Making a Shot in Blender pt1: tracking/keying/masking/setup
Added 2020-05-25 10:07:33 +0000 UTCPart 2 - Lighting
Part 3 - Detailing
01:13 - tracking the camera (ctrl+click to add tracking points)
08:15 - keying the footage
10:45 - masking shenanigans
12:28 - exporting pre-keyed image sequence
14:20 - setting up pre-keyed footage in 3d space
20:30 - adding a new "free" camera
24:34 - general extrusion tomfoolery
Haha! Yeah alright- let's do it! So, on my last post, a few people asked for a tutorial showing how to do something like the boat shot at the beginning start-to-finish, "the whole thing" so this is my attempt at that. It's not a tutorial as much as it's just me talking through making a shot.
I don't expect anyone to really watch the whole thing, but I'll always put the times above for when I do different things, so you can just watch the parts you're curious about.
The boat shot took like 15-30 hours, so the thought of doing a full tutorial for that was pretty intimidating (and also confusing- is it a tut for that shot specifically, or just... "shots", you know?)- but this shot's a bit more straightforward while still dealing with all of the same stuff (moreso, actually, since this one incorporates a live action element).
Making a shot can kind of be broken into two parts. 1.) creating the assets, and 2.) assembling them so they look good (composition/lighting/all that). Creating the assets usually involves the same steps over and over (model some stuff, put a texture on it, maybe a bump/roughness map), so it can be kind of compressed. Part 2 is a bit more ambiguous, since it can come down to more overt personal preference. Honestly, most of composition is just me looking at the screen in silence trying to figure out why I suddenly hate it. This series will probably focus more on number 2, since that's the part I've covered the least in the past.
Let's see how it goes!
Comments
At 7:26, how did he manage to adjust the camera so that the cube aligns perfectly with the table? My cube goes off when I play the video ..
WhaSukGo
2024-07-19 20:51:13 +0000 UTCHi Ian, when I try to import the image sequence as a plane, my texture is showing up pink. To the best of my knowledge I followed along directly with your workflow. Any idea what may be happening on my end?
JJ House
2021-04-29 23:22:52 +0000 UTCSadly yeah, at this point in modern filmmaking it's typically more common to rotoscope green screen footage rather than keying
Ozzie
2020-12-22 00:54:59 +0000 UTCWhat should I do if I lit a green screen badly and it won't key? Roto?
simon wu
2020-11-07 16:27:19 +0000 UTCQuestion: I filmed a dolly shot starting with an ECU and pulling out. Obviously this is significant movement along the Y axis which poses some challenges with the parenting image to camera and moving through other objects in the scene without them all moving significantly which defeats the purpose of the track. Any work arounds to set this up in 3D viewport or will I have to do most of my comping in AE or Fusion?
Boil Man
2020-10-07 22:59:02 +0000 UTCyou and video copilot are the best
noor hicaru
2020-08-20 12:57:36 +0000 UTCOk Ian tanks..Indonesia language terima kasih he he
Raja Cronous
2020-08-19 11:01:12 +0000 UTCI've got the footage right here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RkrxGFvjA2uAZIYAe5FLm9QK9tFhXGxb?usp=sharing I should see if I can upload the entire project file, yeah :)
Ian Hubert
2020-08-18 22:52:07 +0000 UTCfile green screen...model please link download
Raja Cronous
2020-08-18 10:26:19 +0000 UTCthanks a lot for the tutorials im using now blender and ue4, i want to be you on vfx in ue4
Pablo Estrada
2020-08-03 06:56:08 +0000 UTCNo problem, and thanks--I suspected it was something like that! Makes more sense now. As always your content is top-notch, sir!
Kai Christensen
2020-07-03 16:39:45 +0000 UTCI use a lot of after effects, but mostly out of habit :D
Ian Hubert
2020-07-03 07:04:58 +0000 UTCOh! Sorry I missed this- as far as I know, the copy attributes option just basically moves/rotates object B to whatever object A is doing, but they're not linked at all. If you change object A it won't affect B. With the constraint, anything you do to A will be dynamically linked to B. Does that make sense?
Ian Hubert
2020-07-03 07:04:23 +0000 UTCSo you use blender as main software for keying?
Pudding Motion
2020-07-03 05:46:28 +0000 UTCI do have one question. What makes the Copy Attributes add-on different from using copy location and copy rotation constraints? After doing my own testing I can clearly see they are different, but I can't wrap my head around what exactly Copy Attributes is doing differently.
