That looks like some of the stuff Photodex Pro Show does. My wife uses it a lot for slide shows and vid compilations. If it doesnt do it, there are similar effects but better in the producer ver.

You COULD do it in Vegas but a huge amount of work. Easier in After Effects but still no walk in the park. A number of 3rd party tools in AE would probably help considerably.
As others have said if there's some other dedicated app that does it way more sensible to just use that and keep your sanity.

Bob.

Since none of the images in the matrix are moving video streams I would :

1. Create a single (large) matrix of images in Photoshop with transparency and a single image for the "shadows".

2. Put the two images on two tracks in Vegas and add a little Z "distance" between the two tracks to get the sense of space between the images and shadows.

3. Create an empty parent track to these two tracks.

4. Using 3D motion just tilt and pan around the two tracks to your hearts content.

5. At the appropriate location on the timeline just transition into moving video.

the only reason to not do it that way is that when you have your large photoshop image (say 4000x2000), track motion won't zoom around in 4000x2000, it only works with the track's resolution. IE your project resolution.

So while that option might work for some other apps, in Vegas it could give lower-then-wanted results.

But you could to simular with one .veg file being all the images & another being everything else.

Here I was thinking that the 3D parent track motion worked by compositing the child tracks without limiting the resolution the track itself -- but I guess not...

EDIT -- I did come up with another way to use a large "matrix" image along with 3D pan and track that looks pretty clean. Except for the gradiant background, there is only one track of video. And the image is just 1800 x 1800, so there's plenty of room to add more photos. You could also do two layers slightly offset from each other to get even more DOF...

Here is another version of the same clip with two tracks. The lower track has an animated blur added to it and slightly tweaked keyframes to make the track appear to have some DOF...

This is great jdw. Got veg?

Sure thing. I'll get together the veg and media (just two png images) and upload 'em in the morning.

I would like to see that veg as well.
Steve

Here is a link to a zip file containing a veg file and two png files. BTW -- I changed out the photos to different zoo photos. I just wanted to get an idea of how long it would take me to replace 'em in my original Photoshop file (about 5 minutes).

Just right-click the following link and choose "save target as..." to download the zip: photo matrix demo

Jim

Thanks Jim. Just curious: How did you create the matrix in Photoshop?

Hello jdw...

I like the effect you've created very much... thanks for sharing...

Yep, I've downloaded the veg for better evaluation...

Until that time... Earl J.

If you look at the two png files you will see that I just created a "pile" of photos (it could also be a symmetrical grid) then I chose some of the photos to be in the foreground and some in the background. I assigned each batch of photos to each of the two layer groups. I then exported each group as flattened images (with transparency) to the two PNG images used in the Vegas project.

Also, since I'm controlling the "DOF" and "pan and scan" at a clip level (instead of track level) I could just as easily "dolly the camera" through the foreground photos to see the background images by animating the blur fx on the foreground clip as I de-blur the background.

There would be a lot of key framing required -- but I use a 3D application on a daily basis (Lightwave) so I'm kinda used to it ;-)

Jim

I hope you guys don't mind, but I thought I would upload one more version to Youtube. This version uses the technique I mentioned in my last message to "dolly the camera" through the foreground image layer to the background layer.

I've uploaded a revised veg file as well. Just right-click the following link and choose "save target as..." to download the zip (this is just the veg file, you'll need the images in the first zip file mentioned in an earlier post) : photo matrix demo - dolly to background layer

yes, very nice JDW! Thanks for sharing!