte layer with the rgba render of the shards.
Here I've turned on the matte's visibilty to 50% to show how it masks behind the post. I've also added a small amount of blur to the matte so the edges are a little softer when masking the 3D layer.
Shards now appear to fly behind the post. I will now add some depth blur and motion blur to the geometry and colour grade to get an idea of how the shot might look as a final render.
pBlurp dev
I won't recomposite the shot at this stage but I want to experiment with the idea of the words fragmenting and traveling through the city to reform as another word. Cut up polygons with the knife tool to allow pBlurp to break apart the geometry into smaller pieces.
X and Sphere in a particle geometry object in 'thinking particles' with a very simple Xpresso setup using 'pBlurp' (fragment one object and rebuild as another.. or multiple along the way, can follow spline paths but most cases the tangents either end of the default path can be edited to add curvature and change angles of in/out.
X now breaks aprt while travelling off screen. For now I won't re-do the shot in after effects but I will now use this geometry and setup to composite the next couple of shots.
X and Sphere in a particle geometry object in 'thinking particles' with a very simple Xpresso setup using 'pBlurp' (fragment one object and rebuild as another.. or multiple along the way, can follow spline paths but most cases the tangents either end of the default path can be edited to add curvature and change angles of in/out.
X now breaks aprt while travelling off screen. For now I won't re-do the shot in after effects but I will now use this geometry and setup to composite the next couple of shots.
pBlurp
By using a simple Thinking Particles setup I can transform fragments of one geometry object to another (the next word), but it works based on the existing polygons so I'll need to cut the X up with the knife tool to avoid these over sized shards (I like the bold shapes of some large pieces so won't cut up too much but definitely need to subdivide the faces a little. The depth of the shards is editable as is the direction/curvature of the path. This will lead onto the next shot of the shards passing behind the lamp post out of focus/
Shot 1 compositing test
Composited in after effects, touched up the lighting and put a quick curves colour grade over everything to start pulling together a possible look. The green in the shadows and red/orange in the mids and highlights is currently a very popular look for big budget action movies such as transformers and Terminator 4 to allow skin tones to pop against backgrounds and is a simple way to amp up low quality footage to make something look quite nice. I think this colour look is quite familiar to 'street' clothing advertising but it also allows for some more vibrant colours to be injected into it to add a fresh look.
C4D shot 1 test
After exporting as a lightwave file and importing to Cinema 4D the camera and tracking points are visible in the viewport. (I forgot to turn off all tracking points, normally you choose a few key ones and bring them in as nulls to aid positioning, but having them all gives a rough idea of where your 3D geometry should be)
I usually start by setting up a rough light and shadow catcher by bringing in a floor and a primitive object like a sphere. The main lighting of the shot is clearly coming in from the street as it is down an alley with high buildings.
The shadow is a bit harsh here as the alley itself is quite low contrast but when compositing it's not important to spend a long time tweaking in Cinema as I render a multi-pass composition to after effects and can change the look of things with more control faster.
I'm going to start with simple text to test all the shots and get a rough idea of the edit then develop the typography separately and bring it back in (if I use this footage... I think at this stage it may be more efficient to work these up and work with the grain and blown highlights to create a look rather than be too overzealous with the quality of the footage.) The longer shadows coming from the street look more or less there.
The type is rendered alone with an alpha channel
This shot shows where the shadows on the floor are. To composite I turn off the type and render a 'shadow pass' in the multi-pass render to use as a multiplay layer in after effects. This gives a very controllable render that can be colour corrected, blur & grain matched etc to sit in the shot convincingly.
I usually start by setting up a rough light and shadow catcher by bringing in a floor and a primitive object like a sphere. The main lighting of the shot is clearly coming in from the street as it is down an alley with high buildings.
The shadow is a bit harsh here as the alley itself is quite low contrast but when compositing it's not important to spend a long time tweaking in Cinema as I render a multi-pass composition to after effects and can change the look of things with more control faster.
