3-D compositing??

Rv6tc wrote on 3/18/2007, 8:07 PM

I'm making a video for my father's 80th birthday (and this is about the 50th request for help here!!). When I shot it, I had everyone that interviewed look into the camera and say "Happy Birthday, Roy/Dad/granddad". My intent was to string them together to end the video. Now that I've done that, it's.... boring. I was thinking that instead, I could do something like have the clips "fall" from the camera. Imagine that you were looking down on a table and dropping photos, and they were collecting on the table in a jumble. I want to try to do that, except with short video clips. As it starts out, there will be one or two, then the frequency will increase, like a bucket of water spilling... one or two drops, then the rest fall.

I've tried doing this two ways. First I did it as a parent/child composit in 2-D, just altering the sizes of the individual frames. Then I tried a big 3-D master, and tried to zoom it away in the "Z"axis. That works, but only for one clip.. in that I would have to do that for nearly 20 individual lines. That maybe what's required, or this may simply be too big for my experience at this time. But this is my weakest editing skill, so I thought I'd toss it out and see if anyone has any ideas. Absent that, any ideas how to spice up the ending. I think it's fundamentally sound (having everyone en masse wish him a happy birthday), just how would I pull it off?

Thanks again. If you couldn't tell, this is by far the biggest project that I have attempted, and I'm really pushing the envelope of my editing skill. I've relied on this forum, and I can't imagine trying to do this with anything other than Vegas, and this group as tech support.

Keith

Comments

jrazz wrote on 3/18/2007, 9:20 PM

Keith,

Take a look at this video and a look at its veg file. It is of a baseball team that I sponsored last summer. It makes good use of the 3d composite feature of Vegas.

Tracks 6, 19 &, 34 are for video while the other tracks are for stills.

Video: low quality just to show you the effect: 24megs
Veg: Baseball Flythrough Template

Maybe it will give you some ideas or maybe you can tweak the veg file to do what you need.

j razz

TeetimeNC wrote on 3/19/2007, 4:59 AM

Keith, be sure your zoom on the Z axis in the parent track is using PARENT motion control, at the far left in the track header.

Jerry

farss wrote on 3/19/2007, 5:45 AM

What you're trying to achieve is far from trivial, I'd go so far as to say if you wanted it to look very realistic then well outside what Vegas is capable of.
Having gotten that out of the way I'd suggest you start at the end, getting all the 'photos' onto the table where you want them and then work backwards, getting them to move up.

I'd suspect each one will need it's own track and controls so even a few photos becomes a big job and if you have more than one in the air at a time really messy, particularly if the fly around one another.
Ages ago I did a much simpler, almost 2D job and getting thing to move in front of one another is a lot of work and planning, each object needs several duplicate tracks for when it's in front of and behind other objects.

It can be done but, man it's real tedious stuff and it needs plenty of planning. It's probably way easier in a real 3D app (despite the learning curve) like Truespace, unless you want video on each of the 'photos' instead of stills, then as far as I know you're into the real heavy weight applications. You can get older versions of Truespace usually for nothing. Not the worlds best 3D program but it's free.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/19/2007, 8:25 AM

idea:

do it as a single frame for the photo flying. Print those frames on high-quality 4x6 photo paper. Then video tape the picture in front of the camera & it falling backwards (or whatever you wanted: tossing, etc). Make sure you get it in full camera view for ~5 seconds.

Now take that clip on the time line. Bump it against the video of the family/friends talking. Leave ~1/2-1 second of the "flying pictures" clip. Overlap so the talking video & the picture fade in/out a little.

With a little practice/luck, you should have what you want pretty quickly. It'll cost more then an NLE only solution, but be a HECK of a lot faster.

EDIT: free truespace: http://forms.caligari.com/forms/ts3all_free.html

Rv6tc wrote on 3/19/2007, 9:23 AM

Thanks guys.

I think that I can learn to do this, but probably not within the time constraints that remain (under two weeks).

FARSS - I looked at jrazz's .VEG file and nearly passed out. So I think you are right, it will be very involved. Speaking of which... jrazz, the initial few seconds of your video actually look like what I want. It's not exactly the vision I had, but it's in the same vein, as "flying through" the tiles would be a similar effect. So if you don't mind, I'd like to try to adapt your .veg file to use. That certainly is not something that I could learn to do in two weeks.

Friar - There is a lot of merit in your idea, but I'm traveling this week for business, so I would only have next weekend to do it and do it right. If I screwed it up (likely) then there would be no time for a "plan b".

Thanks again for the responses. I appreciate the help.

Keith

By the way, jrazz, how did you set it up to stream the video file? I'd like to do that when I get this project done to get a little feedback (maybe... I'm a little intimidated by the level of expertise here!).

Tim L wrote on 3/19/2007, 10:52 AM

A user over on the Vegas Movie Studio forum recently posted a tutorial about doing this with VMS:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=516412&Replies=2

Now his technique is just 2D -- not as fancy as real 3D motion -- but it is very simply done just using pan/crop on each event. His example is with still photos, but should work just the same with "live video" events.

Note that in VMS he is limited to 4 tracks, so when he drops 3 photos onto the background, he has to then save a snapshot of the screen (background, with 3 photos dropped), use that as his new background, and reset the other 3 video tracks for more photos to drop. This extra effort won't be needed with the full Vegas.

Tim L

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 3/19/2007, 11:10 AM

JRAZZ, is that veg a modified version of the one I put out there all those months ago? or did you go through all that work again? If so, I'm just glad that it has been put to so much good use, if not, then... I feel your pain :)

Dave

jrazz wrote on 3/19/2007, 11:18 AM

Dave, this veg started out as your veg oh so many months ago and has evolved several times since you first shared. It is way easier to start with something you know works and modify it than it is to hang all those pics and vids again. This one actually has been altered several times and at the very end has a baseball fly up and crack the screen and fall off. Making that fall realistic was extremely hard to do, but I think I achieved it. Again, thanks for sharing Dave.

j razz

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 3/19/2007, 11:44 AM

I think I should see if that file can be hosted on the VASST site, so that it's an available resource for others too. I'm just happy to help, and you make a good point (about it being handy to use something that already works). I'll send them a note and ask them if they would want to host it. Thanks for the idea J.

Dave