DigiVFX
Digital Visual Effects, Spring 2006
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project #1
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final project
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project #3: MatchMove

Assigned: 2006/5/3
Due: 2006/5/23 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 (CGI) could be seamlessly inserted into the sequence. In this project, you will use tools to create visual effects for matchmove. You can either use camera calibration techniques or structure from motion methods. Essentially, for this project, you have to do the following things:
  • Shoot a video sequence and digitalize it. (Of course, you should plan ahead to be sure how camera moves and what to insert afterwards.)
  • Apply a calibration or structure from motion tool to estimate camera parameters
  • Import these camera parameters into some 3D packages to add CGI into your scene
  • Optionally, add sound effects to your video and edit it.

Taking video

We will provide a Sony TRV900 camera for the students with no access to video camera. Please sign up here to borrow the camera. For better tracking results, we would suggest that you set the camera in the progressive mode. Hence, the video could be of only 15fps. You can check with this when you convert your video into a sequence of images. If it is 15fps, two neighboring frames are exactly the same. When taking your video, for easier capturing, press the record button earlier to leave a redudant video segment 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. We had problems with this before, but are not sure if the problem is still there. In addition, please note that this camera could have problems with recording sound.

After taking the video, you need to convert it into a sequence of images. We will put a machine with a 1394 card and Adobe Premiere installed in Room 219 so that you can digitalize your video.

MatchMove and rendering

If you prefer to use calibration approach, you can either Bouget's matlab calibration toolbox or Zhengyoun Zhang's calibration program. However, to use this approach, you have to figure out how to insert CGI by yourself.

For structure from motion, there are many excellent commercial software. However, most of them are very expensive (around $5,000) which we can't afford to use in this class. Hence, we will use icarus, the predecessor of PFTrack, for this project. You can download icarus here. Please note that icarus is not distributed online any more. Hence, don't distribute it and only use it for academic purpose.

For icarus, we recommend that you use Blender 3D to add CGI. Here is a wondeful tutorial on using icarus and Blender for the complete MatchMove process.

Submission

You have to turn in two videos, the raw footage before inserting CGI and the final composite video as your artifacts. Write a simple report in html describing what tools you have used and what lessones you have learned.