Need help with static camera solve

[stayinwonderland]

I'm kind of new to this so basically I need to know what the basic procedure is for camera matching/solving?

 

I'm struggling a lot with doing this by eye:

 

 

Is there a techique or does one tend to use a plug-in?

[John Dollus]

I never use a plugin for camera matching photography and often just accomplish it by eye. There is the utility included with Max that works fine if you have known dimensions to match. For example, with your image, the existing facade can be determined by counting the bricks and reconstructing the rear elevation within your scene. Once you have that, you can better locate the nodes required of the matching utility. the main issue you have with your scene is locating points outside of the XY plane of the rear facade. for that, you have the projected end of the planned addition that should work pretty well.

Honestly, your match doesn't look too far off. It helps to get a good source photograph with measurements taken and lens settings noted but that isn't always possible. Check the EXIF data from the photo in photoshop to see if any of the camera settings were recorded.

[stayinwonderland]

Many thanks for the advice. Yeah I actually thought that I should model the existing building in very basic detail and match THAT to the photo as well. The main problem is the plane that comes toward the camera (z plane?).

[Devin Johnston]

If you have Sketch up Pro there is a built in perspective match tool that is much better than the one that comes with Max. The Max tool is at least 10 years old and has never been updated, it's very picky so you'll need precise measurements of the existing structure to make it work. If all else fails you'll have to do what John suggested and eyeball it, it doesn't have to be perfect as long as it looks right.

[Scott Schroeder]

You can always go into Photoshop and do some lens corrections on the base image to remove the vertical distortion and that will help you line things up in Max, similar to what you'd do with camera correction.

 

The fastest way for simple shapes like that house, is to make a very rough box shape in Max of the existing building and use that to line things up. You can also draw perspective lines in Photoshop over your background image and using splines at the major corners of the building in max, line things up that way as well.

 

If you know your camera height and lens, that helps tremendously as well.

[Umesh Raut]

Exactly (as immediate above) what I used when challenged with a similar Q's. Using bright fluorescent green lines on a copy of the BG photo and loading that in Max as viewport background does the trick, and fast too.