NEED TIPS on animating a bullet cam in a movie scene

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Hello, I’m pretty new to blender animating, i’ve modeled few things, but new at animating, here’s what I’m trying to accomplish:

A bulletcam like, the intro of art of war, where the bullet actually moves into a scene, being in front of the camera.

Now, the hard thing about it, is that I need to move the bullet from left to right, between a tree and a rock, and etc, accordingly as the camera moves in the movie(the camera is going forward, zig zagging between objects), so it actually follows it’s own straight line. Basically, i’m going to have to recreate the same camera movements as in the scene, I’m stuck with these cam movements.

So I was thinking about importing the scene in blender, and doing the animation of the bullet as the video plays on background, is that possible? If so, any tips to help me out with this? Like quicker preview way so I can actually see the bullet moving with the background behind it and faster up my work time

Also, I would not use this as final result, but just to do the animation, then i’d import it in After effects, where I would blend it good with the movie scene, so it doesn’t looklike it’s a paper layer in front of anoter background paper layer.

If you come to think of any other way to do this, give me a hint.
To be honest, I have strictly no idea how they do it in movies, and I’d like to know, do they basically recreate them same camera movements to incorporate the special effects//3D objects in them? Or is there an easier way?

edit: Btw, I already got a nice sniper bullet and it’s shell, modeled, looks perfectly fine, just need to blend it in the movie scene, and make it move the good sides of the camera, as it moves.

Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

You can load a background image or video into blender quite easily, look in the view tab in the 3d window, click on Background Image and click the load tab. If you then set to camera view you can set your scene to match the video. You will need to know the lens setting (focal distance ie:35mm etc) of the original footage to match your blender camera to the original shot. This works very well with a static camera, however if the camera in your original footage is moving things get a lot more complicated. If the camera moves along one single steady trajectory you might be able to guestimate the movement with a little experiment and achieve a reasonable result, but if the camera movement is more complicated as your description suggests this becomes pretty much impossible. The only way to do this effectively is to use camera tracking software, which calculates camera movements by tracking anchor points you set in the first frame, following them and recording data that can then be used in your 3d suite, otherwise you would have to manualy adjust and key your camera for pretty much every frame relying on your eye to get it right, which is both lengthy and difficult. I know that there is a free camera tracking program available called Voodoo, but I have never used it, there is a tutorial here - http://fictionality.co.uk/doku.php?id=tutorials:matchmoving that might help you but I suggest you try your compositing skills with a static scene first before you enter this minefield.

#3

Thanks a lot, appreciated! I’ll try it out tomorrow.