Kinda fun - 2D stock images to 3D

[M Carter]

I had to come up with about 50 of these for a project where they had the unlimited stock photo account but a very low budget. It got to be kind of fun, other than the deadline had me up til 2 and 3 AM. 

This kind of stuff can add to your billable hours - since most of us have decent computers, after effects and photoshop and AI, if you can learn character animation, animating charts and data, or basic animation of things like manufacturing processes… you can really add to your billing (more for one-man-band guys than studios with dedicated animators anyway), farm less stuff out, and have more tools for telling business stories for marketing videos.

 

[IronFilm]

I've been saying to a real estate film guy he should do this for the photos from the houses.

[M Carter]

The biggest issue is finding photos that work - I pulled a lot of photos for this project that seemed like 100% good and just didn't pan out. For interiors, too much lens distortion will mess up VP and you need to correct that first; and of course, any furniture that breaks across planes (or even stuff that doesn't) can really blow the look. 

The other issue is that vanishing point only works on flat layers, far as I can tell - so you have to isolate your images first, and my technique was to use a solid green BG (like R0 G125 B0) as the background, and then in AE use keylight to isolate the buildings (you can always retouch the PNGs that VP produces, but Keylight gives you more mask control). But you generally need an instance of keylight on each plane, so it can slow things down a bit.

You can also retouch the PNGs if something doesn't align quite right, but that can be hard since the flattened planes can look really bizarre.

For stuff using displacement maps, it's another story, like isolating vertical stuff, retouching the BG out, and then making sure your displacement map has wide enough gray areas to stick the vertical objects back in so they don't distort but stay put if the camera moves. I learned a fair amount about finessing this stuff, really didn't have time to make each clip perfect but the client was thrilled, and all the suits at the tradeshow were patting some backs.