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Digieffects Camera Mapper
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The Stats
- Developer: Digieffects
- Version: 1.0
- Platform: Mac PPC and Mac Intel, Windows XP, Windows Vista
- Host Applications: Adobe After Effects 7.0, CS3, CS4
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Description
Camera Mapper is an After effects plug-in that used to be a part of Buena Depth Cue. DigiEffects added 32-bit floating point support, and fixed the bugs. All of the Buena Depth Cue plug-ins will become available as individual plug-ins, so that you can select your plug-ins freely, on an à la carte basis.
The Camera Mapper plugin allows you to simulate a 3D scene from 2D footage. It allows you to isolate one or several objects in your footage, project these objects on a separate layer and pull that layer out of the background, creating the visual illusion of the object floating in front of the original footage. Camera mapping is a key part of compositing applications such as Nuke, and while you could do this natively in After Effects, it would be only at the expense of some complicated work arounds that cost time and lack important capabilities.
Features
Projection Camera – The Camera used to line up the original image or footage with the Solid Layers that act as a projection screen.
Projection Layer – The Layer being projected. Once you’ve applied the Camera Mapper effect, the 3D solid will seem to disappear, but when panning around with the active camera, you will see the solid having taken over what’s behind it.
Alpha Handling – The way masks on the projection layer will be handled. You can use the alpha layers of the original footage to reveal exactly what you want to project (normal), or use masks in After Effects.
Remarks
You can have dozens of solids in a scene, so you should label them with meaningful names. Each solid should be positioned in front of the scene component that you want to call to the front. If you’re working with objects that demand accurate positioning, create your solids to measured sizes and locations. For example, if you’re going to project a porch of a house, you should either create a solid that has the exact size of the porch in the footage and parts that need not be called out should be masked.
If part of the scene is perpendicular to the camera, like a sloping rooftop, there is nothing to map onto the solid. In that case, you’ll have to fake it. You can do so by opening the original image in an image editor like Photoshop, copy the part of the scene that is perpendicular to the camera and drop it into the composition, aligned with the area that you want to appear as 3D. The Camera Mapper plug-in’s results depend on After Effects’ model of the world. After Effects does not know real 3D. Instead, it uses projection planes that it positions one on top of the other (or one in front of the other) so that you get a result that looks like 3D but really isn’t.
This restricts you in what you can do with the Camera Mapper plug-in. You won’t be capable of modeling objects with round edges. You can also not use curbed surfaces, because you can’t bend objects in 3D space. And of course, you can’t move the camera 360 degrees around the objects, because we don’t have any data of the back of the objects.
Suggestions, experiments and ways to improve your interaction with Camera Mapper
If you only have one object that you want to pull out of the background, you can start the projection process with an alternative approach. Instead of carefully creating a solid layer that fits the object you want to pull out to the front, it may be quicker to apply a mask to the object in Photoshop, save the mask to an alpha channel, making sure the mask color indicates selected areas. Now you can create a solid layer in After Effects that has the same size as the entire scene and push that solid layer back until the object becomes detached.
Normally, when you mask the object to be pulled out from the background in Photoshop and create an alpha channel, you will end up with either a the mask (black area) where the object is supposed to appear or —if you duplicated the object on a separate layer first— with a visible duplicate in After Effects. In the first scenario, the mask area will be filled up with the object as soon as you apply Camera Mapper to the scene, but if you move the Render camera along the X and Y axis there will be a point where the mask will become visible again. In the second scenario, the object that is still in the scene on the background will become visible as a sort of ghost object. In short, unless you set up your images in a slightly different way, you’ll always end up with a limited freedom of movement.
However, it is possible to get slightly more freedom of movement for the Render camera, provided the background has a relatively uniform texture.
This requires you to take two different shots: one of the background and one of the object to be pulled out of the scene. For this to work well, the camera angle of both shots should be the same. In Photoshop, take the image of the background with the object, make a matte of the object —cut it out, making sure the background is transparent. Now open the image of the background and paste the previously cut out object to its own layer above the background. Still in Photoshop select the object layer, load the selection and create an alpha channel from it. With the selection still active, turn off the object layer’s visibility. Select the background layer and copy the selection to a new file with a transparent background. This file now has the same shape as the object (call this file the “shape image”), but the texture or colour of the background. In After Effects, import both layers of the background with object image separately. Import the shape image. Drag the background layer, the object layer, and the shape image to the Composition window and turn them all into 3D layers. In the Timeline, the object layer should be above the background and the shape layer should be above the object. Create your Camera Mapper cameras and solid as usual. Use the object layer as Projection Layer. Now, when you move the Render camera around, you’ll be faked into seeing the background behind the object without any ghosting at all —this only works with smooth, uniform backgrounds, though.
Support
Installation
Requirements Camera Mapper is a plug-in to After Effects 7, CS3 and CS4. It has been tested with Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Installing 1. Locate the Install file. 2. Double-click the installation program and follow the instructions. 3. The first time you attempt to run Camera Mapper, you will be asked for your serial number. What you need
- A background scene that you want to convert to 3D. This typically is a still image or a locked off / stabilised shot.
- Two cameras: a render camera to render the and move around in the 3D scene and a projection camera that looks directly at your scene.
- One or more After Effects Solid Layers
Step-by-step Tutorial
Imagine you want to break out an object from its background. These are the basics steps.
- 1. Open After Effects and import your footage.
- 2. Create a Render and a Projection Camera from the Layers > Camera menu. Make sure both cameras have the same settings.
- 3. Create one or more solid layers from the Layers > Solid menu.
- 4. Turn the original footage and the Solid layers into 3D layers by clicking the 3D layer icon in the Timeline or selecting 3D Layer from the Layers menu.
- 5. Select the first solid layer you want to use for the Camera Mapper effect.
- 6. Select Camera Mapper from the Effects menu.
- 7. From the Projection Camera drop-down menu in the Effects panel, select the camera you designated as projection camera in step 2.
- 8. From the Projection Layer drop-down menu in the Effects panel, select the solid you want to use as projection map.
- 9. Adjust the solid so it stands separate from the original footage layer and move the active camera around to see the effect.
- 10. Select the Alpha Channel you want to use.
- 11. Freely animate the Render Camera to create a new 3D animation.
