This week, we looked at planar and perspective tracking. This is a form of tracking which follows the perspective and movement of the camera so it stays in the same place in the area.
First we looked at some theory behind tracking and the nodes we will be using in this lesson. We looked at motion blur and the correct paths vs. the incorrect paths which would enable it to work.
We then looked at the same idea, but with grade and transform nodes.
We then looked at the shuffle node. This enabled us to connect different channels from inputs to outputs. We tried changing the input of the alpha channel to depth, so on the alpha channel it would enable us to see the depth within the alpha screen. We used this on an image of helmets.
We then looked at planar tracking on a poster scene. First I created a planar tracking node, selected the 4 points at the side of the poster and tracked it. However, we realised with the pole being in front, the poster wouldn’t track efficiently. We rotoscoped around the pole very roughly, and tracked this back and forth, enabling this to be separated from the tracking of the poster. We then tracked this back and forth, but this wasn’t done properly yet. We had to then select display grid lines and correct plane. This enabled us to adjust the perspective of the poster, so the tracking followed this.
I then added the source image of another poster at the reference point to the scene. We had to corner pin the poster to the 4 sides of the original poster and connect it to all of our planar roto and trackers.
I then followed a node path in which added the roto of the pole back on top of the poster. It did this by re-rotoscoping the pole in more detail this time. For me however the pole appeared black and it hadn’t shown the true image of the pole below. I figured I will need to solve this when I complete my homework.
Work from home
I realised the work we had done in class needed some improvement before I worked on the new poster for the homework. I realigned the corner pins and adjusted the roto. I tracked it with these improvements. I re did the steps we learned in class for the next poster planar tracking. I made all of these nodes and trackers alongside a checkerboard for now, so I could just replace this with a poster of my choice later. I scaled and transformed the checkerboard into the left poster frame, and made sure the corner pins were exact. When I made sure this poster frame was tracked properly and moved alongside the tracker with perspective, I added a poster of my favorite film, ‘Drive’ in place of the checkerboard. I added the same grade and colour correction so it fit within the theme of the poster next to it and blended into the scene.
With some help and guidance, I found that the pole was appearing black because the path wasn’t making it’s way back to the background footage. We connected these together and the pole appeared back in the shot, rotoscoped on top of the first poster.
When I made sure this all played through smoothly, I rendered my scene.
Then I moved to progressing my Balloon Festival Project work. At this point I only had my balloon moving within my colour corrected scene, behind my roto of the mountain. I wanted to add something more to it, and the aim was to have fun with this project so I began thinking of ideas. First I wanted to try out putting png files into nuke and transforming them into the frame. I started out simple and added a rocker launcher sniper in the right corner of the scene which would just be still the whole scene. I then wanted to add a funny animation. I decided to get a png of a dragon, put it in my scene scaled down to size, and transformed it’s movement with keys to appear to be chasing the balloon through the sky. I then downloaded a png of fire and added a dissolve node to make the fire appear and disappear into the exact frames I wanted the dragon to be breathing fire towards the balloon.
I then made sure everything was okay and ran smoothly and rendered this out so I could keep track of my progress of this project.