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Part 2 - LightingPart 3 - Detailing01:13 - tracking the camera (ctrl+click to add tracking points)08:15 - keying the footage10:45 - masking shenanigans12:28 - exporting pre-keyed image sequence14:20 - setting up pre-keyed footage in 3d space20:30 - adding a new "free" camera24:34 - general extrusion tomfooleryHaha! Yeah alright- let's do it! So, on my last post, a few people asked for a tutorial showing how to do something like the boat shot at the beginning start-to-finish, "the whole thing" so this is my attempt at that. It's not a tutorial as much as it's just me talking through making a shot.I don't expect anyone to really watch the whole thing, but I'll always put the times above for when I do different things, so you can just watch the parts you're curious about.The boat shot took like 15-30 hours, so the thought of doing a full tutorial for that was pretty intimidating (and also confusing- is it a tut for that shot specifically, or just... "shots", you know?)- but this shot's a bit more straightforward while still dealing with all of the same stuff (moreso, actually, since this one incorporates a live action element).Making a shot can kind of be broken into two parts. 1.) creating the assets, and 2.) assembling them so they look good (composition/lighting/all that). Creating the assets usually involves the same steps over and over (model some stuff, put a texture on it, maybe a bump/roughness map), so it can be kind of compressed.  Part 2 is a bit more ambiguous, since it can come down to more overt personal preference. Honestly, most of composition is just me looking at the screen in silence trying to figure out why I suddenly hate it.  This series will probably focus more on number 2, since that's the part I've covered the least in the past.Let's see how it goes! 

Files

Making A Shot - pt 1: tracking/masking/setup

01:13 - tracking the camera (ctrl+click to add tracking points) 08:15 - keying the footage 10:45 - masking shenanigans 12:28 - exporting pre-keyed image sequence 14:20 - setting up pre-keyed footage in 3d space 20:30 - adding a new "free" camera 24:34 - general extrusion tomfoolery

Comments

WhaSukGo

At 7:26, how did he manage to adjust the camera so that the cube aligns perfectly with the table? My cube goes off when I play the video ..

Nahuel

Hi Ian! Impressive post! But I need help! I track the footage, key it ok, but when importing the exr to mesh plane I cannot get it to stick to the 3D floor. Please help!

Orkun Işıtmak

was waiting for this my entire life thanks man!

Robert Gyurko

oh man better call saul is great!

IanHubert

LOVING it! We also watched "The Great", which was really good. Quarantine's been a nice impetus to start watching more shows :D

Robert Gyurko

My logic exactly. Haven’t heard of “the great” but I’ll check it out!

Per Kofod Hansen

Pretty awesome! But would a stationary camera not had been a bit easier?

Ry Ken

Wow 😳 this is awesome 😎

JØRGEN WETAAS BULL

Jess, so cool! Want to get into this workflow! Btw " i know this much is true" on HBO, is the best drama series I have seen in a few years. Mark ruffalo is just amazing in it.

Max

another great video! Thanks! It is very useful and interesting to watch how you work

pixlfuckr

Doesn't working at scale also affect lighting and rendering? Not sure if this goes for Eevee. Anyway, I would love to hear about your lighting process.

Kennisoan

Thanks! Just what I needed!

Gabriel Meilikhov

Yessss, more of that please! I've began adopting a similar workflow inspired by your previuse work. Here's my draft so far: https://youtu.be/Fmwh6zZkmE0 You may recognize the steam elements.

keith hamilton

that was epic to watch you like what ever you wanted to design in your head you can produce and then play with effortlessly it was magic to watch you I can do it in 2d but 3d is another story ,haha looking forward to part 2

Gamba (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 Amazing, but what happen if you want to add another character en the same scene ? or more?another one with another camera? they must have to similar camera movent? i can imagen that for lots of people in a scene like, this tripod shoot will be the best... coexist videos with different perspective and paralax could work??
2020-05-25 12:46

max pirrit

amazing, would love to see the full process (texturing, building the world, lighting etc) really really helpful

