Matchmoving with PFhoe

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Matchmoving, also referred to as camera tracking or 3D tracking, was first used creatively by film makers to generate visual effects in blockbuster movies such as Jurassic Park to seamlessly add computer generated effects to the movie.  Since then with the rise of computers and increasing use of CG in television and films, camera tracking has become a necessary tool for professional digital artists.

“Match moving is primarily used to track the movement of a camera through a shot so that an identical virtual camera move can be reproduced in a 3D animation program. When new animated elements are composited back into the original live-action shot, they will appear in perfectly-matched perspective and therefore appear seamless.”
-Wikipedia entry on “Match Moving”

What visual effects can be achieved using PFhoe?
The point cloud and camera data from PFhoe can be used in many 3rd party applications for the following:

Inserting 3D Props – cars, debris, buildings etc.
Inserting animated characters.
Inserting graphics in 3D space.
Effects that you are not suppose to see, often used for fixing problems. Adding an object to cover up an mistake.
Subtle effects, adding snow, water, smoke etc.
Architectural Pre-visualisation.
Design Pre-visualisation.
Set extensions.

Things to take into account when filming
It’s important that the type of shot is right to get a successful camera track. To enable PFhoe to successfully analyse the source sequence and calculate the 3D information, the shot must exhibit perspective changes. PFhoe will take into account the distance between points in the scene, and the speed change of these points as the camera moves towards or away from them.

There must be enough features for PFhoe to track, these are points that are visible throughout the scene.

Before you track the footage in PFhoe, you will need to mask out any moving objects that will interfere with tracking the camera motion. You can import mattes into PFhoe when you import the footage to mask out moving objects. You can use any matte imported as a greys-scale QuickTime or AVI movie and PFhoe Pro can also load mates that are image sequences. The matte sequence should be the same resolution and frame-length as your original footage.

If you’re using a green screen – You will need to use tracking markers. There’s a useful tutorial at at Hollywood Camera Work on everything you need to know about tracking markers and matchmoving on a green screen.

Read the “PFhoe User Guide” – there’s lots of useful information in here, including the keyboard shortcuts.

Exporting the data
Export the tracking data to your 3D animation package or compositing system.  When you open the exported file in the 3D application you will find the virtual camera with the generated camera path. You can insert your effects using the tracking points as reference, these will show as features in your 3D application and using these you can add effects to match the scene.

Get started
Practice makes perfect! You can download PFhoe and run it without purchasing a serial key. The application will be fully functional and only the export is restricted – it’s ideal for learning.

Don’t swim after lunch

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We love the animation and sound design in this short film Directed and Designed by Jens Blank. The film, which cleverly combines live-action footage and CG, was created for a promotional art exhibition. “ It’s my take on daydreaming and changing everyday environments into something exciting. It was done over the stretch of 6 weeks grinding away in my room. Live action, Maya, AE, and PFTrack.” says Jens.

You can find information about the crew, concept art and behind the scenes on Jen’s website www.animateme.me.uk

The Art of Roto: 2011

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Some of you will know Nick Lambert, who very generously shares his knowledge with the PFhoe community in the forum. Nick has 20 years experience, specialising in removal, roto & compositing and has worked all over the world for many clients.

Nick started up Boundary VFX in 2009 with a distributed team of professional digital artists based in the US, UK, Brazil and Canada. They offer outsourced services such as rotoscope, 2D to 3D Stereoscopic Rotoscope and Clean Plating, Keying | Matte Generation and more.

This week FXGuide posted The Art of Roto: 2011 which offers a historical overview of rotoscoping through to the modern post-production pipeline. A thorough knowledge of rotoscoping and roto tools is vital to problem solving in VFX.  Just like matchmoving, it’s an invisible art. The article features Boundary VFX, who are breaking the mould with their outsource services. They have recently worked on major Hollywood feature films, such as Harry Potter and the Smurfs, with more coming out in the next few months.

Our thanks to Nick for his much valued support and congratulations on the recognition of his outstanding work!

