Tracking, Ground Collapse Simulation - Workflow

[reelinspirations]

Hi,

 

OK, so I have a VFX shot I'm wanting to produce. I have an aerial shot of a landscape. The camera is pointed straight down.
The goal is to create a couple of 'sink holes' that crumble away, similar to this, except that the camera is looking straight down.

I've tracked the shot in Syntheyes but am trying to figure out the best way to go about creating and surfacing the geo for this sim.

I've thought about two ways to do this.
1. Use the 4K footage from the video to create a large 'panorama' texture and just manually move the camera over it.
2. Create a mesh in Syntheyes to export to Houdini and somehow surface that with a still image for the sim.
3. ???

Technically, I know how to fracture and surface, etc. I just want to know workflow for best results and practices.

Anyone have any thoughts or pointers on how to do this?

Thanks,

Jim

[Juraj]

Hi,
some ideas:

• if possible, create dense point cloud in SynthEyes, export points and camera into Houdini
• in Houdini: save points rest positions and flatten points to ground plane, triangulate (Triangulate 2D  SOP) it and restore points to rest postitions
• create planar UV projection from top view
• in Nuke: import camera and geometry with UVs, set camera as projector and render multiple frames to UV space of mesh (Projection mode in Scanline render) 
• in Photoshop: load multiple rendered frames from Nuke and blend between them (to have whole surface covered with texture) and color correct if needed
• now you have ground plane with UVs and texture from footage
• in Houdini you can extrude it, pre-fracture, send to DOPs and activate pieces by curve for example
• add some particle based debris and fluid simulation on top of it, render it
• composite all elements in Nuke
• have a beer

 

Juraj

[reelinspirations]

Thanks Juraj for the info.

I use After Effects, not Nuke, but I can take your information and run with it.

Jim