I have been looking into a good matchmover to use with houdini but I cannot find how to load up the matchmoved footage into houdini to line up the track. I did get the chance to try boujou but when I imported it and set up the jpeg sequence to run in houdini 3d viewport the track didnt match the footage at all. Does anyone know how to get this to work right with any matchmover? Also, does anyone have experience using PFHOE with houdini? I am really stuck on finding a way to get this to work. Any help or advice would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

Hairston

Ive used Boujou 3 and 4 with success. This week im going to try Syntheyes, so I shall report back on what its like.
If things are not lining up and you saved it toHoudini format in Boujou, then you need to re-track your footage.

Dont just count on autotracking, manually track certain parts of the footage. Also things like tree's make sure you mask them out of the tracking, as trees are notorious for letting tracks slip.

Any tracks you see that are red, make sure you delete them from the tracking, if you import those and try to line geometry up on them it will only end in fail.

Hope this helps!

I sent you a PM ragupasta.

Thanks,

Hairston

We use Syntheyes here. I've put together a quick video tutorial on loading syntheyes data into Houdini 10. I'll post a link to it tonight.

splitpoint
We use Syntheyes here. I've put together a quick video tutorial on loading syntheyes data into Houdini 10. I'll post a link to it tonight.

Thank you splitpoint. That would be amazing. I appreciate that.

Hairston

Don't get too excited. It's basically for newbies and goes over how to setup the viewport for rotoscoping and how to import the Syntheyes cmd files and nothing more. Hopefully quicktime h264 is ok for you. We're talking 5 minutes covering the VERY basics, made for team members here that are new to Houdini. I'm using the example files from the Syntheyes website so that everyone can follow along.

Check this space in 12 hours.

splitpoint
Don't get too excited. It's basically for newbies and goes over how to setup the viewport for rotoscoping and how to import the Syntheyes cmd files and nothing more. Hopefully quicktime h264 is ok for you. We're talking 5 minutes covering the VERY basics, made for team members here that are new to Houdini. I'm using the example files from the Syntheyes website so that everyone can follow along.

Check this space in 12 hours.

Thats fine for me! Id like to know how to get the video footage to show up behind my tracks in boujou. I press d and bring up the jpeg sequence of that same hip file but it doesnt move according to the camera. I dont know what to do…this is why i asked about matchmovers in general because its not so much getting the matchmover to work but for houdini to recognize it correctly once its loaded.

Thank you again!

Hairston

Tutorial has been uploaded. I was in a hurry when this was recorded a while back and there is an error at 2:10, I say “attribute” when I really mean “parameter” other than that you should be all set. File is about 30MB and can be downloaded here:

http://www.handsonimaging.com/downloads/Houdini_syntheyes_roto.mov [handsonimaging.com]

Enjoy.

Al

Splitpoint, I really really appreciate you posting this video for me. It has been very helpful. I did manage to get my boujou footage tracked into houdini. I dont know what I did differently but now its lined up perfectly (and I havent even really done much to track outside of autotrack). I do have another problem however. My background video shows up fine in the 3d viewport but when I go to render it, all I get are white dots, my sphere object, and a black screen…No video. Can someone help me get the video to show with the tracked footage in the render? Am I supposed to be doing something specific to get it to work right or maybe exporting it somewhere else? Thanks!

I have attached a picture of my problem…hopefully it will help

Hairston

All you want to render out is your added geometry. Render it as a .pic(nc) if your compositing onside houdini, or .tga(32-bit) if compositing in another package as you need the alpha channel.

Simply drop your background plate as the background in a compositing app, and add your rendered geometry as forground.

Did you shoot this footage yourself? If you did you might want to go back and add a tennis ball/pieces of duct tape on the ground and manually track those if there is slip in the plate. You have your tracks based on tree's and grass. Both move around in the wind, and most of the time gives wrong tracking. Tennis balls cut in half are a good way of tracking things, however that takes some roto-work/matte painting to remove from the footage, but it will give you some really solid trackable features.

ragupasta
All you want to render out is your added geometry. Render it as a .pic(nc) if your compositing onside houdini, or .tga(32-bit) if compositing in another package as you need the alpha channel.

Simply drop your background plate as the background in a compositing app, and add your rendered geometry as forground.

Did you shoot this footage yourself? If you did you might want to go back and add a tennis ball/pieces of duct tape on the ground and manually track those if there is slip in the plate. You have your tracks based on tree's and grass. Both move around in the wind, and most of the time gives wrong tracking. Tennis balls cut in half are a good way of tracking things, however that takes some roto-work/matte painting to remove from the footage, but it will give you some really solid trackable features.

