Well it's been a while since I've touched this project so today I sat down and opened it up to try my hand at compositing the GS4 onto a photo background. Clearly still a lot of things to learn, but overall, I think it's not bad considering this is my first comp of a CG element onto a photo background.
Mark: I've been watching these grow and grow. I'm really impressed. One thing, though--and I hope I don't sound too terribly picky, but SP liked to run their locos with as clean a stack as possible. Maybe just a little less smoke. Dang, I'm sounding like the kind of Rivet Counter nobody needs to have around, LOL! But really, those images are terrific. I especially love the fact that you're incorporating the articulated coaches. Tom
More work on the 3D GS-4 today. In light of using this model on my Thunder Ridge Previz, I decided fire her up and let out some steam! Check it out as she idles and starts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WieeTdvs8&fmt=18 She's really come a long way since the start of this thread.
Well, we gotta record the Daylight making a run over Donner pass. Then I'd extract all individual frames from the video and open up After Effects. In AE, I'd open the motion tracker and multiple points on the loco where exhaust might come out (stack, cylinders, valves, and such). Then I'd open up a match mover and have to go through frame by frame and click numerous "real" points of the scenery. The matchmover would take those points and calculate the "virtual" camera's orientation to exactly that of the real camera we used to record the Daylight. Now I could go into Maya and begin building the steam dynamics with particle systems while hopefully someone else goes in and rotoscopes the Daylight and any object that might pass in front of the steam by tracing every single element in every single frame! Finally, with all the elements extracted, tracked, matched, and rendered, I would take everything into AE again and build the final comp by layering our original plate under the rendered steam (placed at our tracker points). The match move ensures the steam we shot through the virtual camera is matched with the real camera. Then I layer on top our elements of the real footage extracted via rotoscope so the steam appears to flow in and out of the original scene, just as the Daylight does. Lastly I just tweak everything to get a pretty range of color and vwala! Live steam on your GS-4!! Whew!
Any of your friends at the Academy of Arts want to try? I was actually asking about some real steam, on the layout, and not just that which comes from my ears when something isn't working right
