MovieFX: Combining real and virtual, part 1

[Petr Schreiber]

Welcome to the new MovieFX series of TBGL tutorials!

As the name suggests, they will introduce you to various ThinBASIC techniques, which can be used to produce moving pictures.

The "Combining the real and the virtual" sub branch of the movie related tutorials focuses on one extremely attractive topic of today, which is enhancing pictures and movies of real world around us with computer generated elements.

The structure of tutorials is done in classic way from basics to more complex topics.
The series “for advanced” presume the reader is already familiar with TBGL .

MovieFX series start with very simple scene, which will show you how to turn still photo into less static video with one CG object added.

To create AVI, VirtualDub is used to do some post processing and generate the final file.

Download PDF article (http://psch.thinbasic.com/data/MovieFX_CombiningTheRealAndTheVirtual_Part1.pdf)
Download script (http://psch.thinbasic.com/data/MovieFX_CombiningTheRealAndTheVirtual_Part1.zip)
Download final AVI with sound (16 MB) (http://psch.thinbasic.com/data/MovieFX_CombiningTheRealAndTheVirtual_Part1.avi)

I hope you will like it. It is quite simple (script has 170 lines) but somebody could find it interesting.


Petr

[Michael Clease]

your links arent working

[ErosOlmi]

Fixed urls

[Petr Schreiber]

I am sorry for the problems with links,

I was half sleeping when posting :)

[ErosOlmi]

That is great Petr. Incredible effect.

Maybe at the end you can ... wipe out the UFO at warp speed (http://www.ussdragonstar.com/utilitycore/warpspeeds.asp) :D

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks Eros,

I will add some more effects and more intelligent animation in next parts of the MovieFX article series.

There are still many suspicious things to fix in this video - for example still birds on the antenna :)


Petr

[Michael Clease]

Amazing, I could see a special FX package written in TB.

[ErosOlmi]

... for example still birds on the antenna :)


oh, yes. They should be scared by the UFO approaching and fly away but ... maybe ... they are not real birds but ... extra terrestrial probes coming on hearth to study us :D

[kryton9]

Petr, what are you doing? You know I love looking at UFO videos on youtube. Now I will have a hard time believing any of them... and I want to Believe :)

Superb work as always from you Petr!

[Michael Hartlef]

Hi Petr,

which codec did you use for the video?

[Michael Hartlef]

Can't watch the video on my XP system but your PDF is well made. Thanks for sharing!

[Petr Schreiber]

Hehe, thanks guys :)

the idea with FX package is not bad, I think code from this and following articles could be assembled to some little application.

Kent, I am sorry, but I could not resist. Especially after watching District 9 :)

Mike, I used "Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2". I think it probably came with K-Lite CodecPack or something like it.
I can recompile the video for you, if you say me which codecs you have installed.

Or you could download the script, set:


%produceBitmaps = %TRUE ' -- Was false


Let it render, press [escape] once done and use VirtualDub to do the video for you.


P.S. Eros - I knew it! Beeping of the birds is the way they cry the info to the Space :)

[zak]

thank you Petr very much, i am always wants to forge a UFO flying over our home, but i was not able to do so.
best wishes

[Michael Hartlef]

That is really a nice video. Liked it. Did you add the shaking via script or with VirtualDub?

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Mike,

as described in the paper, the shaking is done in the script.

I used VirtualDub basically only for the mo blur - we already know motion blur can be done in ThinBASIC too, but I did not wanted to complicate the code with it.

[kryton9]

Petr, did you post new photos of your fx photos on the web?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYAFDyBCT8&feature=related

[Petr Schreiber]

It seems I am not the only one who had idea to play with CG UFOs this Autumn :D

[Michael Hartlef]

Its UFO time atm. In our local press we get flooded with news from weird creatures that were seen or found somewhere in this world. To bad never something like this happens here in germany. :)