Digieffects announced Camera Mapper, an After Effects filter developed in collaboration with Mark Christiansen that "allows you to simulate a 3D scene from 2D stills or 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."Also, Red Giant announced Magic Bullet Mojo, a filter that acts like a magic button to give you a blockbuster-type film look "often use a subtle coloring effect to warm up actors’ skin tones while backgrounds and shadows get a cool blue treatment" (don't worry, there's a Warm slider to mix up the look). For background see the AEP post on a discussion of examples of Blockbuster Film Look and the Stu Maschwitz note.
Update: David Torno had comments on camera mapping (once championed by ex-ILMer Alex Lindsay for Electric Image) the AE-List, "The [Camera Mapper] plugin simplifies a method Andrew Kramer showed back in 2007... I wouldn't compare it to Photoshop vpe though. With vpe you create an actual connected 3d grid layout for the still image environment and panels are created and placed based on the grid.
Camera Projector would have been a better name. Since mapper implies that the image is stuck to the object. Obviously that is not the case as soon as you move any object in the scene."
Update 2: see VisualFXtuts.com for a Digieffects Aged Film & CameraMapper Review and Giveaway!
I'm pretty sure the Camera mapping (projection) technique was in one of Mark Christiansen's books before Andrew Kramer did a video tutorial on it. I'm also fairly certain it was written about with a demo video on Stu's Prolost blog before AK as well. AK has done a lot for AE, but credit where credit is due, and let's not just assume that because Andrew made a video tutorial he was the "first" or it's "his technique". That said, AK did make it easier for novices to get their heads around the concept of projection.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the reference to Alex Lindsay was to add that perspective; I think Alex taught camera mapping in his earliest classes in the mid-90s even before he left JAK FIlms for ILM.
ReplyDeleteI think the ref to AK was just that Videocopilot has the tutorial online for people to see. I think that Trish & Chris did an early tutorial on light transmission, a feature that only whetted the appetite for actual camera mapping.