first tracking project

How could i have made the drone more believable, texture wise?
I see where scaling and animation could be better, but i just wanted to get it done.
Also it was rendered with cycles ,you can see one of the pane in the right corner as a white plane, it was used for the light/emission. how could I have made it a transparent source of light?

thank you
D

Emitter planes emit light. If they are in view of the camera, the camera is going to pick up the light. I think you just have to move the plane so it’s not in camera view. Might have to increase the intensity to make up for the greater distance of the light source, too.

Thanks Orinoco. That was my best guess too. I think I might be able to put it on a diff layer as well but have not played w/that yet.

In the object tab in the properties windows there’s a menu called “Ray Visibility” (in cycles). Uncheck “Camera” and the emision plane will not be seen.

Thank you Chanfiroly, will try that on my next tracking project. (Whatever it is, it’ll have more point to track in the background trakcing all nearly the same shade of blue gray on blue gray light was a bit of a pain)
Any advice on how to make the drone look more blended in it’s surroundings?

Cool! :smiley: This works. Had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the object tab panels to find “Ray Visibility” though. There are also check boxes for Glossy, Shadow, Diffuse and Transmission, so it is more than just the visibility to the camera.

@pdxDaniela, I tried the different layer approach. It didn’t work. If the emitter plane layer is not visible, the light won’t illuminate things on the visible layers. :frowning:

Now, about that other problem. The only thing in the image to compare the drone to is the wing of the airplane. The drone appears a lot ‘sharper’ because it is CG while the plane wing is a photograph probably from a small resolution hand held camera. You need to reduce the apparent resolution of the drone to make it look like it fits into the shot. Perhaps some DoF adjustments to make the drone look fuzzier?

I wouldn’t call that tracking. Solver Error of 234??? At the 18th second your drone is inside your plane. Sorry, don’t wanna be rude but thats just not good at all.

Thank you Orinoco. will give it a try. And yes it was my phone camera. will try w/a better camera next and more contrasting focus point in the background.
MarkusB. No! Really? Not ready for hollywood you say? Yes it is bad, my first attempt at it and I also saw the drone going inside the plane. But yes I agree it is bad, not good. Quite dreadful. It made somebody cry somewhere. Sorry.

I think the phone camera is fine. It lends an air of reality to the shot. After all, many passengers on planes have phone cameras to record events like a drone flying near their plane, but how many passengers would have a professional video camera at the ready? I’d spend time figuring out how to ‘lower’ the resolution of the drone rather than raising the resolution of the rest of the image. And, of course, learning how to use masks so people somewhere don’t cry anymore :frowning: ( :wink: )

Very good point Orinoco! No tears.
Or i’ll get nothing but coal and bad karma for Christmas :slight_smile:
I think next actually i’ll try and get some footage from where I work or around town. See if I can come up w/something else. I thought a drone was more timely than a ufo. but all droned out for now. maybe next flight out I’ll get more footage.
Thank you though!
D

Sorry man if I ve sounded rude. My tracking and compositing skills are not really better than yours :slight_smile:

The footage was made with my Nexus 4, so your phone is good enough as a camera. And I don’t think you have to reduce the resolution of your 3d elements, just add image noise to it. As far as I know you can cover the lens of your camera, take a black picture so to say and enhance the contrast. Voila you have the noise of your camera chip.

No prob Markus I try to not take offense too easy or too fast. Life is too short. & it was a bad tracking :slight_smile:
your windmill in town looks very nice btw.
So will try it again, should have a new tracking project by mid january. (Have other stuff to do first). But have never heard about “taking a black picture” will have to research that.
Cheers everybody.
D