Kai Christensen
2020-06-24 21:55:28 +0000 UTCMan, the technical elegance of this workflow is something else. Motion tracking, scene recreating, then normalising footage so you can redo the camera move, and then make the whole scene to fit the composition of that camera move. Awesome stuff!
Zachary Macintyre
2020-06-24 12:47:39 +0000 UTCJust wanted to say that Copy Location -- Copy Rotation -- Parent to camera stabilization/normalization technique was particularly interesting to me. Spent a good twenty minutes just now trying to get my brain to have some sort of intuition for what those steps are actually doing, but I think I get it now and wow, that's very cool. Thanks for the neat trick (among all the other incredible neat tricks I've already learned)
Kai Christensen
2020-06-24 07:10:48 +0000 UTCThis video accomplished more in 28 minutes than i have in my entire life
Kai Christensen
2020-06-22 19:34:56 +0000 UTCThis is absolutely amazing. I cannot (emphasis on cannot) wait for part 2
Kai Christensen
2020-06-22 19:31:17 +0000 UTCThank you Ian for this , Can't wait for part 2
Mugrapher
2020-06-14 22:11:09 +0000 UTCOh hey yeah! Sorry about that; I'll try to get it out by the end of the day. The last week's been kind of wild. :)
Ian Hubert
2020-06-06 20:04:37 +0000 UTCHey Ian, any ETA on when we getting part 2? No pressure, especially with the whole thing goin' on
KAVN
2020-06-06 15:26:25 +0000 UTCHey great video thanks! I think it is better to key the green screen in another software. I personally suggest Davinci Resolve, it is free and also industry-level software. maybe you can add that in future videos.
Kash
2020-06-04 14:10:58 +0000 UTCThanks for this, it has really helped me take my own skills to a new level.
Tony Rizo
2020-05-27 18:07:03 +0000 UTCjust seeing this has made me realize how much more I'm capable of doing as a solo - keep up the inspiration
Zach Hoy
2020-05-26 23:11:49 +0000 UTCAlso- have set the virtual camera to match the real camera (sensor size, etc.) and even mimicked the same height, etc. as the real camera...s till problems. Corrected for lens distortion, etc... All the same stuff you's do for a similar scene in NukeX, Fusion Studio, etc.... I normally use either Syntheyes or Mocha Pro for all my tracking, but would love to do it all in Blender if i can figure out my problems in doing so.
gary hardesty
2020-05-26 19:41:50 +0000 UTCOops- hit send too early on my last reply. The challenge for me is: when a person is walking left to right in front of the camera, everything is OK. When the person is coming toward or walking away- wow, that is really tough! Ian talked a bit about this challenge in an earlier tut. Scaling and overall distance traveled (green screen person, VS the green screen extraction in the 3D scene). I have a ton of trouble gettting all of this to match. In other words- I adjsut scale in blender,e tc., but- seems line the real person and the virtual scene never match up- the person, as they walk away from the camera, for example, are either getting too small too soon (IE: their scale does not match the scale you set when they started their walk), or, the distance traveled by the real person, in the 3D scene, is wrong, for example, maybe they walked 4 feet, but in the scene, the walk covered the wrong amount of distance. As I said, this happens even when scale, etc. is OK at the beginning... I used the fllor, wall and scale alignment in the Blender tracking/solve system, and that seems OK...but...?
gary hardesty
2020-05-26 17:17:07 +0000 UTCI am also now waiting for---part 2... :) The biggest challenge I seem to be having is getting the real (green screen floor) and virtual floor to line up well enough, especially when the shot is a locked-down tripod shot- seems like it should be easy to match the two- but it's not. I am especially anal about the real scene and the virtual scene having all the proper foot AO/shadows to make the shoot believable when comped together (virtual floor + extracted green screen).
gary hardesty
2020-05-26 17:09:41 +0000 UTCThis is awesome, Waiting for Upcoming parts.. Also looking forward for the green screen lift tutorial. Thanks Ian
akim mohideen
2020-05-26 10:56:22 +0000 UTC"The boat shot took like 15-30 hours" believe me i would have taken weeks or probably given up.... but slowly am trying to understand the workflow and practicing it....Cant wait for part 2 ......
shonal bose
2020-05-26 07:07:15 +0000 UTCAh! Thanks a ton for being here! :D Oh, totally! I've thrown some random footage (including this shot) here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RkrxGFvjA2uAZIYAe5FLm9QK9tFhXGxb
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 04:27:15 +0000 UTCHi Ian. New fan here. I watched it all the way through and loved it! I’m looking forward to part two. I don’t suppose you could share the green screen footage so we can follow along with it... could you?
