3D mesh captured from video!

A creative way to grab a mesh from video using free camera tracking software. This is normally used to add 3D images to video, but it can also obtain them. With this dramatic look at video editing, we can even mod YouTube clips! If the camera is moving, 3D data is scraped right off the screen. This tutorial explains how to scan, interpolate or otherwise recognize a 3D mesh from a short video clip using Blender. First we capture the points using voodoo, then we import into blender and shrinkwrap a mesh onto the captured points. The result is a crude 3D model of a real world object or person.

Corrections: I forgot to tell you to click on "Rem Double" to remove duplicate vertices.

Master the matrix. Why build a 3D scanner when we already have one!

CREDITS

--music and video--

This video and background music are Copyright (C) 2010 by their sole author, producer, writer, director, composer, perfomer and publisher, Henry Kroll III, (YouTube: themanyone).

This video and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

In short: you are free to share and make derivatives of this work under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Don't forget to attribute the software visuals. (See below.)

My Website:
http://thenerdshow.com

My music CD:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/HenryKrollIII
http://mixculture.org

---software visuals---

This video contains parts or visuals of free software programs. You may use them freely according to each particular license.

Permission has been granted to use the software visuals along with the following attributions:

The Voodoo Cam Tracker is Copyright (C) 2002-2009 the Laboratorium für Informationstechnologie, University of Hannover

The Voodoo Cam Tracker website:
http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html

Blender is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

The Blender.org website:
http://www.blender.org

Recorded on the free Fedora Gnu/Linux operating system. (Other operating systems should work, too.) Fedora software is available under the terms of the Apache License.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License

The Fedora website:
http://fedoraproject.org

ImageMagick was used to convert the .jpg images to .tga format.

The authoratitive ImageMagick license can be found at http://www.imagemagick.org/script/license.php and ImageMagick notices at http://www.imagemagick.org/script/notice.php.

The ImageMagick website:
http://www.imagemagick.org/

--music software used--

I recorded all of my improvised "background music" "live" during a solo jam session with the KORG Karma keyboard and playing along with myself, using heavily modified Generated Effects (also produced with the same keyboard). KORG places no restrictions on the music made with their keyboard software. This keyboard has been used by the likes of Pete Townshend, Peter Gabriel, and myself to create complex, professional-sounding music, but in this case I just used it to throw together a quick background track. I made this background track specifically for this video. It does not appear on my CD or website.

If you would like to hear even better music from me, complete with vocals and even some home-made instruments, check out my CD.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/HenryKrollIII

I recorded my performance at 48,000KHz using the open-source Audacity multi-track recorder software. I used the open-source gtk-recordmydesktop for the screen captures and voice narration. Then I mixed them into a .wav file using Audacity. I down-sampled it to 44.1KHz for the video using the free and open-source avidemux software video encoder which uses the free and open-source ffmpeg video codec.

Audacity is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

--video production software--

Avidemux is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

gtk-recordmydesktop is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

My camera, a cheap GE E-850 8.0 megapixel, needs updating, badly.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

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[seeriktus]

@themanyone could you have made the texture grid lock onto the correct place on the image?

[themanyone]

@seeriktus Not automatically. Once it's projected onto the mesh, it's locked to it.

[maw88ify]

Hi I use Linux Ubuntu , and Linux Mint, I was wanting to know is there any software for that is free and open that can take a group of numbered images and put them into an AVI in number order ... It takes me to long to click and drag one at a time... See I render some of me 3D in Bender as PNG then edit them using MyPaint , and gimp to add fun effect... But putting it back together as an AVI is a pain any help would be great... Thanks

[themanyone]

@maw88ify GIMP does animations and can open a series of images as layers. With the Gimp Animation Package (GAP) these can be saved as an AVI. This can also be done with ffmpeg and a custom script from the command line, but I'll leave the explanation to someone who wants to impress us with the amount of free time on their hands.

[netnerd01]

Nice concept, but wouldn't it work better to make a rough mode and use this to enhance it?

[themanyone]

@netnerd01 If you can make a rough model in blender you don't need mesh capture, but this has some interesting uses for people who are not so artistically inclined. If the subject is symmetrical you can also take the best side and mirror it to make a better-looking model...

[goeiecool9999]

jeez why make all that images jpegs? just load the entire video in the blender video secuence editor select you end/start frame save as targa and bam!

[ArcadeGames]

Too much trouble for a sub par model...

[Pabloko09]

It didn't work.. I'm extremely ugly and my computer said "I'm not working with that thing!"

[issacdhan]

Wow. I am a special effect artist and taught 3D in past. I think whoever going to learn 3D he should start from here then to higher level. Very useful for teaching.Now onward I will show this video to texturing people to teach 3D texturing concept.

[mrchaoslama]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Test py...

[uuuserunknown]

@dipingo when exporting as a python script select export all instead of limit to 1500 or something.

[motherfather2009]

so you made a timeconsuming video-cameratracking just to get a texture of your face on a lowpoly 3d head? didn't get the point. Funny rushing into the picture at the beginning, though :)

[HawkpathAS]

What was the program that you used to save the video as as a jpeg sequence?

[arasbm]

Thank you! This is a great tutorial and It was very helpful to me.