How was this done?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

…talking about THIS video:

I’m talking about, at 3:00, Louise is reflected onto that “blob” thing!! Louise is, of course, real, and the blob CG! How was this done?? (I don’t think calling it “environment mapping” would explain it). I’m very curious, and even MORE curious because this video is from 1996, AFAIR!! What kind of tech like this did they have in NINETY-SIX??!!

Once again, I’m very glad that I’m on BA which has an equal no. of CS people as CG :slight_smile:

2

…well? It’s been 5 days - No one knows? :frowning:

3

She doesn’t appear to be reflected. In the “reflection” you see her from the front when the object is behind her. To me it looks like they just mapped this video or similar footage to the object and blurred it.
It is in the shot too short for the viewer to notice so it would be silly to use more elaborate techniques.

4

This is a fake reflection clearly. I mean, there must be many ways to do it, just as there are many ways to make fake reflections with 2D softwares. For example, a car reflected on a reflective floor. You realize it is fake because in the reflection of the floor you do not see parts of the car that do not appear in the original photo, for example the bottom of the car.
Here in the video apparently the reflection on that object is just X-mirror original image there.

5

Here is a simple way to do it in Blender, with images sequence clip:
Fake 3D reflection movie.zip (2.8 MB)
Fake 3D reflection movie
Just to get a rough idea

Edit:
Well, i don’t think this is offtopic

6

Ah Good Point.

How would it have been done if there HAD to HAVE been a true reflection though? What kind of tech do we have to do this, 25 years later, in 2020??!!!

7

I hope im on the same page as you. So you are asking how to do it correctly?

Since the actor is already on a green screen- you just have to have one more shot of having a camera behind her. then use that as the diffuse of the reflective object (blob). Still it wont be 100% accurate. but if you play with the reflectivity you can add some realism into it…

8

You wouldn’t even have to film it at the same time. The reflection is blurry, the objects shape distorts the reflection and the screen time is short so nobody will notice faking it.

9

OP! I think you’d be surprised at what level of tech available in “NINETY-SIX” it was only 5yrs later Square Enix released FFTSW, granted a box office flop but nonetheless a ground breaking CG derived cinematic production for it’s day…anyway given time you’ll eventually figure out the ‘how’ too your query.