using a drone video as environment reflections?

[SgWRX]

someone approached me talking about using a video from a drone as a reflection map. so we would have an empty lot on a street, the drone would fly along that street recording video facing the empty lot and again facing the opposite direction of the empty lot (this would be the reflection map then). i suppose it would be visible in the windows of the building to be put on that empty lot. it would be to mimic a "flyby" at about car-level or a bit higher.

 

is that something that would be desirable? has anyone done this?

 

my thoughts are chrome ball reflection maps could be made, but these would be still. i suppose that someone could do a video of a chrome ball where the camera moves around it from south-to-north (for example).

 

thanks,

[Scott Schroeder]

Seems like trying to kill a fly with an atom bomb. It's beyond overkill, unless there is an ultra specific reflection you need to match. Even then, you'll have to match camera speed. On top of that, reflections don't move. Cameras move, but that environment you see in the glass stays still. It seems like you'd end up with a lot of undesirable sliding in the reflection.

 

You might Google Street View grabber maybe? You can grab pretty good spherical maps from Google Street view and use those as background images.

 

http://jamiecardoso-mentalray.blogspot.com/2015/01/google-maps-to-streetview-grabber.html

[Ernest Burden III]

You might Google Street View grabber maybe? You can grab pretty good spherical maps from Google Street view and use those as background images.

 

Which I have done, works well.

 

You can also get elevational views out of the result, by mapping to a sphere and pointing a camera from the center and rendering.

[Ernest Burden III]

Also read this recent thread:

http://forums.cgarchitect.com/79721-drones.html

[SgWRX]

i didn't think there would be an advantage to it in any way, but i thought the person who asked me about it knew something i didn't it didn't make sense to me. good thread on the drone thing. i've been touching base with our local community drone expert who happens to be the former chief of police. so i'm "on it" but waiting until the FAA is supposed to be a lot more clear and more relaxed on commercial use of drones. the hope is, they would be putting in place something similar we saw with private drone users - just register online and get an aircraft #. i'm in "wait" mode to see what actually happens but can't wait! if not for all 3d stuff, just for documentation of our buildings and such.

 

although i did find a video where someone used an animated shot where the person walked up to a floating chrome sphere and poked it. it was pretty cool.

 

thanks,

[komyali]

lol "kill fly with atom bomb" anyway, I was thinking to one of my animations to do that in reflection map, but it was ussles, time killing with little effect. That would only be good where you have facade all of glass in urban area, but again you create sphericall map... I will test this when I found some time