Texture Projection

Ive stumble upon this a few times on the net and not too long ago I helped freind with creating a scene using projection for live work he was doing for a company.I have yet to see the final results but I was impressed how easy and fast it was to set up.

Let me start of that this is no in-dept tutorial, I know its possible with maya that I use and 3d studio max, possibly many similar applications.
All im going to talk about the usefulness and when you should use it.

The easiest way to describe this is that you take a picture or even a painted image work, you set it to project over the scene, and the projection works very much like it does in the cinema, home theater or flashlight if you will.
Like shown in the picture below.



Then you add objects that "attracts" the projection and get all the detail that comes with it, this could be really hard and you have to put both mind and effort into this to get it good. the more primitive shapes that is in the image the better.

Buildings and houses, walls in general is good. open terrain and so on.
You most likely have to edit details like wires, things that is just too small or shallow to use. you better add that as 3d detail later.
Good thing is that the building and such dont have to be a 100% right, you can miss shape it to fit the texture and still get a results just as good.
No worries about shadows just that it gets the appropriate light

Thats pretty much how it works, now you have a scene that you can move around in, you cant stray too far off the original angle since you will see edges and textures of for an example houses being projected in the sky, this can be avoided however if you have several shaders/textures for different objects, like the sky is painted one or an complete other texture which may give some extra freedom. more work, but not that much if you need it.

My scene
I took a photo from a road trip a couple years ago I think I was in Austria. took me around two days to do with some trail and error
You can see the image below and the results in a still image. I choose this image simple cause there was a simple scene with treelines, backdrop, ground and some details. Since all the tutorials ive seen was of harder objects like corridors, mountains and houses.



If you look closely they are pretty similar and that is good thing ofcourse. Also take note that the camera is closer into the scene than the original due to that you cant be further out only further in. But the magic comes first to life when the scene turns into animation like in this clip here.



As you can its a simple camera movement and added two objects, the two planes, actually interacting with the surroundings through their shadows.
Having a walking meshwarrior wouldn't make much difference other than more animation work for it.

Its not hard to this but some planing is needed before you even start, lets get to that later.
Lets break it down now Yo.
the Scene have four key components, and that is the ground, the whole ground since that is one and the same.
the first line of trees, the second line of trees, and the backdrop being the sky and some distant mountins.

Thats four right, 1,2,3.. yeah.

Four key components.
the Ground is edited to have the ground and trees first line of trees is edit out, also the lonely tree in the middle and poles from the fence.
The first line of trees is edited somewhat, but for most part it has this alpha channel, which is for those who don't know is a black and white image that regulates the transparency of the image. meaning that I more ore less just cut out the trees with black and white.
The second line of trees is using the same texture as the ground, since its a clear line of trees its not much to talk about.
And at last the backdrop which isn't edited at all, it has the mountains like I said, but since we are not going much upwards with the camer there was no reason to edit that out, even though I could.

a Scene from an other angle below.



Good overview how the scene is built, and also a good example what you cant do with it when it comes to where from you shoot the scene.
We have some details that we need to talk about, being the lonely the tree and fence poles. Those like I said was edited out and the tree is texture that is using a alpha channel to regulate its transparency like the first tree line did.
and the poles for the fence is just 3d primitives added with a basic texture to fit in. they are using a shadows that falls on the ground to and some extra realism into the scene, and they are one of those details that are need to be done afterwards. If this was a city with lots of little things that "poked" out in the air and thing that is hanging around all those would have to be edited out from the original added later.

Adding bump maps would surely higher the experience but I didn't have to think about that since there is no obvious place to add that.



Here is a better view of the different components in the scene, only three since the second tree line and the ground is the same.
I didnt bother changing color for the lonely tree and the other details but you can see where they are and how simple the scene really is.


a Wire to even more see how its built, this is what I look that while working with it getting the 3D lines to fallow the lines the photo.

..and last, the final results.



any feedback or quistions about can be sent either to my email TruB@Redward.org or the comments below.

/TruB