Photomontage Help

[basafath]

Hi Everybody

I am working on a photomontage. I have assigned the background image to the viewport background and set the "lock zoom/pan" option ticked on. But inspite of that, I am not able to zoom into the background image. I need to mask a few things in the foreground of the image so that they are visible in the render output.

Please help. I dont understand where I am going wrong.

Thanks.

[Ruprect]

Hi there,

 

on your first point,

 

try cropping your pic on photoshop to the exact shot you need before applying as max background.

 

and on your second point, try using the matte material.

 

Adrian

[FORM3D]

my montage advice would be ,

 

crop the image with the horizon in the dead center of the image.

 

set the max output to the same size as the psd you will have created. Or a ratio of this for testing obviously.

 

in the viewport options select match bitmap and lock zoom pan,.

 

then faff with the camera position , making sure to put the camera target is in the same position as that of the original photo .

 

i have been doing a lot of montage of recent ,

 

its also a huge hlep if you have the position the photograph was taken from .and the hight of the person that took it ..

 

hope this helps.

[FORM3D]

having read your post again, id sugest that any forground that you want to mask should be masked out in post in Ps.

[Conor Clancy]

Camera matching is quite hard but certain information will make things easier.

 

1. a map, as detailed as possible showing the EXACT location the photo was taken from.

 

2. as Form3D mentioned, the height of the person who took the camera.

 

3. The lens settings of the camera, this can be gotten from the EXIF data stored in the image file. The info you're looking for is the mm setting the lens used, be it 28mm, 32mm etc. It is important to know as well if the camera is a full frame digital camera or not. If it is, then you can just take this lens data as it is in the EXIF data, however, if it's not a full frame Digital camera, then you'll have to find out how big the sensor is compared to a 35mm sensor and adjust the lens settings in max to match. For example, I have a Canon EOS 350D, which is not a full frame camera. When I get the exif data for a photo, it says the lens setting I used was 18mm. I need to multiply that by 1.6 to get the actual lens setting if it was a full frame digital camera, so now my lens setting I input into the camera in Max i now 28.8

 

With these 3 important bits of info, you can line up your map in max (i map it to a box and scale it to match the model), place the camera where you marked the map, adjust the height and the angle, input your lens settings and SHAZAAM!!!! it will be close, not exact, but close. I little tweaking should get the camera view to match the model.

 

And finally, as Form3D said, do your masking in Photoshop after. It;s much easier this way.