Turtle Beach VFX Reel – Breakdown

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Turtle Beach, located in Utrecht the Netherlands, is a small VFX company owned by Geert van Schoot. With an in-house greenscreen studio and camera, light and grip equipment Turtle Beach handles all visual effects demands.

We contacted Geert after seeing the very impressive “Turtle Beach VFX Breakdown” to ask if he had used PFhoe on any recent projects.  “Yes, I’m using PFhoe as my main 3d tracker” Geert told us.

The first shot in the breakdown, an aerial scene of a golf course, was filmed using a remote control mini helicopter with a canon 5Dmk2, on a windy day. Although the golf course was being filmed for a new course promo, Geert also needed an impressive opening shot for a budget short movie called ‘the Cleopatra Diamonds’, starring Dutch illusionist Hans Klok. “I tried various workflows to get the best results. I first stabilized the shot thinking that this would make it easier to track in PFhoe but actually I just needed to track the original plate. I exported the camera data to After Effects to add the 3D elements, and then did a 2d stabilize in After Effects. The last pass was adding Vue 3d elements, using the same tracking information. Every shot has it’s own workflow.”


Final Shot

In-between Shot


Before Shot

In another scene, girls in the control room (for the same movie as mentioned above) was shot in a very small chamber with very little light “PFhoe did a good job, no manual corrections needed. It’s a tricky scene because the water can’t be tracked or the moving actresses and all had to be masked out leaving not much quality footage to track.  Even with the closely added cg foregrounds (computer screens) there was no jitter at all.”


Before                                                  After

The UFO scene was made for ‘Klokhuis’, a daily educational children’s show on dutch tv. The show has a lot of short comic scenes all shot with 5Dmk2, often combined with vfx.


Before                                                 After

We asked Geert “Would you recommend PFhoe to others?”
“For my kind of work clients want to see an immediate result, often there is no budget for more versions or tweaking. A shot needs to be at least 90% after the first pass. PFhoe is great value for money. The interface is easy to understand, it gives good tracking results and what is important for me is that the workflow with After Effects is very quick and straightforward – you simply export from After Effects the part of the shot you want to track together with a rough animated matte to mask out any moving objects so they do not interfere with the camera track, in PFhoe perform the track and then orient the scene at 1 point and import the camera into After Effects. That point now becomes position 0,0,0 (xyz), place an object there, scale it to the right size and start building the scene. Easy!”

What is PFhoe?

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The Pixel Farm have been creating world-class tracking technology for over 10 years, helping artists to achieve exciting, cutting-edge visual effects.

PFhoe is The Pixel Farm’s introductory matchmoving application, a stand alone, automated matchmover that provides a simple to use, intuitive interface allowing users to quickly and easily track shots and use the camera data to match CG elements into live action footage, a crucial part of many visual effects shots.

Don’t just take our word for it, here’s what our customers say..

Continue reading →

A few case studies featuring PFTrack  

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Captain America: The First Avenger

We’ve enjoyed reading a case study from CGSociety on Captain America: The First Avenger.  The visual effects were created by a collaboration of very talented post production facilities from all over the world. Double Negative was the lead vendor responsible for 630 of the visual effects shots on the film with another 13 companies taking on more vfx shots.

Visual Effects Supervisor Edson Williams, at Lola VFX, located in California, talks about a unique process used to make the characters a cinematic reality, including using The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack to track Red Skull’s face.

CGSociety Case Study

Official Captain America Trailer

Bird – A Decent Animal

A team of Savannah College of Art and Design students expertly match live-action with CG animation and visual effects in this well-executed student short. We thoroughly enjoyed the film and there’s also an interesting Behind The Scenes and VFX Breakdown on the website dedicated to the film, visit www.ada-bird.com.

Led by director Jon Balcome and featuring, Dan Giraldo and Pat Longstreth as VFX producers, the project started out as Balcome’s thesis for his MFA Visual Effects course at Savannah. In total there were 42 shots in the film, 29 of which were VFX shots. To create the visual effects, the team used a pipeline that included Maya, Nuke, After Effects, Photoshop, PFTrack, ZBrush and BodyPaint 3D.

