Cineversity

Hi there.

I’m trying to get the version 11 presets working on version R11.5 and get the error message “The following database file(s) might have been damaged: Projection Man after installing in the appropriate path on mac osx.

Is it possible that the file posted on cineversity has been corrupted?

Many thanks,

Ben

Testing the archive on my side shows no errors. But I am on a Win8 system.

Is the error coming from the OS itself?
Have you re-downloaded the file?
Have you tried a third party program to unzip?

Let me know, otherwise I’ll see if Rick can reproduce on a Mac.

Hey there Patrick.

I’ve downloaded separately on two different machines running OSX and then downloaded a few more times to make sure when it didn’t work the first time. I used the native OSX archive utility and also tried using the unarchiver which is a third party utility. No crc errors or permissions problems.

Cheers,

Ben

I just tested it, dragging it to the editor window or placing it in the Browser window (restart: I get the same problem with r11.5. (MacOSX.7.5) 
It works nicely on r12, each time tested with native and Stuffit expander.

Thanks Dr Sassi.

Forgot to mention I’m on OSX 10.6.8 and also running r11.5

Hey Ben Trahair,

You’re welcome. Thanks for the additional information. As I was able to reproduce it, I think it is not related to a specific MacOSX version, and more people might have problems with it, if the constellation is similar.

I think at this point (r14 and MacOSX.8) it might be a nice alternative to just supply the r11 files and allow everyone to create his/her own presets with it. (Just my point of view). As I can’t do this, perhaps Rick or Patrick might like to do it.

If you like to dive deeper into camera projection and such, perhaps you check out the newer versions (demo) anyway, with the camera calibrator. I’m not a sales rep, so this is just a tip from one artist to another. I have finished a longer series about Camera Mapping/Projection and photography for it, which will published hopefully this year. It is an essential workflow to know, from my point of view a “must know” for a lot of content creator.

All the best

Sassi

I’ve been trying very hard to convince my work to upgrade our two licenses since r12 came out. No luck yet :(
Been meaning to check out r14 for a while and the new camera tools look really useful. Its really nice for me when people release presets and plugins that are 11.5 compatible as its becoming less and less catered for (understandably software is evolving and can’t be held back forever).
Looking forward to your new series when it comes out. No doubt it and the projection man presets will aid my self approximating rudimentary workflow

Cheers,

Ben

Hey Ben,

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, updating is sometimes underestimated. I hear sometimes people investing in hardware instead of faster “code”, even if an update would come cheaper in some cases, to gain render speed. But yes that is very subjective. So far I can tell, the overall speed has increased over the years. New technology might seem to be slower during the introduction phase, but that is more or less typical, first coding - then improving. Anyway, I like to share some other thoughts.
The technique with planes and getting things done is a method, but not THE method. It is certainly a way to go, and if the idea fits to your way of thinking, it is nice to use it. However, I have never worked that way, and I use “Camera Projection/Mapping” already over a decade for my work. Over ten years ago I produced my first TV opener for a documentary with camera projection. Delivered on DigiBeta and Sp. Certainly not a quality people would admire today, while most production use RED 5 or soon 6K. (I shoot 4K for the music video (link below), and used a lot of camera mapping.

The Projection Man is (as the name suggest) a MANager, not the tool itself. It is sadly often confused with it. The key in “Camera Projection/Mapping” is, to find the position and lens of the original camera, to be able to set up the camera in C4D in the same way. The object in such an image should be roughly represented in shape and scale for the projection to create the illusion of having the image “re-dimensionalized”—will say, you can move an other camera partially around the object to create new parallax information. ..or in other words, new perspective information for this object.

It is typically a back-ground information (e.g, Digital matte-painting), but not at all limited to it. The idea is, to get away with the least amount of geometry and the maximum amount of image information. As the image contains the light taking from the set or local situation, the “backed in” light information of this image delivers a huge amount of reality in nearly no render time. Based on the baked in light, the images should be taken with the later use in mind.

If there are more than one image to integrate on one geometry (or in the scene itself), the Projection Man comes in handy, or just to “patch” the given image. That is in a nut shell the use of it. I’m happy to answer questions about it in the main forum.

Soon, so I was told, will be released the Making Of, of my multi awarded short “JET”, where I have used to great deal camera projection. Later this year, the Camera proejction series will be hopefully online, as well the Making Of of that music video.

All the best
Sassi

Thanks for the info Sassi. Hopefully its not a massive job to get it converted for 11.5, I’ll stand by until then. Happy to help in any way I can if its a massive job though guessing I won’t be able to do too much without a machine running the pc version.

If you’re interested here’s a quick snippet of my first go at doing camera mapping with some photos I took on cockatoo Island in Sydney. I set it up before watching any of the tutorials here on the correct way to set things up so its a little lopsided in places. I’m pretty happy with it as a starter anyhow.

https://vimeo.com/58228425

Your music video looks great by the way. Love the reflections in the windows. Did you work with multiple projections in one scene to be able to get more flexibility with the camera? Is that a problematic technique to get lots of different shots to sit together? Some fairly big moves there I imagine there would have been a fair amount of patching.

Ben

Hey Ben,

Looks very nice already. I have developed a simple but effective way for the reflections on buildings. It is all in a long camera projection series. I use for this the Camera Calibration tool. Before this great tool was available in C4D, I used other options. Vreel3D has a long success story with their tool. However, with several shots from a different position most 3D tracking applications (e.g., Syntheyes) can do this kind of work. The key is always to get the camera and geometry relations (I think nothing new to you in your scene. You might not even need this preset at all. As I mentioned earlier, it is not part of my pipeline.

What I found more than often the case, is that people just simply reduce Camera-Projection to the Luminance channel (or color only), which is of course a huge limitation.

If I may, just a single suggestion: Material changes its appearance while the camera moves. Even “Tar” on the street looks different based on the viewing angle. Concrete or bricks have more than often little dots of more reflective parts in it, tiny. Do get this easily done, take the image which you use in Photoshop, create a layer on top and just paint those areas, or perhaps do a color selection, or what ever tweaks those areas, then create a black and white version of it. Save it as a new image and use it in the reflectance channel of the material. Just slightly to give you material more “live”. I stress here a “shy” use. It is best when seen more or less unconscious than obvious. Mixed with a Fresnel Shader might improve the results even more. Perhaps—instead of small sprinkles you might use blurry spots—especially in areas where the material has the greatest contact to the world. Frequent use polish things, which is true for many things. Make that visible.

As I mentioned during the Siggraph presentation, take the shots for the projection work always very close (in terms of POI/POV) to the Camera projection camera. The closer that is, the less geometry is needed to convince the audience. Soon will come the JET Making Of, so I was told. It has a lot of Camera Projection discussion as well in it.

To your question, with view exceptions, in the music video, most buildings are based on one shot only, but the more objects I had in the scene, the more likely it is, that I have shot the building from the point where the projection camera would be. Sometimes it is just a double plane, such as with the two traffic scenes, yes, camera mapping with live footage, to adjust the timing later one. But for the foreground, if possble I use 3D object for the little parallax details.

I have to stop here, as I know I get quite talkative when Camera Projection is the theme. :o) I love it.

Good luck with your project. I curious about when its done!

Sassi