I'm going to start with simple text to test all the shots and get a rough idea of the edit then develop the typography separately and bring it back in (if I use this footage... I think at this stage it may be more efficient to work these up and work with the grain and blown highlights to create a look rather than be too overzealous with the quality of the footage.) The longer shadows coming from the street look more or less there.
The type is rendered alone with an alpha channel
This shot shows where the shadows on the floor are. To composite I turn off the type and render a 'shadow pass' in the multi-pass render to use as a multiplay layer in after effects. This gives a very controllable render that can be colour corrected, blur & grain matched etc to sit in the shot convincingly.
Tracking Screens 1
Tracking first shot, note the graph at the bottom shows good (green) features that are tracked perfectly, any red or yellow points can be filtered out as in the screenshot below so the camera solve only reads the best features to get a more accurate track..
Camera solved, 3D data shown in context on the right panel with a camera and points.
This track was very simple as there is a lot of parallax in the shot to work with and get 3D data with foreground and background points.
This shot was a bit trickier in terms of the stages needed to produce a good solve. First because there is a moving object the train must be masked out so the tracker ignores it otherwise it would try to use the points on the train as reference points when positioning the 3D camera.
Aswell as the moving train, the light moving across the floor in the foreground causes problems as the feature pixels change colour or lightness rapidly. Luckily the background stays largely untouhed by movement or light changes so a track was fairly easy but a lot of yellow tracks had to be filtered.
This was another very simple track as there are a lot of static points.
Camera solved, 3D data shown in context on the right panel with a camera and points.
This track was very simple as there is a lot of parallax in the shot to work with and get 3D data with foreground and background points.
This shot was a bit trickier in terms of the stages needed to produce a good solve. First because there is a moving object the train must be masked out so the tracker ignores it otherwise it would try to use the points on the train as reference points when positioning the 3D camera.
Aswell as the moving train, the light moving across the floor in the foreground causes problems as the feature pixels change colour or lightness rapidly. Luckily the background stays largely untouhed by movement or light changes so a track was fairly easy but a lot of yellow tracks had to be filtered.
This was another very simple track as there are a lot of static points.
Quick edit of raw test shots
Just a quick edit to get a sense of movement while I've got the footage rather than make an animatic of the storyboards. I'm going to track extended versions of these shots and I can get into building some test 3D elements directly in the footage within Cinema 4D. Once I'm happy the idea is working I will the revisit the design elements and experiment with type to develop a more interesting bespoke solution that can translate across the t-shirts etc and not rely so heavily on the aesthetic of '3D & photography' which would obviously be an issue
Test Footage Screenshots
2 Successful + 2 Unsuccessful Brands
My Work with tracking
Tracking Test
Tracking Test 1 from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
This was my first ever attempt at using pfTrack with just the autotrack (which is generally all that is needed) but without the knowledge to refine the solve so the result is quite rough. The screen below shows the public domain footage posted on mograph.net of a NY subway in pfTrack with the tracking points and the positioned 3D camera in relation to these. This is then exported as keyframe data to Cinema 4D or After Effects (or any other compositing software...). The second shot is from after effects where I applied depth of field to the AE camera and an orange coloured omni light so the text sat somewhat realistically in the shot.
Compositing Test
Matchmoving/Compositing Test from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
First attempt tracking and compositing, went through some issues with 'shadow catching' and after discussions with a few people in the industry decided that the cleanest easiest to use method was to use compositing tags and render out the main passes without the shadow on the floor, and then render a second shadow pass with all the geometry turned off in the render so compositing in after effects was much easier as the shadow was on a seperate multiply layer.
E4 Sting
E4 ESting: Floating Farm from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
This was done quickly over about a day in total, while not really competitively taking part in the contest it did give a context to put the skills I'd learned recently into use so I shot some handheld footage around the farm and river near my house and composited some 3D E4 logos flyng through it. Some of the shadows were drawn by hand with soft masks where the floor couldn't be determined properly for example the large field with the long grass pictured below (no shadow, shadow in video).
