Shake Newbie Questions

[chartt]

Hello, I just purchased my copy of shake this week and am slowly pouring through the materials that came with it. I am an amatuer filmmaker that uses final cut pro mostly, but want to start getting into special effects. A question I have is:

What (if any) other plug-ins or software do I need to do some sort of rudementary 3d tracking for a shot?

It's nothing complex, just a few seconds with a spinning camera. I have a copy of lightwave 8 I have been learning to use, but I am wondering whether I should switch to Maya instead? Apple's website says they work great together but they don't say exactly how?

What does Maya do with Shake that I can't do with Lightwave?

I understand I have to have data points in the greenscreen shot and use those somehow to track the camera in my 3d modeling program and use that output to composite with my greenscreen. Any other info, or experience would be most helpful. Thank you for your time.

Marc -

[user_deleted]

To track in 3d you'll need Boujou or Matchmover or something along those lines. I know Maya has a tracker that is a nightmare to use and I think there's a plugin for 3dsMax that's decent, but Boujou is pretty much the standard.

You can't track 3D in Shake, it needs to be done externally.

As far as lightwave vs Maya ( the eternal arguement,) my experience would say Maya. Or XSI, which is looking like the next step in 3d. Unfortunately the main brains behind Lightwave have left the company and created an excellent modeller called Modo. If all you do is model, it's very cool. But Maya does EVERYTHING except render nicely. But you can use an external solution for that as well. Lightwave is easy to learn on however, but it's being phased out ( at leat here in Vancouver's VFX houses,) as far as I can tell.

As far as 3d tracking and the Maya/Shake relationship, check the manuals and tutorials - it's just too much to type up here.

Hope this helps!

jon a

[deke-kincaid]

Unfortunatly Boujou and Matchmover are quite expensive(US$ 2,500-15,000). Although I have only professionally used the previous mentioned ones, I have heard many people talk about one called Syntheyes and PFHoe:
http://www.ssontech.com/
http://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/contentfull....ntent=pfhoe.htm

They are priced for someone who has limited funds. If you have the money though, I would suggest Boujou Bullet($2,500). I used it proffessionally on many projects.

I have a big list of matchmovers here if you want to explore all options:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=101533