monday 12th May 2008

Today we did some more motion tracking using the leaves the we created on the last lesson. Firstly we went out and filmed some more footage to track. We wanted flat surfaces so we filmed buildings and signs.

We used the same technique as the last lesson, but this time we added a ramp effect to the colours of the leaves. This is the first one we did.

In the next shot, we decided to have a couple of areas where the leaves were growing. The first above the doorway, the next on the big wall next to it. We used the same technique as before for both. For the second, however, we wanted the vines to become transparent when it grew across the window. Do to this, we had to create a travelling matte. We did this by created a new black solid at tracking it to the window using the same technique as before. On the leaves layer, we then selected the new black solid as the matte layer. Here is the final result.

We then wanted to have a transition between the two clips, so we thought we’d use the tree as a wipe. We did this in the same way as the window. We created a new solid then added a mask to it that was the shape of the tree. We then tracked this solid to the tree itself.

8th May 2008

Today we furthered our work with motion tracking by looking at perspective corner pin tracking. Using this method, you can track the 4 corners of an object. We decided that we wanted to create the impression of 2D leaves growing over a sign. Firstly though, we had to create the animation of the leaves growing. We downloaded a stock picture of some flowers and in Photoshop separated the flowers, leaves and vines onto separate layers. We then animated these items using strokes and scale keyframes. This is what we came up with.

We went out and filmed a simple pan past a parking sign to use as our footage. This is that footage.

The first thing we had to do then was track the four corners of the sign. We then applied this track data to the precomposed flowers layer we’d created. To add more to the image, we used a lens flare effect. We also used the tracking data to position this.We then decided to create a vine that grew up the pole. We did this by drawing a path and adding a key framed stroke effect to it. We then animated some leaves growing from the vine. We motion tracked to pole to keep the vine in place.

This is the final result.