Match to Live Setup in Maya and Nuke

Match to Live Setup

The ability to match a CG object into live footage speaks volumes in regard to your ability to model, texture, and composite, as well as your attention to detail as a digital artist.

For the sake of simplicity we'll use a still frame.
When shooting footage or a still it can be very helpful to include simple objects that will save tons of time in post.

Here is the plate I shot with my *crappy* Canon PowerShot A410

Be careful not to edit or crop your photo as that will rob your image of recorded camera information and may cause strange distortions in the image's perspective.  

Shooting a version with a simple primitive cube will help you line up perspective in Maya

Shooting a chrome sphere will make reflections a snap

In order to effectively use the chrome ball data, you will have to crop it like so:

1) Use your plate with the cube in it as an Image Plane for your main camera.

2) Create a Cube in Maya and use it along with the grid in your Camera's view to match perspective from the plate to your scene.  Once you have it perfect, lock your Camera.

 

 

3) Create and texture your model.

4) Render out all of your passes (example: specular highlights, diffuse color, reflections...etc) and bring them into Nuke.

You'll be doing something like this...stay tuned!