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Creating additional Plane constraints

Lesson 2: Solving with survey data

Beyond the lesson

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Live > Lesson 2: Solving with survey data > 

Evaluating the solution with imported geometry

The best evaluation of your solution is to set an object in front of the solved camera and see if it matches the background as you play the animation. In this case, we will import a fence modeled in Maya.

Before you load the modeled fence, do the following steps to add one more survey constraint. You add a Point constraint to orient the solution so fenceCorner is at the origin. You need fenceCorner at the origin because the fence model has its corner at the origin and you want the two to match exactly.

To reorient the solution with fenceCorner at the origin

1. Switch to the Survey settings.
2. Choose Points from the Constraint Type menu.
3. Select the following track point in the Outliner under clip1TrackedPointVisibilityGroup > clip1TrackedPointGroup:
   • fenceCorner
4. Click Create. Maya creates a Point constraint in your scene, located at the origin (0,0,0) by default.
5. Switch to the Solve control panel, select registered1 from the solution list, and click the Register button. The solver creates registered2 with fenceCorner at the origin.

You will now import a fence that has been modeled to exactly match the fence that was filmed.

To import a modeled fence

1. Choose File > Import.
2. Navigate to the MayaLiveLessonData/scenes directory in the Import browse window.
3. Double-click fenceModel.ma to import it.

To evaluate the solution

1. Hide the Plane constraints by selecting them and choosing Display > Hide, Show > Hide Selection By hiding them, you can see the fence better.
2. Enlarge the shotCamera view panel, which is in the upper right of the Solve panel layout. This panel shows the view from the solved Maya camera.

   

   In frame 1, you can see that the modeled fence accurately matches the fence that was filmed. To quickly see if it matches well in the other frames, you can scrub through the shot in the Time Slider.

3. To scrub through the shot, drag slowly from left to right in the Time Slider.

   The fence model does not appear to slip in relation to the background, so this confirms that the solution is accurate. If you rendered a sequence of the camera moving around the modeled fence, you could composite the sequence with the original background and they would exactly match.

   Although scrubbing tends to skip frames, it gives a preliminary confirmation that the fence model matches the background in all frames.

4. To evaluate the solution in a more accurate playback, select Window > Playblast.

   The Playblast movie is an approximation of how the rendered sequence will appear. In this movie, you can look for subtle mismatches between the model and the background, such as momentary jitter.

   NoteAs an alternative to the Playblast, you could play the animation in Maya, provided you allocate enough memory in the Setup Cache control panel. If you have memory allocated for all 240 frames, the playback will be as fast and accurate as the Playblast movie. When using Playblast, you’ll need approximately 20 Mbytes of free space in your computer’s temporary directory.