Boujou to Shake

[aurel]

Howdy! I saw this subject posted else where on Highend but was a bit vague. Here's my situation if anyone could please shed some light on this for me.

I filmed a 3D camera move - tracked that in Boujou and exported the data into Houdini. I've rendered out the scene and it is just slightly off when I composite it in Shake (checked the timeline/keyframes lineups) - it's just plain off.

My question is - would it be helpful to export the 2D camera data into Shake? And if so, how exactly would this help? I can't get my head around this... I'm hoping you could explain this to me. I would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks so much for your time! Have a good one!

[deke-kincaid]

Sounds like your just getting a bad track in boujou. Did you check it in houdini to make sure it matched? Boujou looks like a silver bullet but sometimes it give you bum results that you have to massage a little bit. I usually just group the camera to a null and then hand animate the null with corrections for the matchmove.

[aurel]

Thanks Deke! Great nickname by the way! Yeah I got a pretty bum track. I'm trying to make it work though. Not sure on how you would go about fixing the little problem areas by attaching the camera to a null and matching the animation, you must have a damn good eye! If you care to tell me your secret it would be a great lesson learned!

I read through some of your blogs. Very interesting stuff. Cat in the Hat sounded like loads of fun, hehe, roto work gotta love it. I'm actually doing a Digital Effects course in England at the moment down here in Bournemouth. I'm originally from Texas though. How's the weather in California???
How long you been in the industry? Any advice on applying for a job? I'm really missing the states! We use Houdini and Shake here on this course. Houdini is pretty cool - vast piece of software though.

Where abouts in Cali are ya? I got a friend in LA. Anyway, thanks so much for your time. Love to chat more! I got a project to finish. Take care man!

J.T.

[deke-kincaid]

Load the scene you tracked in boujou into whatever they call an imageplane in houdini(it should allready be setup from the file you exported out of boujou). Your just going to put a few dummy objects where the real objects are in the scene are. Mess with the placement till they are as close as possible. If there is a floor in the scene then make yourself a ground plane.

Now meticulously go back and fourth between frames one frame at a time to make sure stuff matches up. When the motion is off just animate that null over the camera to correct the bad track. Just find out what the hot key is for frame forward and frame back and get used to them. Frame forward, back, forward, back, forward, etc.. till your eye catches whether the movement is correct or not. Then go forward another frame and do it all over again. It is a very meticulous process and requires an eye for movement.

[aurel]

Thanks a lot Deke. I'm gonna get to it. Take care.

J.T.