Camera Analysis - having an animated Projector Freeze Frame?

Have run into a problem with the Camera Analysis.
In the old Mono Analyser you could have a diffuse map on Projector mode and select a 1frame camera to freeze the motion , but the layer input could be moving picture. Ie you might want to do some extra warping on the still to get it to line up through the track…

In Camera Analysis this seems impossible? The ‘Projector Freeze Frame’ doesnt seem to be able to handle a moving source when you have assigned the media. It really is frozen you cant do anything to that image before the action.
i would normally look at my camera track as Context while moving a Bicubic on the still in a previous action , but with Camera Analysis / Projector Freeze Frame , this is broken.

Anyone else experienced this or got a workaround? I may well be missing something really obvious :smile:

If I understood you correctly, you’re trying to do a projection mapping on a surface and lock it, right. I think you need to add at least one keyframe to your surface that’s receiving the projection. I can’t tell for sure if this was your problem, but… there…

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I can do the projection no problem but sometimes you dont want the incoming footage to be completely frozen. This wasnt an issue in the old Mono Analyser but in the new Camera Analysis it just doesnt update the freeze frame if you do things to it downstream .

So in short i want to do a projection from a single frame , but that frame needs to be able to move / animate over time

I don’t know if it’s related, but I have a camera with a lookat axis that will pan around a projection and it will not update when I move the lookat unless I change the action display from “live preview” to “3d”

Maybe toggling to the non-lut “3d” view will do the trick.

Hiya Mark,

I think I understand your issue and I think I have a solution for you. Firstly, I’m with you— the use-cases for Projector Freeze Frame are too few for me for all the reasons you’re describing, and I’ve honestly never used it.

  1. Do your camera track, get a tracker axis, I’m sure you’ve done this part already.

  2. Pull out any media I have in the Action as a surface, make it a child of that Tracker Axis I made, and ensure the scale is large enough to successfully project onto.

  3. Then right click on that surface, Add Map, Diffuse Map with the thing you want to project selected in the Media list.

  4. Set that Diffuse Map to Projection.

  5. Take Default camera and remove the Mimic link linking it to the Camera Analysis, duplicate Default camera, and “Keep” on the frame you want to use as the basis of the track for that duplicated Camera (usually called Default1). And then on your Diffuse Map, change the Projection camera to Default1.

That’s how I do what you’re looking to do. But let me know if anything I said is hazy because it’s a lot of steps and it’s not the easiest thing in the world.

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ahhhh so this is what im looking for , essentially using the projection method from the old Mono Analyser. The Camera’s have no keyframes from what i could see as all the info is held in the Camera Analysis but I will try again. If that works its exactly the solution im after , cheers!

if you unlink the camera analysis from your camera, that camera will then inherit all the keyframes of the analysis. From that point you can average, delete, adjust the camera keyframes as you normally would.

Hey guys,
I got myself into it this morning and I see the problem with Projector and there is definitely room to automate this workflow. Do you guys feels it will be good to do all those steps in a single click? Can I ask you Jeff the drawback of using a 3D Shape versus a Surface like you mentioned?
Thanks.
Francis.

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Having the 1 click workflow is very handy , the downside is the projector surface you get is very limited and currently actually freezes the input where as you may often want moving footage as the input , all be it that it lines up at the chosen frame.

3d shapes for me always just seem like overkill for most cases. I would only ever use one if I wanted to extrude a layer in some way , otherwise a bicubic surface does everything I need mostly.

The icing on the cake would be if the surface could be warped whilest projecting the chosen frame to make adjustments to tracks etc but i realise technically this probably presents problems as the surface is projecting…

a ‘secondary’ surface control could perhaps be the ultimate answer so you can warp a projection all in a nice simple way in the same Action

Hey @FrancisBouillon ! So glad to see you here.

I looked into the 3D Shape vs Surface situation and after a handful of tests, I remembered that the issues I ran into is related to importing SynthEyes camera tracking into Flame and nothing to do with Flame’s camera tracking. Sorry for the false alarm. I’ll edit my post to clear things up for the future.

I have no issues with using a 3D Shape when using Flame’s camera tracking, but I moved away from it due to scaling issues when working with SynthEyes camera tracking data and projecting onto a drawn 3D Shape. It had something to do with where in space the drawn 3D shape lives versus where in space a dragged out surface lives. The results with SynthEyes were more predictable when pulling the surface out.

At the end of the day, it isn’t too different to me whether I pull in a Surface that fits the projection or draw a shape to fit the projection, but since I had issues with SynthEyes I just ended up moving away from 3D shape to simplify things so I didn’t have to remember which one has limitations and such. But look what good that did me? Now I’m spreading lies!

Warp your image on a stabilized plate, premult, and then project separately. Looking at your projection in context and trying to warp is needlessly painful.

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i feel no pain using this technique whatsoever :grin: :man_shrugging: horses for courses as they say

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Thanks Jeff ! It makes sense regarding SynthEyes.
Mark, yes I agree being able warp the texture directly on the 3D Shape will make things much easier.

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