Welcome to.
Good source material.
Now what do we mean by source material.
Well like reference material in the past but this time it's actually going to be used with in our final
render.
So this could be a picture a photo a video or even another render that you've done now in a bit we'll
grab a photo and check out its settings.
Now this is important for both still some photos and I'm going to hammer this point home because it
really does save you a lot of time with your own video.
Keep notes of the settings as they're often lost.
So what device you took it on.
In fact let's get to the essential data that you're going to need.
Now this is a little bit of a white lie.
You can get by without this information.
However it will take a lot of your time and to ing and fro ing and trying to get the scene just right.
If you've got the data it can speed up things a lot.
So the resolution of the recorded data the camera sensor size and the lens focal length.
Now some of these you're going to have to look up for certain devices and some of them are built into
blender so we can use a combination of research or just a preset that's straightaway available to us.
Now pictures fortunately often have this data stored with them and you can right click on them and on
a Windows machine you can go to propertys or on a Mac you can go to get info.
And if the picture has this information stored with it then you will actually be able to look at that
and recall it down.
And then we can set up our camera in the scene with the same settings.
Now if it's a render that you've already done you have to use the camera settings that were in that
other blend file.
Now things that are nice to have is a way before we move onto that.
I do apologize.
Pictures do have this data still with them but videos do not.
So it is a great idea that you know down what device the video of the video was recorded with.
If that's possible now Nice to have.
Well measurements of the area you're working in that's very useful for working at distances and placing
things at a certain scale within your scene position of any lighting.
Now if it's an outdoor scene in the daytime there's usually one prominent light that is the sun in the
sky that will be the source of most of your lighting.
However if it's in endorsing you may have several lights scattered about contributing to your scene.
If you'd taken note of where those are and perhaps the intensity of them or just say they're all the
same.
Then at least you got a good standing to start using that photo or video.
Now in this particular instance we're going to use a photo so the lighting is probably just going to
be the sun.
Keep things simple remember that.
Now a couple of things to look out for.
Light direction and looking for shadows.
Now the can't go hand in hand in shadows can be both a blessing and a curse.
So you will want to make sure shadows don't cross over where your object will be.
If they do you're going to have to create a nother object to cast.
That's the real shadow on top of your objects.
And of course delete the other one and this entails more and more work.
And we want to avoid getting too nitty gritty at this point.
Certainly there will be instances if you ever go into this fully where you will have to edit the actual
picture or video and cut things out and mask things off.
But we're not going to go quite that deep dive in this section.
Reflections are very similar to shadows.
They can give away the true nature of a scene.
So we do have to be careful with their reflections.
Instances like that could be a glass building or a mirror.
A good reflective surface cars tend to be reflective they're going to reflect the area around them things
that you might not focus on like a puddle on the ground those can reflect and give away the fact that
hang on a minute there should be a reflection of the objects in there as well.
Again if we can avoid those type of things we can get on really well and quickly.
That's the important thing.
Now you also have to watch out for anything in the foreground those foreground objects can cause you
a bit of a nightmare there in front of your object and therefore you've got to work around them.
So at the moment I would avoid foreground objects where possible.
So finally if you were creating your own source material you can have a bit more control over how it's
looking.
So with photos take measurements of the scene that's very important as well as the camera settings that
you currently have.
So remember what focal length you've switched your camera so if it's a fixed length camera you may have
to research if you've taken a video or photo with your iPhone or Android device then you'll want to
look up the specs of the camera with videos you can lay down markers especially if your CGI is going
to cover the area in question and that can help massively high contrast is.
Because that helps with camera tracking and we'll see that later on.
Now you will want to avoid sharp and jerky movements.
It makes tracking the camera really really difficult and time consuming.
Now remember this the last I'm going to say this is so many times to store your camera and lens settings.
Make sure you know what they are.
It's going to help you a lot.
Okay so now we've got the ground work sorted for what source material is ideal to be working with.
It's time for a challenge and I'd like you guys to go find a photo now find yourself a suitable photo
to work with.
Think about your projects what you're working on and what you are trying to achieve.
Remember please keep things simple especially if this is your first time doing any visual effects.
Now I'll personally be finding a runway because I'm doing a CGI plane and I'm going to place that on
the runway.
Now make sure your image has camera details.
Now if you've gone off and taken a photo great you're going to have all the details because you've actually
taken the photo.
But if you haven't and your sourcing a photo from online make sure that it does have those camera details
embedded in it.
Go ahead.
Pause video and go find a suitable photo.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Let's go see what I found and make sure it's suitable.
Okay so after searching the web for a bit I have found a picture I really like.
We can see where the light sources is the sun and it's just dipping below there.
The mountain top they're just glaring out.
That's going to give us some new lovely warm colours as well.
Going to produce long shadows when it's so low on the horizon.
And now I don't have to actually be this but I will since I'm on the site.
But before I go any further of course let's just make sure that this particular photo is suitable because
I don't know any of the settings it might just be an image.
Okay so clicking download has just opened up for me.
A nice high res image that's very useful.
Look at lots of detail.
Okay so I'm going to right click and save the image in my downloads for the moment and open it up.
Now you will.
You can right click on the download itself and get to Properties out or indeed right click and go to
get info.
I believe I can get info from preview on a Mac as well so we can see straightaway.
I'm going to go to the file tab first of all we've got there.
Of course we've got a number of pixels it is that's also easy to look up so that's a great start.
I'm going to look under the E X I left later.
Now this should give us.
Here we go focal length.
So we've got the VAT's we need to know what camera it was taken on.
I'm guessing it's taken on a camera yet.
We got the lens model here now that can be very useful if you chanty exactly mimic a real life lens.
Because we are going get the data for that lens.
If it's got any particular distortion but do we have the camera type.
So let's go along here.
Here we go.
A e e o s eleven hundred d.
I don't know the sensor size for that sungura Search for Canon.
E o s eleven hundred d.
Umm let's give a literally go sensor size.
Now I'm I'm a bit of a photographer.
I'm going to assume it's there a S P A This one here of that size so it's a width here.
Is going to be 22 point two.
So I've written down all of these bits of information making sure that I can go back to them if I need
to.
It's quite an affordable camera.
Excellent.
I really like this photo I am looking forward to working with it.
How did you guys get on.
Are you going to use the photo that I've got here or are you going to follow along with a plane.
You could you could put a car on there if you wanted to as well.
Cars and runways kind of go together.
If you picked a different scene I'd love to see what projects you were going to work on.
Remember to share that in the discussions and I will see you guys in the next lecture.