For this component we were asked to record a scene using an animated camera pan movement whether that be vertical, horizontal or both. We then were asked to create an object using Maya and import it into the scene whilst making it look as realistic as possible using 3D tracking and colour grades to ‘attach’ the object to the scene we had filmed.
Filming My Scene –
I started this project by brainstorming for places that would be appropriate to use in tracking, and also somewhere that would be suitable for attaching my object to.
I then decided to film my video on the piece of land outside of my building as it had a large open space where I could implement my object, and had minimal intereactions with the floor so it could be useful when tracking.
Creating my Object –
Once I was happy with the film I had recorded, I then began to think about what object I could create that would fit well in the scene and could look very realistic. I began with the idea of a jet that would fly through the air just above the buildings in the background, I constructed it in Maya, textured and rendered it out to begin implementing it into nuke. However, after considering that the task was to extend the scene rather than have a moving object in the background I decided against the idea and began to brainstorm again.
I then decided that a fountain would dit very well in the middle of the grassy area in thge middle of my shot, It could be colour corrected to fit that of the buildings and use stone texturing to further increase its realisticality in the scene.
I tried to ensure that the fountain did not look contemporary or minimalistic as i wanted to make sure that it didnt stand out like a sore thumb in my scene as this would reduce the likeness of it being there.
Once I was happy with the model shape, I began to texture the fountain using an image for the colour. Again making sure that it could fit in the scene so I decided to use a stone texture.
I increased the specular roughness of the object to match the properties of real stone.
Tracking My Video In Nuke –
Once in Nuke I used the CameraTracker node to render through my footage and hold points that would follow through to the end of the clip. I then needed to get rid of each point that would cause a problem in my scene.
I deleted all sky points as it could lock onto clouds and they move which would interact with my tracking, and then I also reduced the Max Error in the CameraTracker node to ensure that any red coloured tracks would be excluded from my scene.
After this I created my scene which also created my pointcloud node, here I can switch to 3d view and see each track in my 3d space. It helped me to visualise where my scene was and how to incorporate my object. 
After creating my track I took the camera properties into Maya, where I applied these setting back in so I could see exactly what I would see in Nuke. This made it much easier to implement my object as I could see the track in maya and allign my object to those points.
I scaled my fountaion down and fit it to the footage accordingly and then began to create my shadow for the floor.
I created my ground plane to sit on the bottom of my fountain as it was going to be on the floor. I applied the material ‘aiShadowMatte’ which takes away the visibility of that plane in render view but also allows for the shadows to be casted onto that plane.
I then needed to create a lighting set up that would match that of the scene, this took a while as I needed to carefully adjust each area light to fit the scene. One thing that I had noticed once applying the lights was that the shadow had become a lot darker than those of the objects in my original footage.
This was because the standard settings for the aiShadowMatte were active…
I then modified these until I was happy with the shadow I could see from my fountain in the scene.
This made sure that the shadow was not dark enough to look black on the grassy area around the object and brought down the opacity from other areas of light in the original footage.
After being happy with how my created object looked in my scene I rendered out the passes to I could then take them in to nuke and apply them separately.
I needed to make sure that I applied ‘Ambient Occlusion’ and my ‘Shadowmatte’ layers separately and they would come out as independant renders.
Nuke Structure –
Afgter exporting my maya footage and renders of each pass, I then took those files back into Nuke so I could then merge them all together again and start to apply colour corrections and grades where I thought fit.
After playing around with different colour saturation movements and gain alterations, I was happy with my fountain object and was ready to implement it back into my scene…
making sure that my nodes were set up this way ensured that I could see my fountain over the top of my footage, and so I was ready to render out what I had put together.
Above is what my footage looked like without colour corrections and alterations.
And below is what my footage looked like after my improvements.
Even though there is not a hhuge change colour wise, the object in the swecind video can be seen to look more fitting than that of the first video.
And finally here is the breakdown of how I produced my final render.
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