Blender and Voodoo Camera Tracking: The Desk

A video of my desk. With a monkey. And a strange man. With telepathic powers. And a rocket chair. How can this get any more random?

I'll tell you how. No actually, I wont, but here's a quick runthrough of how I made it.

1. Filmed desk using digital camera.
2. Put Video on Computer.
3. Used Blender to convert video into TARGA files.
4. Opened TARGA files in voodoo, set up initial camera, and tracked footage (took about 20 mins)
5. When voodoo asked if I want to make it "Super dooper accurate", I clicked yes.
6. Waited 20 hours (literally, no joke) for it to complete.
7. Saved camera track as python script.
8. Opened blender, set up render settings to match video footage (aspect ratio, resolution)
9. Opened and ran python file.
10. Drank coffee.
11. Added TARGA files + Scene + Alpha under effect in the Video sequence editor in blender.
12. Made the background image a sequence, loaded TARGA files, made it auto updating.
13. Put in 3D objects and animated. Made plains "OnlyCast", so shadows cast on them, but they cannot be seen.
14. Got another Coffee, and rendered animation. (coffee took 3 mins, render 5)
15.***Most Important***
Uploaded video to youtube for people to laugh at and post negative comments.

DONE!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Blender
• Voodoo
• Camera
• Tracking
• Track
• Random
• 3D
• Blender3D
• animation
• art
• experimental
• short
• film
• tutorial
• trailer
• The
• Desk

[mysoulstudos]

Shadow?

[Crozonexz]

@mysoulstudos Made a invisible plane that lines up against the real table, and then made it receive a shadow

[alexchrisccc]

pretty good nice job :)

[Crozonexz]

but is it random enough?

[Crozonexz]

@homersparents As for a tutorial, I got off the ground with this one "fictionality.co.uk/doku.php?i­d=tutorials:matchmoving"

Hope this helps

[Crozonexz]

@homersparents I find that I get the best tracking results when I have a really clear video feed that is free of film grain. This is probably the most important point. Also try to avoid zooming and keep the video focused.

Also, it really helps to really tweak the options for lens aperture, focal distance etc, and enter correct information about the approximate position of the camera.

After voodoo is finished, it may want to "refine" the result. It takes forever, but is really worth it.

[homersparents]

@Crozonexz

is there a good tutorial that can show the little tricks people must have to make it look right.

i followed one but my video doesn't match move well and the object looks wiggly. its like it almost tracked but not close enough.

what the trick?

[Zaylien]

love you explain your coffee in with the process. Damn accurate.

[Rubdos]

So... 22 hours for 13 sec video? You're crazy! For a real movie you have 15.000 hours of voodoo :D lol

[mysoulstudos]

were's onlycast? in the matreial button?

[aninjainatree]

nice looking... but horrible animation! lol jk

[karlajihil]

nice animation.. but it really looks fake!