The shots below are within Cinema 4D, the footage is set as a background object, the camera is exported from pfTrack and the geometry is then positioned easily with the use of compositing tags exported from pfT also to show the position of elements within the shot. This allows easier estimation of geometry and depth.
Tracking Test 1 from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
This was my first ever attempt at using pfTrack with just the autotrack (which is generally all that is needed) but without the knowledge to refine the solve so the result is quite rough. The screen below shows the public domain footage posted on mograph.net of a NY subway in pfTrack with the tracking points and the positioned 3D camera in relation to these. This is then exported as keyframe data to Cinema 4D or After Effects (or any other compositing software...). The second shot is from after effects where I applied depth of field to the AE camera and an orange coloured omni light so the text sat somewhat realistically in the shot.
Compositing Test
Matchmoving/Compositing Test from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
First attempt tracking and compositing, went through some issues with 'shadow catching' and after discussions with a few people in the industry decided that the cleanest easiest to use method was to use compositing tags and render out the main passes without the shadow on the floor, and then render a second shadow pass with all the geometry turned off in the render so compositing in after effects was much easier as the shadow was on a seperate multiply layer.
E4 Sting
E4 ESting: Floating Farm from Matt Frodsham on Vimeo.
This was done quickly over about a day in total, while not really competitively taking part in the contest it did give a context to put the skills I'd learned recently into use so I shot some handheld footage around the farm and river near my house and composited some 3D E4 logos flyng through it. Some of the shadows were drawn by hand with soft masks where the floor couldn't be determined properly for example the large field with the long grass pictured below (no shadow, shadow in video).
The shots below are within Cinema 4D, the footage is set as a background object, the camera is exported from pfTrack and the geometry is then positioned easily with the use of compositing tags exported from pfT also to show the position of elements within the shot. This allows easier estimation of geometry and depth.
Motion Type Inspiration
Festival Visionsonic - October 29th to 31st 2009 from PIXELS Transversaux on Vimeo.
Nice and simple tracked footage with after effects type. Like the vibrant colour grade on the footage that gives it a bright 'sunny' aesthetic.
MTV music awards 2009 video package by Prologue from Huitième Degré on Vimeo.
I like the rough hand held shots along with the glitchy edits and tight tracking. The strong silhouettes make the visuals interesting and again the colour grade gives it a unique look that is dirtier than the last. Perhaps more of a 'filmic' look.
Create. Breathe. Repeat. from danDifelice on Vimeo.
The simplicity of the type works well with the shots. The colour grade has quite a low contrast, almost polaroid like in its look. The shot with type set apart by quite a distance is really nice & has a lot of depth.
Cinema4d from GGmotion on Vimeo.
This is more of a motion test but the way the geometry reacts to the building in the footage is interesting. I've never rebuilt geometry within a shot for elements to react against apart from floors so this may be an opportunity to try out new techniques such as a wall and a floor on a street..
street tests from Najork on Vimeo.
This was a tech demo done with the release of particular v2 earlier this year and was one of the first videos to show the new 3D shading tools within the plugin. Again the handheld shots work well with the aesthetic and sell the tracking and compositing of the CG elements.
MTV from Graphik Boutique on Vimeo.
MTV logo built in 3D (cloth), nice handheld track though a single shot for that length seems a bit much.
Mtv organic from oldie on Vimeo.
More MTV reveals with handheld tracked shots. The compositied shadows are what sell the shots and the locations obviously set the tone. I need to find some areas of the cities that will allow some isolated shots without people to achieve a similar atmosphere. I quite like the idea that the locations are quite varied and this could play a part in my work. Perhaps street clothing is expanding into less urban areas, for example BMX takes place in forests and on dirt tracks aswell as in the city or in parks so perhaps the locations could change while the type runs through them to emphasise the mixture of elements and cultures.
Sketchbook Pages
Initial screenshots
So far I have worked in my sketchbook (including these screens of quick concept sketches) however as I start to work more within a digital medium I will keep a record of work online here including screens, test shots, footage, motion tests, colour grading tests etc that would not come across in a sketchbook or printed due to the obvious motion aspect and nuances of digital work.