Thanks again for the help. The footage im using is stock footage from syntheyes website. Its actually supposed to be an intermediate track video. I just happened to pick that one to verify that everything works. I am not familiar with just rendering the object and moving it to a compositor. Wouldnt I need to move the camera footage as well? I am completely green when it comes to this but I REALLY want to learn how to do it. Great idea with the tennis balls btw.

Here is a (very) basic overview of a small effect composited ontop of a photograph. I was messing around with volumes last night and wrote them out to disk, so I used that today and created a small composite file, then ive recorded me explaining about it, albiet very breifly. Keep in mind this was never supposed to be a polished piece, simply something to show you.

Also if your serious on 3d with film ect, I advice you to take some courses over at http://www.fxphd.com/ [fxphd.com] I took..

• Colour Theroy
  
• Compositing With Fusion 5.2
  
• Photography For VFX
  
  
  All courses I took were excellent, and I know a few people who have taken different courses (Nuke and Massive to name a few) and they also reccomend them.
  Plus you get access to VPN software. Which gives you access to full applications for learning and personal/non-profit projects, which is a very nice feature.
  
  Anyhoo hope this helps.
  
  Here is the file link..
  
  http://www.filefactory.com/file/ah3ab46/n/Compositing_mov [filefactory.com]

Thank you very very much ragupasta! That is an excellent beginner video. I do, however, want to mention that I was referring to the actual video sequence of my tracks. How would I go about getting my original footage to display my geometry as a whole sequence? I understand how to mix them in a compositor but im not sure if the camera will need to be imported to the compositor as the tracks wont line up…or will they? Thats where im having the trouble of understanding, not so much in how to blend 2 images together..thank you again very much for that video..im saving it.

Hairston

I would like to post another picture example of what im trying to explain. In 3ds max, you can load up an already tracked video and then put your geometry in with it and run test renders to get a good idea of what your final product will look like…it displays both the video footage AND the geometry in the render. This is what im trying to acheive in houdini so that I can match up the lighting and texturing. Is it possible to do this like max? If not, how can I acheive this? Thank you.

(ignore my mouse writing on the pic lol)

Add a grid to the scene that is the same size as the footage, and add the footage as a texture map. And no the camera doesnt need to be exported into a comp suite. You can do so, as compositors have a 3d side to them which is very good for faking things like parallax, but there really isnt any need to import the cam and tracks into comp. Unless you are wanting to anchor something to the footage in comp, but most comp suites have a built in tracker anyways.

ragupasta
Add a grid to the scene that is the same size as the footage, and add the footage as a texture map. And no the camera doesnt need to be exported into a comp suite. You can do so, as compositors have a 3d side to them which is very good for faking things like parallax, but there really isnt any need to import the cam and tracks into comp. Unless you are wanting to anchor something to the footage in comp, but most comp suites have a built in tracker anyways.

Yes im wanting my 3d object to be anchored to the actual footage so that it doesnt slip. I wanted to use boujou instead of having to use the built in compositors tracker. I wasnt sure how to do that.

I'm not sure to had understand what you need hairston630.
But you could load a background image directly in mplay(pressing d on mplay viewport), or you should render it directly with mantra.
To render a background image with mantra it's enough to go to camera,view and put a background image in the right parameter.
In that case your renders will be postdivided with background, so beware of it.
I hope to be usefull

fikusplyne
I'm not sure to had understand what you need hairston630.
But you could load a background image directly in mplay(pressing d on mplay viewport), or you should render it directly with mantra.
To render a background image with mantra it's enough to go to camera,view and put a background image in the right parameter.
In that case your renders will be postdivided with background, so beware of it.
I hope to be usefull

Thank you for the kind assistance fikusplyne. If I load the background in MPLAY would it render out? Or would this be a sort of “test render”? Thank you.

Hairston

Hi,

If you want to render a background with your render, use the Background Image parameter (under the View tab) of the camera.

If you just want to see how your render looks like over a background, you can use the Background tab > Filename parameter of mplay's Display Options.

Cheers!
steven

stevenong
Hi,

If you want to render a background with your render, use the Background Image parameter (under the View tab) of the camera.

If you just want to see how your render looks like over a background, you can use the Background tab > Filename parameter of mplay's Display Options.

Cheers!
steven

Thanks steve. I noticed the background image parameter on the default camera but on the exported boujou footage it doesnt exist. I have a strange error that seems to follow from boujou to houdini when I load the hip file. I have attached it as well as attached a photo of my camera and the error. Any suggestions?

Hairston