DigiVFX
Digital Visual Effects, Spring 2005
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project #3: matchmove

Assigned: 2005/05/04
Due: 2005/05/24 11:59pm
artifacts, winning artifacts

Project description

Matchmove is a technique of estimating camera parameters from an input video sequence so that computer generated imagery could be seamlessly inserted into the sequence. In this project, you will implement a structure from motion technique for matchmove. Structure from motion methods usually consist of four steps: feature tracking, 3D estimation, bundle adjustment and 3D reconstruction. In this project, you are only required to implement the 3D estimation part using Tomasi and Kanade's factorization method (a reference matlab implementation). For feature tracking, you can use icarus as demonstrated in the class. After recovering camera paramters, render a simple object such as a sphere or a cube into the input video sequence using the recovered paramters.

Bells and whistles

Students will get extra points if they implement any of the following extensions: You are welcome to do any other extensions or develop algorithm realted to morphing. The bonus depends on how useful and difficult these extensions are and how much you archieve the goal.

Submission

You have to turn in your complete source, the executable, a report in html format (including all resources) and your artifact. The report could contain a description of this project, what you have learned from this project, description of the algorithm you have implemented, implementation details, results (either good or bad), and what extensions you have implemented. You also have to submit your favorite artifact generated by the program you have implemented. For this project's artifacts, submit the composite video using your own program from the input video you take yourself.

Reference software

There are many excellent commercial matchmove software. However, most of them are very expensive (around $5,000). Hence, we will use icarus, the predecessor of PFTrack, as a reference software for this project. Please note that icarus is not distributed online any more. You can download it here with the id and password distributed in the class, but please don't distribute it and only use it for academic purpose. If you are interested in using icarus and blender for the whole process of matchmove and compositing. Here is a series of excellent tutorials.

Taking video

We will provide a Sony TRV900 camera for the students without the video camera access. I will post a signup sheet in the forum and send a mail when it is ready. Please sign up a time slot for using the camera there if you need to use this camera. It has been set at the progressive mode for better tracking. Hence, it is only 15fps. When taking your video, for easier capturing, press the record button earlier to leave some redudant video segments before and after the segment you want. That is, it is easier to capture a video segment if it is in the middle part of a longer video segment. It is a problem with the time code written into the tape. I had problems with this before, but not sure if the problem is still there. I will put a machine with a 1394 card and Adobe Premiere installed in Room 219 so that you can digitalize your video. Please note that this camera has problems with recording sound. However, it should not matter since we don't need sound in this project.

Testing data








Reference