SlowMotion Matrix style?

[olix]

Hi, i was trying to figured out how can i make a render scene for an animation like Matrix style camera motion scenes like gtting 60 or 70 frames/sec in maya ????
is it possible ???, i

[jtk77]

Not really the answer to your question , but may help:
You can render it out a normal (or close to what you need to avoid bad frame jitter it you slow it down A LOT) frame rate and do it in post. Affter Effects for example, has a time remapping feature so you can randomly speed up , freez and slowdown sections of your animation . I was messing with this : Take a character doing a jumpkick or something, render that out . At one point in the animation freeze your character , animate the camera doing a 360 around the character --starting at the original camera position , then ending at the original position with the character frozen at the point in the cycle . take the two files into post and cut them together, cool matrix-ish effect.
( very import to the match the two camera renders completely!)

"..you know, its hard to get people to pay you to make dancing robots.."
--Mr.K

[heydiddlediddle]

unless you need dynamics...why not just animate it to a high framerate? Time in the computer (as i'm sure you're aware of) is even more relative that reality and you don't have the confines of proper lighting, gravity, physics, etc. I would think that doing something like this would give you an idea of how good your own sense of timing as an animator is... Or if you're in a real crunch and just need to take an existing animation and extend the filmrate, group everything animated together, use the dopesheet (or graph editor depending on what you're ocomfortable with) and simply scale the animation. and poof, you magically have an easy way of doing slow motion (and you might want to fudge the final render in post to get a trailing effect).

If you want that move around then freeze action shot (a la matrix, lost in space, etc), same principle, just add a second set of the same keys where you want the freeze effect to happen.

Now if Maya had a good time warp (like alias or flame) where one curve controlled all the animation in the scene, we'd really have something...

have fun.

[jtk77]

YES . What we need is a good time warp, you're right. You could use the graph editor in the same way , but you'd have to be certain you stretched out all the curves to equal lenghths , that can get messy. Either way , approach just like you would if you were shooting it in real life , when you need to cut the camera and edit . do so , when you need post( which should be at least 40% of the work with any animation really) then do so.

"..you know, its hard to get people to pay you to make dancing robots.."
--Mr.K

[mistah_a]

has anyone tryed to simulate the cameraRig that was used
in matrix for the camera (slowmo spinFX)
that would be nice to do,not to hard i guess!!!

[petternicklas]

hi!

i hav'nt tried it but,
there is a cameracut MEL...that cuts from one camera to another on given frame, and renders it all in one batch render. then its just a matter of making keys on every camera...one drawback is that moblur does not calculate right.

manne

[pseudosuperman]

I've actually thought of how this could be done in 3d since I saw the movie. I think I have a pretty good solution. You don't need to remap time or speed the framerate or anything.
At the point you want the camera move, just stop (or slow down) your character(s). Obviously, This will work better if you know at what point this will happen before you start animating. Then move your camera around at the desired speed as you would normally do. Keep in mind the camera in Matrix dind't actually move all that fast, it just seemed that way because the action was slowed so much. Then pick up your animation on the other side. For added fun (if you want the not-quite-perfect arc that they had in Matrix) set your camera position keyframes manually.
Hope this helps.
-Josh
<>

[mistah_a]

hey it wasn

[smatsri]

Even though there was 120 (or however many) cameras this is not necessary in the computer as all other motion can be stopped (or slowed down) and just the camera animated. If you are working with digital characters then it is a lot easier to create this type of effect in computer. The reason that there where so many still cameras was that this is the only way to capture enough live action information to make the shot possible. It requires thinking about in a slightly different way to produce it in computer but it is infact easier.

[miguel-1]

well i think it

[yamaguchi-tai]

Yeah. I had to do this for a project (don't ask). It is relativly easy. freeze whatever character you are animating, set the camera on a motion path 360 around the character, and bam. The before and after shots can be done in a seperate scene, and if you notice in the matrix they achieved the effect of fluidity with some real nice editing.

Neo_1138

"Wow....deja vu"

"Wow....deja vu"

[jtk77]

Yep.
Exactly what I said secound post........... on the camera rig thing-- You never need to use a rig like that in 3d. They demoed the rig within the computer to make sure they had all the proper readings and mesurements. But to acheive the same effect , just spin a camera around a frozen or slowed down character. The reason they have to set a rig like that in real life is becouse you could never get a perfectly still mid-air shot by spinning a camera around a person. But in 3d , thee are no rules like that.

"..you know, its hard to get people to pay you to make dancing robots.."
--Mr.K

"..you know, its hard to get people to pay you to make dancing robots.."
--Mr.K

[cheeseman]

We did a couple of Matrix style shots for the NHL on ESPN and ABC. For one I animated everything as normal. Then I baked all the animated channels (to get keyframes on every frame) and scaled them all up for the time I wanted to be slow-mo. This worked OK but did not leave a lot of room for adjustment or changes because you're dealing with so many keyframes. For the other shot, I first planned my camera move and then animated all the characters with a slow down area in the middle of the shot. I even had some particles coming off the hockey stick when the puck is hit. They had an draq field and gravity field that were both animated to make the particles freeze in mid air. I recommend the second approach because you have a lot more control if changes are needed, which of course, they always are. Time stretching in After Effects might work in some situations and can look really cool. -David

[heydiddlediddle]

The MATRIX freeze motion spin shot will replace the flying chrome balls as the cliche CG effect of the 2000s!

-Nostradamus

I'm already sick of the Matrix shot...enuf is enuf, it's about as cliche as the camera coming out of the eye to another scene through another eye thing. Commercial directors and producers be aware, it cheapens the product by emulating (especially if it's done poorly).

We did a couple commercials that have people floating in mid air, paper hanging in the air, books and computer monitors suspended several feet off the ground, etc. One shot, no 3D, one camera, and a lot of time on the flame. You don't neccesarily need that rig to do that style of shot, actually, the shot that i'm talking about might have needed a thousand or cameras (it's about 1000 frames in length) if it's even possible with that rig (the camera spins around people, keeps dollying and trucking and panning through a mall size area, into an office, into a monitor and up some stairs into an airplane). Just some ingenuity and some brainstorming between the flame artists, the director, and the DP. I repeat...no 3D and one camera. We have producers still trying to figure our how we did it... Although we did another one with Maya as well of a golf club hitting a ball, freezing in mid stroke, grass floating in air, camera spins, club finishes stroke.

DK