Battle: Los Angeles

Long-time PFTrack users, SPIN VFX, recently delivered 200 shots for the military sci-fi thriller Battle: Los Angeles. Check out the case study on The Pixel Farm website if you haven’t already.

Grey Days

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The award winning London creative post production company The Operators have used PFhoe Pro on a unique creative showreel of their accomplished work.

The award winning London creative post production company The Operators have used PFhoe Pro on a unique creative showreel of their accomplished work.

The Operators, a hugely talented team of people with great creative vision, excel in the convergence of print into motion with a high-end finish. This is not your standard showreel, filmed in a documentary style, the viewer follows actor Adam Morris who plays the role of a city worker having a bad morning on his commute to work and on this journey he is surrounded by animated artwork cleverly illustrating a varied portfolio of VFXwork produced by The Operators.

“I was very pleased with the results PFhoe Pro gave me on this project” commented VFX Supervisor Ben Le Tourneau at The Operators. “Like many VFX artists, I have very little time to learn new applications but with PFhoe I jumped straight in and followed the logical left to right process and started tracking the footage in no time”.

Technical case study to follow at The Operators

The PFhoe Project of The Year 2011

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Winner Announced!

Thanks for all the great entries we received for this competition, they were amazing!
Difficult as it is, there has to be one winner.

Congratulations to Hannu Hoffren who has won a full commercial copy of ‘PFTrack’ and a free subscription to ‘fxphd’ for coming first in The PFhoe Project of The Year.

Hannu’s entry, titled “Puijo Tower Travels” is an “out of this world” video that’s very interesting, especially for those of us who do not see extreme cold weather very often!

We judged the projects based on creativity, for technical achievement and aesthetic appeal.

Hannu has very kindly provided a vfx breakdown that we’ll be posting here shortly and he tells us of the inspiration behind the project on his website http://www.fxgrill.com/2010/12/

Links
See all entries
PFTrack
fxphd
Hannu’s Website

Watch Me Move

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The Animation Show
15 Jun – 11 Sep 2011
Barbican Art Gallery, London

A must see if you’re visiting London anytime soon. A delightful art show tracing the history of animation over the past 150 years and covering every discipline of the art-form including zoetrope, shadow puppets, stop motion, cell-drawn, claymation and CGI.

Watch Me Move brings together the films of contemporary artists alongside popular favourites includingWalt Disney and Pixar, and go behind the scenes of much-loved films such as Pinnochio, the 1940 Walt Disney classic and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park.

Greenlight PFhoe Pro Case Study

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At Greenlight Television it’s not just the motorsport events they cover that are fast, but also the turnaround required to cover these events. “Using PFhoe I was able to track 3 shots in a day. I’d say to anyone in my situation, when you are the only designer in a company and want to do something a little bit different, PFhoe is a great place to start. I didn’t have to spend a lot of time learning the application, I watched one tutorial and then followed the step-by-step process and it gave me a good result straight off.” says Luke Pointon, Graphic Designer at Greenlight.

Click on image to see the full title sequence.

Greenlight Television is a production company that covers a diverse range of programmes including every kind of motorsport. Currently the team are on location in Barbados filming the Sol Rally, a massively popular event on this tiny Caribbean island. Following this they are off to film powerboat racing in Jersey and Malta. Do they have any vacancies? I hear you say.

Luke used PFhoe for the first time recently to help create the title sequence for the British Rally Championship, a series of 8 rallies located throughout the UK. Using the tracking data generated in PFhoe Luke was able to add blocks to the scene in 3D space and design these blocks to fall on the racing track, the result is impressive.

Luke has provided a nice VFX breakdown, click on image to view

Once each rally has been filmed by the specialist crew at Greenlight, Luke creates the titles, straps, result boards and course maps, ready for the edit which is done on-site and then sent to Sky Sports as a finished programme ready for broadcast the following day. The cameras used are Sony XDCAM PMW500 in 1080 HD and shot interlaced to capture the motion, which wasn’t ideal for Luke when tracking the footage. “Next time we will shoot at 50 frames per second which will capture the movement beautifully and work much better in post production.” says Luke.