Jeremy McCloud
2020-05-26 04:20:15 +0000 UTCAH! That looks great! I love it!
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 04:11:58 +0000 UTCAn A73! I've been loving it; it's been great for greenscreen work, since it's so light sensitive I can get a fairly deep DOF to keep lots of tracking points in focus (and reduce noise :D)
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 02:04:22 +0000 UTCWouhou! Thanks for doing that Ian, you legend!!! I can’t wait for part 2!
Nicolas
2020-05-26 02:01:04 +0000 UTCgreat stuff Ian! quick Q: What camera you using these days to shoot your live footage?
George Castro
2020-05-26 01:58:04 +0000 UTCI'm hoping to get through the whole process over the next few videos! We'll see how it goes!
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 01:42:12 +0000 UTCAh! Yeah that's right- sorry! Let me respond to your message :D
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 01:39:14 +0000 UTCOoo yeah- so, oh man I have too many thoughts on that! Haha, if I had filmed someone else sitting across from him (maybe even further forward or back), I could do this same process, but just split the video plane and put the other half closer/further away, and it would all just "work" still. In this case, there's already some existing "real" camera motion burning a perspective into the footage, and the digital camera works better the closer to that original camera movement it stays. If you add another piece of footage with random camera movement to it, you'd have to split the difference when animating the digital camera. The nice thing about this process is it basically stabilizes the footage, though, so if it's just handheld without crazy perspective shift, it should work just fine)- All that to say- yeah, tripod shot would probably be easiest, yeah! This is how I went about it for the dynamo dream trailer, kind of a mix-and-match: https://youtu.be/FFJ_THGj72U
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 01:10:38 +0000 UTCAh, I've heard that!! We should check that out next :D
Ian Hubert
2020-05-26 00:58:32 +0000 UTCGreat job, Ian! I have a shoot I need help with- cam on tripod/grn screen- can't get the real floor and virtual floor to line up...
gary hardesty
2020-05-26 00:15:57 +0000 UTCYou legend! thanks for all of these videos.
Brent Holzheimer
2020-05-25 23:57:46 +0000 UTCThat's a good point, yeah! Especially since blender measures in watts, if you're using real-life measurements, that could affect things. Normally I just crank the slider till I like the amount of light, so that's never really mattered, but if you're trying to emulate exact lighting conditions, that could totally be a thing. I'll be tackling lighting on this scene soon! We'll see how it goes, haha
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 23:20:46 +0000 UTCYES! Exactly what I need:) THanks Man!
Benjamin Lacey
2020-05-25 23:00:45 +0000 UTCOh, thanks for this! I think I fairly rarely use the distortion data (as evident by my basically deleting it all straight off when I jumped into the compositor). I'd love to wrap my head around that workflow a bit more, though. I know Sean Kennedy released some really useful videos lately.
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 22:44:41 +0000 UTCYeah!!! It's crazy convenient. And it's actually a lot more responsive than it looks in the video- I only realized after that I had the compositor open in a panel, so it was re-keying every time I changed frames, haha
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 22:43:51 +0000 UTCAwesome!! I'm glad! :D
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 22:42:36 +0000 UTCI'm glad it's useful! And for a virtual camera, absolutely, yeah. In this case, it's kind of nice that the footage has an original movement I can kind of echo, but in general you'd save yourself a few steps if the camera was just locked down :D.
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 22:42:23 +0000 UTCLess fun, though
Carter Burr-Kirven
2020-05-25 21:33:42 +0000 UTCAny kind of reprojection in particular? Check out this one, for projecting footage onto geometry from an animated camera: https://www.patreon.com/posts/re-animating-in-36909454 and for basic camera projection, like "3d-ifying" a photograph, there's any number of videos online
Carter Burr-Kirven
2020-05-25 21:31:46 +0000 UTCThanks heaps for this. This is exactly what I've wanted to see!
Tim Evans
2020-05-25 21:28:44 +0000 UTCHey Ian, this is exactly what I've been looking for thanks so much! Quick question, if you are going to end up creating a virtual camera movement, would it be faster to just film everything locked off on green screen for a character like this? I understand the benefit of tracking if you want to use your original camera movement, but strictly asking for the perspective of a virtual camera
Dax Blinn
2020-05-25 21:21:38 +0000 UTCLove this! Really helps get a feel of the workflow with real footage which is why I'm here! I'm very interested in a tutorial on reprojection. Your video on YouTube about motion tracking touches on it a little bit when you reproject footage into the room you build but I can't quite wrap my head around how to use reprojection in my own projects and would love to see more examples. Thanks for the content Ian and hi from area code 2 0 6 !
