the maps, the rain, the pills, the place
July 25, 2013 1:36 PM   Subscribe

Night Stroll by Tao Tajima. A visually stunning nighttime display of lights and shapes across the streets of Tokyo. [via / epilepsy warning]

Music: Purple Blaze by Ris Paul Ric
posted by Wonton Cruelty (6 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Awesome visuals, awesomely annoying song.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:44 PM on July 25, 2013


Awesomely annoying comment.
posted by Optamystic at 2:04 PM on July 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


Anyone have more details on how one would go about doing this?

I'm assuming that you can bring along some device similar to (if not a hacked) kinnect camera to map out the 3d space (and light reflectivity) of where you shot. Then you go back, input the 3d and light data into your 3d modeling software, where you add the neat lighting animations and their reflections. Lastly, add the video as background.

Am I anywhere near close? Is there now specific hardware/software to make this process easy to do?
posted by comradechu at 2:23 PM on July 25, 2013


comradechu: "Anyone have more details on how one would go about doing this?

I'm assuming that you can bring along some device similar to (if not a hacked) kinnect camera to map out the 3d space (and light reflectivity) of where you shot. Then you go back, input the 3d and light data into your 3d modeling software, where you add the neat lighting animations and their reflections. Lastly, add the video as background.

Am I anywhere near close? Is there now specific hardware/software to make this process easy to do
"

You can do that, I guess, or you can move your camera around a bunch and let a 3D tracker do a camera solve on that, which will also give you decent point clouds of the environment, probably good enough to at least place some surfaces good enough to map these reflections, etc.

Note that most of these environments have large flat surfaces, so they don't need crazily detailed 3D models to generate workable reflections. To me, it looks like they 3D tracked it, generated a camera solve, placed some large flat surfaces for things to reflect off of, rendered, and composited that.

It's a very nice, pretty (and more abstract than usual) use of an existing, well established technique. To an extent, I think it's an indicator of how well established the technology is when people start using it creatively/artistically like this instead of, say, putting some dinosaurs in the scene.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:15 PM on July 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


I liked the music too, dammit.
posted by kurosawa's pal at 8:07 PM on July 25, 2013


Joakim: thanks for the explanation. I used to work for a certain video editing software company, but that was a few years ago and I never was involved in compositing area. I didn't know there was a 3d tracker plugin that uses the camera motion to figure out the 3d space, but that makes a lot of sense.

For others who were curious, there's a lengthy After Effects 3d tracker tutorial video that illustrates how 3d graphics get added after a shoot.
posted by comradechu at 11:00 PM on July 25, 2013


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