Coming into Match Motion I wanted to challenge myself to play with some different software's outside of After Effects, since I have experience with AE's motion tracking. I torrented Mocha Pro and spent time messing around in that to see what things I'd like to use it for. I also have experience with C4Ds motion tracker but want to improve my proficiency with it. For this class I have shot on Android phone, and yet to use a nicer camera or green screen. For that reason these videos have several problems.
Tracking Ideas
Biking: One of the main visual ideas I want to keep developing in this class is to play with biking footage to add/remove things in the world, and to place green screen footage in a virtual world.
Walking Around in Public: I have several VFX/animation ideas that involve blending 3D characters and virtual urban space with the real world.
Biking Footage
Ultimately I'm interested in taking biking footage, or tracked green screen footage to add 3D elements, and stylize to exaggerate the experience of biking. To start out with I want to get a good workflow of tracking / rotoscoping / stabilizing this type of footage.
This footage is low res/ high motion blur and has several foreground objects that obstruct the plane I'm trying to track to insert my image.
Stabilizing Tests with Mocha
When playing with Mocha I wanted to test the stabilizing module, and it was more difficult than anticipated. I think this stems from my general footage problems. Either way messing with it for a bit got me closer to thinking about creating a stylized blur/focus effect with artistic stabilization.
Walking Around Neighborhood
For this video I used C4D to camera solve. Like the last this is phone footage, but it is less motion blur and less lighting. I would like to work up to urban scenes where I remove elements and Add 3D buildings/Characters in the foreground and background. For this clip I was just trying to get a character walking on the correct plane, which was difficult.
I tried to recreate the 3 levels of planes that were the street/sidewalk/subway step, but did this without doing any 3D reconstruction at first. The point cloud I got wasn't great. Furthermore I was using Octane render, and as you can see from the final clip, there are issues with the ground shadows in C4D. This is from a combination of inconsistent planar tracking and no compositing in After effects.
Next Steps:
Filming
Use better camera on a tripod to reduce motion blur and improve consistent plane tracking
Green screen footage
Plan shots better to track planes when capturing footage outdoors
Mocha Notes
Try Mocha remove module or C4D mask tool to improve motion tracking procession
Improve Rotoscoping
Try using planar mesh Mocha to AE to C4D for better tracked footage
C4D
Fix Lighting
Make better HDRI's
3D reconstruction