Digital Visual Effects

Digital Visual Effects, Spring 2011

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project #1
project #2
final project
assignments

project #3: MatchMove

Assigned: 2011/4/27
Due: 2011/5/17 11:59pm
submission, voting, 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 using 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 on 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 camera for the students with no access to video camera. Please sign up here to borrow the camera.

MatchMove and rendering

If you prefer to use calibration approaches, 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. In this project, we recommend to use Voodoo or icarus (the predecessor of PFTrack). You can download Voodoo or icarus. Please note that icarus is not distributed online any more. Hence, don't distribute it and only use it for academic usage. Voodoo is highly recommended since it is much easier to use and is actively supported.

For inserting CGIs, 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. You will need this Python script to import Icarus output to Blender. If you use Voodoo, you do not need the script since Voodoo includes this in the program already.

Here are the slides from TA's help session. You can download the required Python file for new version of Blender here.

Submission

You have to turn in two videos, the raw footage before inserting CGI and the final composite video as your artifacts. It is not required but preferred to Write a simple report in html or pdf describing what tools you have used and what lessones you have learned. Please follow the instruction for submission.