2d3 Boujou

Easy-to-Use Motion Tracking

Commercials, films, and television programs pack in the visualeffects, but most of these don't stand out as “effects” toviewers. Subtlety and believability are key.

Changing wheels in Boujou for Volkswagen.

One of the greatest obstacles to creating totally believableeffects? Incorporating digitally fabricated elements, such as CGcharacters or backgrounds, successfully and seamlessly into alive-action scene. Traditionally, this called for hand tracking anobject. Prior to the actual compositing, this step requires the artistto carefully calculate the position of the objects as well as thecamera path, frame by frame. Besides being labor intensive, handtracking can also tie up a compositing suite for hours and even thendoesn't always result in an accurate track.

Enter Boujou, a powerful application from UK-based 2d3. The softwarestudies the composition and camera motion within your footage, and thenautomatically produces a spot-on camera track, one that's easilytransferable to most compositing systems. Simply load the clip into theprogram and it's turned around in minutes as a “solved”track. Any CG you want integrated can be put into place across asequence, regardless of the types of camera moves involved.

Brickyard VFX has recently used Boujou in both its PC and Macversions for shot tracking on a range of high-end commercial projects.With Boujou as part of our day-to-day toolset, we now have theadvantage of delivering whatever a client needs on time, on budget, andwith a high-quality finish.

Here are a few scenarios where Boujou helped us to save the day onrecent jobs.

Volkswagen Tent: The premise? A couple stays overnight in thedesert, sleeping in what seems to be a high-tech nylon tent. But a360-degree shot reveals that they are camping in a much different typeof “tent”: their new Volkswagen Jetta.

The client — happy with how well the original commercialworked — hoped to continue using it to promote Volkswagen'slatest model of the car. There was a catch, though, as the wheel rims(which appear in full view throughout the spot) were slightly differentfrom those on the new car. Since car commercials need to show the exactavailable configurations, the wheel covers had to be replaced.

“Could we fix it in post?” Ah, those immortal words thatwe hear so often. We took a look at the material to assess the amountof work. With that single, continuous camera move, there wasn't roomfor a mistake. If the track was off even a little, the composite wouldbe apparent. But if the task proved too arduous, we would lose the job,since the client was prepared to shelve the commercial.

We first modeled the replacement rims in LightWave, and thenimported them into an Action setup within Flame. We knew tracking wouldrequire a considerable amount of work using Flame's tracker, with a lotof hand adjustments. At that point, we had just heard about Boujou'sautomated 3D tracking. After calling 2d3, they agreed to run a test onthe material for us. It generated a perfect track. We bought thesoftware and flawlessly completed the job. Our client was happy.

Priceline Supercomputer: This series of spots forPriceline-employed actor William Shatner, who stood in front of a setof huge computer monitors. Since the monitors were shot as bluescreenpanels, we could composite graphics, images, and text animations ontothem. Previously, traditional tracking methods meant pulling a reliablemotion track for each of those panels, with up to eight panels perscene! Because of the way the edit worked, we also ended up doing manymore shots than had been planned.

Using Boujou, however, we automatically generated accurate 3D cameratracks for each shot, enabling us to quickly composite all of thepanels. We stayed within budget and met our deadline.

Royal Caribbean The Message: Seemingly straightforwardprojects, such as this advertisement featuring vacationers on a RoyalCaribbean cruise liner, can often present the most complex challenges,even when there are no apparent visual effects. This spot closed with ashot the client really loved: a sweeping 360-degree move around theship in the middle of the ocean with the sun setting in thedistance.

This scene was filmed from a helicopter, flying away and lookingback toward the ship. Sounds nice, but the helicopter rotors appearedin frame, marring shot composition and causing a flickering effect.Plumes from the smokestack of the ship were also visible and had to beremoved. Finally, the sky's very complex cloud formations and vibrantcolors made it extremely difficult to patch.

To make the shot work, we knew we had to replace the entire sky. Wematte-painted the sky and reconstructed it in 3D, tracked the cameramove with Boujou, and dropped in the new background. Without Boujou,the costs of meeting our client's request would have been prohibitiveand next to impossible to deliver within the deadline.

Apple and VW Pods Unite: This spot plays on the innovativedesign and similar sleek design style Volkswagen and Apple share. Theobject? To peak interest in a special offer: “Buy a New Beetle.Get a new iPod.” The creative treatment, which shows a womantaking the two products on the road, culminates in a final shot thatpulls from a close-up of the iPod display face out of the vehicle'sopen sunroof and beyond.

This last scene — a long, high pullout envisioned by thecreative team — could not be achieved as a single, seamlesscamera move using the physical rig. We would have to virtually extendit, blending all the shots together seamlessly.

Motion control passes were filmed using a “buck,” aversion of a car that comes apart like a jigsaw puzzle. Some shotsfocused in a tight close-up on the iPod's face near the dashboard;other shots started on the top of the car because the camera rigwouldn't fit through the sunroof. To work out the final shot move, wecomposited all of the passes together on the Flame. Once we solvedthat, the resulting clip was tracked in Boujou to obtain a motion trackfor the iPod face.

Boujou is extremely fast and easy to use. It's become a keycomponent in our production pipeline, something we can apply on almostall jobs that pass through. Since Boujou runs on Windows, Linux, or theMac OS X, we can move tracking chores to any free computer, which helpswith project management.

In the past, tracking has been a complex task, consuming a lot oftime at the beginning of many effects jobs. With Boujou, trackingbecomes an automated, seamless part of the workflow, something that nowhappens in the background. I don't think our artists will miss thosehours and hours of tedious manual tweaking.

Brian Drewes has supervised commercial and music video effectswork for a range of directors, including Gerald Casale, Mark Kohr, NickLewin, and Baker Smith. As producer/managing director at BrickyardAtlantic, he regularly shepherds projects from Arnold Worldwide, HillHolliday, and other others.

With offices in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard VFX, anindependent visual effects boutique, specializes in digital finishing,effects, and compositing. Brickyard's problem-solving expertise on setand in the studio has been applied to high-profile campaigns for Atari,Snapple, AT&T, Visa, and Volkswagen. For more information, pleasecall Brickyard VFX Atlantic at (617) 262-3220, Brickyard VFX Pacific at(310) 453-5722, or visit www.brickyardvfx.com.