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Millimeter2d3 Boujou
Feb 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Brian Drewes Producer/Managing Director Brickyard VFX Atlantic
Easy-to-Use Motion Tracking
Commercials, films, and television programs pack in the visual effects, but most of these don't stand out as “effects” to viewers. Subtlety and believability are key.
 Changing wheels in Boujou for Volkswagen. |
One of the greatest obstacles to creating totally believable effects? Incorporating digitally fabricated elements, such as CG characters or backgrounds, successfully and seamlessly into a live-action scene. Traditionally, this called for hand tracking an object. Prior to the actual compositing, this step requires the artist to carefully calculate the position of the objects as well as the camera path, frame by frame. Besides being labor intensive, hand tracking can also tie up a compositing suite for hours and even then doesn't always result in an accurate track.
Enter Boujou, a powerful application from UK-based 2d3. The software studies the composition and camera motion within your footage, and then automatically produces a spot-on camera track, one that's easily transferable to most compositing systems. Simply load the clip into the program and it's turned around in minutes as a “solved” track. Any CG you want integrated can be put into place across a sequence, regardless of the types of camera moves involved.
Brickyard VFX has recently used Boujou in both its PC and Mac versions for shot tracking on a range of high-end commercial projects. With Boujou as part of our day-to-day toolset, we now have the advantage of delivering whatever a client needs on time, on budget, and with a high-quality finish.
Here are a few scenarios where Boujou helped us to save the day on recent jobs.
Volkswagen Tent: The premise? A couple stays overnight in the desert, sleeping in what seems to be a high-tech nylon tent. But a 360-degree shot reveals that they are camping in a much different type of “tent”: their new Volkswagen Jetta.
The client — happy with how well the original commercial worked — hoped to continue using it to promote Volkswagen's latest model of the car. There was a catch, though, as the wheel rims (which appear in full view throughout the spot) were slightly different from those on the new car. Since car commercials need to show the exact available configurations, the wheel covers had to be replaced.
“Could we fix it in post?” Ah, those immortal words that we hear so often. We took a look at the material to assess the amount of work. With that single, continuous camera move, there wasn't room for a mistake. If the track was off even a little, the composite would be apparent. But if the task proved too arduous, we would lose the job, since the client was prepared to shelve the commercial.
We first modeled the replacement rims in LightWave, and then imported them into an Action setup within Flame. We knew tracking would require a considerable amount of work using Flame's tracker, with a lot of hand adjustments. At that point, we had just heard about Boujou's automated 3D tracking. After calling 2d3, they agreed to run a test on the material for us. It generated a perfect track. We bought the software and flawlessly completed the job. Our client was happy.
Priceline Supercomputer: This series of spots for Priceline-employed actor William Shatner, who stood in front of a set of huge computer monitors. Since the monitors were shot as bluescreen panels, we could composite graphics, images, and text animations onto them. Previously, traditional tracking methods meant pulling a reliable motion track for each of those panels, with up to eight panels per scene! Because of the way the edit worked, we also ended up doing many more shots than had been planned.
Using Boujou, however, we automatically generated accurate 3D camera tracks for each shot, enabling us to quickly composite all of the panels. We stayed within budget and met our deadline.
Royal Caribbean The Message: Seemingly straightforward projects, such as this advertisement featuring vacationers on a Royal Caribbean cruise liner, can often present the most complex challenges, even when there are no apparent visual effects. This spot closed with a shot the client really loved: a sweeping 360-degree move around the ship in the middle of the ocean with the sun setting in the distance.
This scene was filmed from a helicopter, flying away and looking back toward the ship. Sounds nice, but the helicopter rotors appeared in frame, marring shot composition and causing a flickering effect. Plumes from the smokestack of the ship were also visible and had to be removed. Finally, the sky's very complex cloud formations and vibrant colors made it extremely difficult to patch.
To make the shot work, we knew we had to replace the entire sky. We matte-painted the sky and reconstructed it in 3D, tracked the camera move with Boujou, and dropped in the new background. Without Boujou, the costs of meeting our client's request would have been prohibitive and next to impossible to deliver within the deadline.
Apple and VW Pods Unite: This spot plays on the innovative design and similar sleek design style Volkswagen and Apple share. The object? To peak interest in a special offer: “Buy a New Beetle. Get a new iPod.” The creative treatment, which shows a woman taking the two products on the road, culminates in a final shot that pulls from a close-up of the iPod display face out of the vehicle's open sunroof and beyond.
This last scene — a long, high pullout envisioned by the creative team — could not be achieved as a single, seamless camera move using the physical rig. We would have to virtually extend it, blending all the shots together seamlessly.
Motion control passes were filmed using a “buck,” a version of a car that comes apart like a jigsaw puzzle. Some shots focused in a tight close-up on the iPod's face near the dashboard; other shots started on the top of the car because the camera rig wouldn't fit through the sunroof. To work out the final shot move, we composited all of the passes together on the Flame. Once we solved that, the resulting clip was tracked in Boujou to obtain a motion track for the iPod face.
Boujou is extremely fast and easy to use. It's become a key component in our production pipeline, something we can apply on almost all jobs that pass through. Since Boujou runs on Windows, Linux, or the Mac OS X, we can move tracking chores to any free computer, which helps with project management.
In the past, tracking has been a complex task, consuming a lot of time at the beginning of many effects jobs. With Boujou, tracking becomes an automated, seamless part of the workflow, something that now happens in the background. I don't think our artists will miss those hours and hours of tedious manual tweaking.
Brian Drewes has supervised commercial and music video effects work for a range of directors, including Gerald Casale, Mark Kohr, Nick Lewin, and Baker Smith. As producer/managing director at Brickyard Atlantic, he regularly shepherds projects from Arnold Worldwide, Hill Holliday, and other others.
With offices in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard VFX, an independent visual effects boutique, specializes in digital finishing, effects, and compositing. Brickyard's problem-solving expertise on set and in the studio has been applied to high-profile campaigns for Atari, Snapple, AT&T, Visa, and Volkswagen. For more information, please call Brickyard VFX Atlantic at (617) 262-3220, Brickyard VFX Pacific at (310) 453-5722, or visit www.brickyardvfx.com.
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