Cinema 4D and tracked green screen footage

[shannon101 0]

I am working on a motion graphics project that has some tracked green screen footage. I understand three different ways to bring in the image sequence.

1. is the Fg object, 2. BG object and 3. a plane. The problem is that I need to use a plane that is in the exact position and scale of the original shot for the track to work right.

The reason for the plane is because I need to see how the animation will look passing from the BG of the character to the FG. If anyone has an

easy way to figure this out in Cinema it will be Highly appreciated.

[iMACHINE 0]

Create a new camera and set position and rotation transforms to zero.

Create a plane and set its X and Y values to the dimensions of the video (such as 1920cm X 1080cm)

Set the plane's orientation parameter to +Z

Make the plane a child of your camera and then use the reset PSR so that the plane's center is the same as the camera's center (may not be necessary).

Set the plane's relative Z position to 1920 and leave it as a child of the camera

OR

Unparent the plane, Set the Camera's Z position to -1920 and then contains the plane to the camera with tags.

 

To keep it simple I'd just keep the plane as a child of the camera.

 

Next, you can take it a step further and rig the plane to scale based on distance from the camera.

Here's a link to a sample setup - Keep the camera focal length and sensor size at the same values the same or it'll break - more xPresso required but this should get you started I think... Select the plane and move it along the Z axis to see.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0fm9fx7muq4jru/Camera%20with%20Plane%20Attached.c4d?dl=0

[shannon101 0]

You are a God send, I new there had to be a logical way to do this. Thanks so much. I will try it out and respond if it works.

 

Brilliant!

[iMACHINE 0]

No Problem. Let me know how it goes...and PM me for my contact info if you ever need more of this kind of help.

[shannon101 0]

It works man. The dimensions of the frame were a little funky making it exactly 1920x1080 made it too large for some reason. But by converting the pixels to cm I was able to scale the plane up to fit the frame and it matched my track and everything. One thing I still cant wrap my mind around is why did the distance of 1920 for the plane make it sit at the perfect position for the camera to animate with it properly? Either way the formula works and I will definitely be using your expertise I am sure sometime in the future. Thanks again and take care.

[iMACHINE 0]

Cool, I'm glad it helped. I figured you'd need to tweak some values to fit your project settings as this was thrown together blindly. I am working on setting up a slightly more advanced rig that will simply take your render settings and the camera settings and apply those dimensions directly to the plane object and do some other fun stuff with it. This example was done in reverse just to flesh it out.