Chris MacDonald Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Hey guys, Recently completed an animation (just some industrial units - so don't get too excited) for a client that was an incredibly steep learning curve. The client insisted we use drone footage (something we've never done) and add their buildings onto it. I can't share the final animation as it's not in the public domain yet, but I have made a little shot breakdown of a couple of seconds of it. I'm quite proud of it as camera tracking is something we've never done, let alone all the various after effects bits that go along with it; that's not to say it's perfect - it isn't. A significant portion of it was rendered on Chaos Cloud. Just thought I'd share. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jesusgomez2 Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Great job! How did you do the cámera traking to assemble the 3D model? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 For having never done any tracking, this is really good! However, if I must be critical. You didn't fly the drone into a tree. -100 points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 Great job! How did you do the cámera traking to assemble the 3D model? Thanks, the cameras were tracked in After Effects, then imported into the site model and hours spent trying to scale and rotate them to align to what was on screen. It's extraordinarily tedious. For having never done any tracking, this is really good! However, if I must be critical. You didn't fly the drone into a tree. -100 points. Thank you. I have to say the drone guys multitasking was pretty impressive; having to watch where the drone is (line of sight) whilst checking the mini-screen that shows the direction that it's flying in and all the various stats, and all whilst watching the actual camera footage, etc. Seemed hard work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 18, 2019 Share Posted July 18, 2019 It looks great, I’d recommend using something like Boujou next time to save yourself lots of headache. I can track something like that and have it lined up in 3d Studio within an hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Bussey Posted July 31, 2019 Share Posted July 31, 2019 imported into the site model I wondered if you could expand on your process at all. I'm trying to get an after effects camera in to 3DSMax, it was created by a script from google earth studio, and I'd love to be able to get that in to Max. The scripts I've tried so far don't work for me. I'd prefer to export the camera directly, but if I have to track the footage that's fine, although I think that would still leave me with a cam in AE and not Max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregedwards Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 excellent stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 (edited) I wondered if you could expand on your process at all. I'm trying to get an after effects camera in to 3DSMax, it was created by a script from google earth studio, and I'd love to be able to get that in to Max. The scripts I've tried so far don't work for me. I'd prefer to export the camera directly, but if I have to track the footage that's fine, although I think that would still leave me with a cam in AE and not Max. So I looked into this Tom. I was able to get the Google Earth Studio camera exported into After Effects, and then exported the AE Camera via the AE3D_Export script you can find on the web...you have to alter the script in order for MAX to understand it but it does in fact import into MAX. In this case open the maxscript file AE3D_Export created in a program such as Notepad++. Then do a search and replace for "Camera" (you don't need the quotation marks), replace with basically anything...in the cases I found online, people were changing to MyCamera or Camera_. Next in line 19 or somewhere close to the top, find where it says "freeMyCamera" or "freeCamera_" (whatever you replaced the original "Camera" with) and change this back to "freeCamera." Run the script in Max and you'll have your camera (rotated funky as it always does from AE to MAX), and your null object, assuming you created a track point from Google Earth Studio. Group your camera and null, rotate accordingly. You'll notice the overall scale to match real-world scaled/modeled objects is waaaaaaay tiny. I'm still messing with my camera matching but right now the scale of the grouped Camera and Null is at 16 million times its original size. Yes... 16,000,000. Edited August 2, 2019 by charris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Bussey Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 Aah, you legend! I'll give that a go. Thanks. Do you think that scale changes every time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 Aah, you legend! I'll give that a go. Thanks. Do you think that scale changes every time? I'm hoping not, but I've yet to give it another go with a different project. I may do that some time today/this week. What would be great is if the scale is always the same and then someone figures out the rotation numbers going from AE to MAX because it unfortunately isn't as simple as a 90 degree rotation in any of 3 axes...seems to be all different and may differ with every project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 13, 2019 Share Posted August 13, 2019 (edited) So I worked with that camera in Max a bit more and am pretty much waving the white flag on that work flow. I believe due to the extreme scaling up of the camera (the 16 million times original scale), its extremely jittery even when its imported close to the origin 0,0,0. Pretty disappointing. I'll probably try it another time with a much smaller camera radius movement to see if that is any better. If I do that, I'll start a new thread as we're moving further and further away from Macker's original post. EDIT: Maybe if I scale up the camera data in AE before MAX it might help? Grrrr...more trial and error in the future. Edited August 13, 2019 by charris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicolai Bongard Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 Not sure if it works with cameras, but perhaps try to apply a reset xform to it after the scaling? That usually helps with geometry that gets wonky when it is the wrong scale or far from the project origin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 (edited) So for the scaling issue...I've somewhat gotten that "fixed." Basically when the AE3D_Export script is up in AE, I wasn't paying attention to the scale button it offers. In the first case it was set to 1 = .001 so I moved it to 1 = 1000, then tried again at 1= 10000 (the max it can go). Remember when I said I had to blow it up 16M times the original size? In the case of the 1000 scale, I scaled it up 160% (1.6 times original import size), for the 10000, I scaled it down to 16% of the original size...the numbers make sense. With that said...very jittery still, even with the camera and tracking points imported to 0,0,0. Guess I'll give the reset xform a try as Nicolai suggested. EDIT: No dice on the xform reset. So disappointing. Edited August 14, 2019 by charris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 (edited) For those interested in seeing what's going on... Here's the smooth export from Google Earth Studio, which also exports out the camera path smoothly to After Effects: Here's the exported After Effects camera into MAX, which is very jittery (everything near the origin): EDIT: I believe I have solved it! Standby after its rendered, probably by tomorrow. Edited August 14, 2019 by charris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Harris Posted August 14, 2019 Share Posted August 14, 2019 (edited) EUREKA! I have found it. Or something like that. Please watch the 2D imagery exported from Google Earth Studio here first to understand what the background images were: Here's the solved camera match here (Google Earth Studio to After Effects to MAX): I'll have to write up a tutorial on this after experimenting on a different file to see if there are certain numbers for rotation and scale every time. Is it 100% perfect? No but pretty darn close. What's key here is to point out that you have to have terrain information that you build your 3D models on and definitely something close to whatever Google Earth's terrain is. Unfortunately the terrain you get out of Sketchup is a more degraded version of what you see out of Google Earth/Studio. So the parts that are slightly off or sliding are due to that's where our survey stopped and where the Sketchup terrain began. Edited August 14, 2019 by charris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cafric1 Posted August 21, 2019 Share Posted August 21, 2019 This is very interesting! I wasn't even aware of GE Studio. I'm looking forward to experimenting as well. Keep up the good work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Bussey Posted August 24, 2021 Share Posted August 24, 2021 Hey @Chris Harris, I somehow ended up looking at this topic again two years later. Did you ever find a rock solid workflow from GES to Max? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now