Sideways footage - reframing

[caseyjames]

I posted a similar question in the matchmoving forum but it occurred to me that the matchmove was pretty straight forward. This is more of a nuke/maya question.

I am working, by myself on a minute long video of a name Actress dancing on a body of water (cg set). I have 10 days to create A LOT of quick cut shots with set replacements. The comp and sets are pretty simple. The footage was shot DVNTSC 16:9 29.97 on a blue screen with the majority of the footage having been shot with the camera rotated to frame her as completly as possible to maximize resolution both because it was shot interlaced and because the bg is being keyed out.

I am planning on doing the matchmove's as usual in Syntheyes.

What I am a little clue lessabout is taking the shots into maya and reframing them aeshetically for the reflections on the water, while mainting the cameramove, and then exporting out camera/card info to nuke so that I can comp her into the correct position in nuke.

I'm anticipating keeping anything with a large paralax shift framed as-is and expanding the horizontal resolution when necessary to the correct aspect (which I don't entirely know how to do in either program).

For the shots where there is little parralax shift (either locked of or handheld but fairly still) I intend to stabalize them in Syntheyes and add a second camera in maya/nuke to create the camera moves. I'm guessing an animated card is best way to go about this and then exporting that card location to nuke is the best way to go, but the excution is beyond my understanding.

If someone could give me a hand I would be extremely greatful. I am mainly a composer (I am doing the music as well) but for this project I am in a spot of creating everything myself.

Here is a still of the bg I made... Its going to be really wild if I can pull it off.

[MartinL]

Well if you have made a 3d track in syntheyes its pretty simple.
Just open the scene in Maya for example. Project the footage on to card (placed where the girl is supposed to be) using the camera from synteyes.
And then make that card with the projected girl texture reflect in the water.
(The texture should have a proper alpha channel of course).

Then make a new camera and animate it. And render everything (except the girl on the card of course

Then export the animated camera, syntheyes camera and the card for the girl to nuke.
Project the original girl footage on the card using synteyes camera (key it before you project it). And render using the animated camera from your 3d application.



I hope that makes any sense / helps you. It may not be the best way, but its the only way i can think of

Cheers

[caseyjames]

Projecting it is a good Idea, I haven't thought of that. That would allow me to add a second camera parented to the Syntheyes one with the correct aspect ratio for the shots with parallax shifts that i don't intend on adjusting beyond chaining the aspect ratio and it will give me an image to film for the shots where the camera move is quite different than the original.

It still leaves the problem of getting the information into nuke so I can composite the girl in the right place with the right camera move.

For example, I stabilize a shot in syntheyes, project it in maya and create a new camera to fly around it and render both the bg and the reflections in maya. I don't know how to export a projecting camera out of maya into nuke (as well as the shotcam) so I can do the comp of her on top of the bg image with the baked reflections.

How would I go about doing that?

[donat]

Go to http://3dmation.com/

In the Mocon script collection there's a MEL script called pass2nuke. You can use it in Maya to export the camera path to Nuke. In maya, you select the camera(s) you want to export, run the script and it will save a Nuke project with the camera(s).