To create the titles, Luke spent about 3 days testing various shots and getting ideas together. Once he had the footage ready the titles took about a week from start to finish using Final Cut Pro to de-interlace the footage and to edit, then straight into PFhoe to generate a 3D camera, from there into Cinema 4D to create the animation and finally into After Effects to composit. The whole project (straps, results, maps, branding the programme etc) from concept to completion took about three weeks.

“PFhoe has been a great introduction to matchmoving and it’s very likely that we will invest in PFTrack as we get more and more into VFX!”

Visual Effects: Luke Pointon at Greenlight Television
Production: British Rally Championship – for Sky Sports.

“PFhoe Pro 2.2 Simple, but Powerful Match-Moving Software”

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We met with Ricky Grove of “Renderosity” last year at Siggraph when he came to our stand to see the newly released PFMatchit. We enjoyed chatting to Ricky and if I remember right, Ricky enjoyed a couple of glasses of The Pixel Farm’s famous ‘Kentish Cider’ on the booth. (That’s the way to look after Press!) Ricky loved PFMatchit and wrote a great review on the new node-based matchmoving application (if you’re interested here’s the “review”)

I recently invited Ricky to try out PFhoe. I’m very pleased to report that he also liked PFhoe and here’s the full article.

“PFhoe Pro 2.2 - Simple, but Powerful Match-Moving Software”

The Pixel Farm in the London to Brighton Bike Ride

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For the second year running The Pixel Farm took part in The London to Brighton 54 mile bike ride and achieved a record time (for us anyway) of 5 hours and 15 minutes. It was tough but we had a great time and were fortunate to have a clear run most of the way to Brighton. We reached 41.5 mph going down hill, not bad hey?

The event takes place every June and about 27,000 people cycle to raise money for The British Heart Foundation.

In the picture, from left Thomas, Paula and Wayne before the start at 6am. (Thomas looks a little bit nervous!)

PFHoe Is The Stuff Of Rocket Science

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PFHoe has served as a great introduction to matchmoving for Fulvio Pozzoni of boutique media company, The Rocket Science Group, London,UK.  “At first I just experimented with it, because I’d never used it before” explains Fulvio. In fact those first experiments using test shots of a London alleyway and shot on a standard prosumer DVCam worked out so well that he found he had created a segue ident for his company’s promotional films. “It’s very easy and fun to use, but at the same time it is very powerful” he says. Fulvio shot the scene a number of times, trying each version in PFHoe until he found the one that worked best. “ Because I tried a few shots, I now have a better idea of how to plan a shot for tracking next time”.

Having achieved such a great result in his first attempt, Fulvio then went on to use PFHoe again in a commercial project for a BUPA internal promotion. This was a more difficult shot and featured a dolly shot moving along a corridor with plain white walls.
Fulvio explains, “Because of the white walls, I didn’t have much contrast to define areas in the shot, and I thought that PFHoe being an entry level tracker wouldn’t be able to track the shot”. Because the shot moves through two distinct locations, along a corridor and then into another room, the shot was split into these two respective parts and tracked separately.

With little or no real features to identify along the plain walls the corridor shot was problematic. However a few well placed user features and with some assistance from the geometry tool helped to achieve sufficient camera data to work with in Cinema 4D so that as the moving 3D object (the star) travels along the corridor tracked parameters enabled it and it’s shadow to be satisfactorily composited. The second part of the sequence was a cinch for PFHoe, creating a very accurate camera straight away. Fulvio confides, “Because this was the first time I was using PFHoe on a project for a commercial client I did suggest that we have Plan B, in case I was unable to deliver the idea”.  Of course he needn’t have worried. The client loved the result almost as much as Fulvio loved creating it.

Having had such a positive experience of matchmoving Fulvio says that it has opened up a whole new set of possibilities in the film projects he works on, saying “ I enjoyed using PFHoe very much and was amazed by what it could do.”

The Rocket Science Group
Visual Effects: Fulvio Pozzoni