Edward Cunningham
2020-05-25 20:16:15 +0000 UTCthank you for this insane tutorial !
Romain Mercurol
2020-05-25 19:49:29 +0000 UTCFYI for anyone tracking in Blender, if you plan on refining those Kappa 1 and 2 distortion parameters you need a LOT of points, and you need them all around the screen especially near the edges! 8 trackers is considered the minimum (technically the lowest is 6), but more is generally better.
Zeke Faust
2020-05-25 19:26:19 +0000 UTCFire
Griffin Toal
2020-05-25 18:31:40 +0000 UTCWow, parenting masks suddenly makes masking in Blender super interesting. Thanks! For the record, I did watch the whole thing, and I think alot of folks will.
Mark Miller
2020-05-25 17:24:32 +0000 UTCGreat all the way through! I love how you're able to put a scene together like you're sketching in a note book. Question Ian: What do the specs on your PC look like?
Chris Ak
2020-05-25 16:08:38 +0000 UTCThis is great!!! Would love to see some tips on combining multiple locked off clips and adding and exporting the camera moves. I’d like to build my scenes in Blender but be able to composite and color correct the footage and the 3D as separate elements after in Ae. Match grain and add more elements etc. Thanks for this Ian. You’re a real hero.
Mike L. Taylor
2020-05-25 13:43:25 +0000 UTCTakes me 3 days to make a room and he makes a room and adds live video in it all in 20 minutes while singing the theme song from cheers WOW true Jedi here's my 7$ just EPIC 🤩🙏🏾#KEEPFILMING
Patrick Lever
2020-05-25 13:28:25 +0000 UTCAmazing!
Jan van den Hemel
2020-05-25 13:18:44 +0000 UTCamazing, would love to see the full process (texturing, building the world, lighting etc) really really helpful
max pirrit
2020-05-25 12:47:18 +0000 UTCAmazing, but what happen if you want to add another character en the same scene ? or more?another one with another camera? they must have to similar camera movent? i can imagen that for lots of people in a scene like, this tripod shoot will be the best... coexist videos with different perspective and paralax could work??
Gamba
2020-05-25 12:46:09 +0000 UTCthat was epic to watch you like what ever you wanted to design in your head you can produce and then play with effortlessly it was magic to watch you I can do it in 2d but 3d is another story ,haha looking forward to part 2
keith hamilton
2020-05-25 12:27:20 +0000 UTCYessss, more of that please! I've began adopting a similar workflow inspired by your previuse work. Here's my draft so far: https://youtu.be/Fmwh6zZkmE0 You may recognize the steam elements.
Gabriel Meilikhov
2020-05-25 12:08:19 +0000 UTCThanks! Just what I needed!
Kennisoan
2020-05-25 11:56:04 +0000 UTCDoesn't working at scale also affect lighting and rendering? Not sure if this goes for Eevee. Anyway, I would love to hear about your lighting process.
Michiel Coene
2020-05-25 11:46:02 +0000 UTCanother great video! Thanks! It is very useful and interesting to watch how you work
Max
2020-05-25 11:45:04 +0000 UTCJess, so cool! Want to get into this workflow! Btw " i know this much is true" on HBO, is the best drama series I have seen in a few years. Mark ruffalo is just amazing in it.
JØRGEN WETAAS BULL
2020-05-25 11:41:02 +0000 UTCWow 😳 this is awesome 😎
Ry Ken
2020-05-25 11:21:58 +0000 UTCThanks Ian!
Davide Gualmini
2020-05-25 11:17:46 +0000 UTCPretty awesome! But would a stationary camera not had been a bit easier?
Per Kofod Hansen
2020-05-25 11:10:02 +0000 UTCMy logic exactly. Haven’t heard of “the great” but I’ll check it out!
Robert Gyurko
2020-05-25 10:42:23 +0000 UTCLOVING it! We also watched "The Great", which was really good. Quarantine's been a nice impetus to start watching more shows :D
Ian Hubert
2020-05-25 10:40:51 +0000 UTCoh man better call saul is great!
Robert Gyurko
2020-05-25 10:39:01 +0000 UTCwas waiting for this my entire life thanks man!
Orkun Işıtmak
2020-05-25 10:09:13 +0000 UTC
