Tracking Actors Heads - Help Please

[ashish-d-tamhane]

Can anyone please give me some advice, or at least point me in the right direction -

I'm new to compositing, and have been given the daunting task of creating a series of shots where actor's heads are replaced with larger CG heads. Before i start trying to do this, can someone just explain what is the best way of tackling this?

1) Presumably, if the actors are still, (and they will be sitting down at desks in some shots), i can just camera track the video using something like Boujou, then import this camera into Max, position the CG heads over the top of the actors heads, render and composite, and these shots should be ok.

2) For shots where people are moving, should i render out each head as a separate layer, then using the tracking function in combustion, track the movement of each actors head, and use this data to link the rendered head to the actor's body?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as i'm sure i'm going to run into some serious problems along the way.

Thanks in advance.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
1) Presumably, if the actors are still, (and they will be sitting down at desks in some shots), i can just camera track the video using something like Boujou, then import this camera into Max, position the CG heads over the top of the actors heads, render and composite, and these shots should be ok.

Good option

QUOTE
For shots where people are moving, should i render out each head as a separate layer, then using the tracking function in combustion, track the movement of each actors head, and use this data to link the rendered head to the actor's body?

Is possible, but you will need a lot of tweak in the animation of the heads in Combustion, and the movement of the actors is limited (2D Heads)