Patrick Lever

Takes me 3 days to make a room and he makes a room and adds live video in it all in 20 minutes while singing the theme song from cheers WOW true Jedi here's my 7$ just EPIC 🤩🙏🏾#KEEPFILMING

Mike L. Taylor

This is great!!! Would love to see some tips on combining multiple locked off clips and adding and exporting the camera moves. I’d like to build my scenes in Blender but be able to composite and color correct the footage and the 3D as separate elements after in Ae. Match grain and add more elements etc. Thanks for this Ian. You’re a real hero.

Chris Ak

Great all the way through! I love how you're able to put a scene together like you're sketching in a note book. Question Ian: What do the specs on your PC look like?

Mark Miller

Wow, parenting masks suddenly makes masking in Blender super interesting. Thanks! For the record, I did watch the whole thing, and I think alot of folks will.

Zeke Faust

FYI for anyone tracking in Blender, if you plan on refining those Kappa 1 and 2 distortion parameters you need a LOT of points, and you need them all around the screen especially near the edges! 8 trackers is considered the minimum (technically the lowest is 6), but more is generally better.

Edward Cunningham

Love this! Really helps get a feel of the workflow with real footage which is why I'm here! I'm very interested in a tutorial on reprojection. Your video on YouTube about motion tracking touches on it a little bit when you reproject footage into the room you build but I can't quite wrap my head around how to use reprojection in my own projects and would love to see more examples. Thanks for the content Ian and hi from area code 2 0 6 !

Dax Blinn

Hey Ian, this is exactly what I've been looking for thanks so much! Quick question, if you are going to end up creating a virtual camera movement, would it be faster to just film everything locked off on green screen for a character like this? I understand the benefit of tracking if you want to use your original camera movement, but strictly asking for the perspective of a virtual camera

Tim Evans

Thanks heaps for this. This is exactly what I've wanted to see!

IanHubert

I'm glad it's useful! And for a virtual camera, absolutely, yeah. In this case, it's kind of nice that the footage has an original movement I can kind of echo, but in general you'd save yourself a few steps if the camera was just locked down :D.

IanHubert

Yeah!!! It's crazy convenient. And it's actually a lot more responsive than it looks in the video- I only realized after that I had the compositor open in a panel, so it was re-keying every time I changed frames, haha

IanHubert

Oh, thanks for this! I think I fairly rarely use the distortion data (as evident by my basically deleting it all straight off when I jumped into the compositor). I'd love to wrap my head around that workflow a bit more, though. I know Sean Kennedy released some really useful videos lately.

Benjamin Lacey

YES! Exactly what I need:) THanks Man!

zephirus

That's a really good question. Maybe there are some downsides of doing it that way.

IanHubert

That's a good point, yeah! Especially since blender measures in watts, if you're using real-life measurements, that could affect things. Normally I just crank the slider till I like the amount of light, so that's never really mattered, but if you're trying to emulate exact lighting conditions, that could totally be a thing. I'll be tackling lighting on this scene soon! We'll see how it goes, haha

Zeke Faust

Yeah Sean is amazing, such a great person to have in the community. We recently did a deep dive into lens distortion workflows in blender because of some crazy anamorphic footage I'm working on, and he figured all of it out and made it into one convenient node group

Zeke Faust

I think that tiny bit of parallax makes a ton of difference in integration and realism, even if you end up changing the move slightly in post you have that little bit of perspective on the footage that you couldn't get with a locked off shot

Alex Doyi

If the original camera was stationary you’d lose the perspective shift of the real elements. Things like the parallax of the front and back edge of the table would look really wrong. The only reason Ian is able to add new camera movement without it looking wrong is because the new camera movement still roughly follows the old one and is therefore able to utilize the shift captured in the original footage

Alex Doyi

I had a question about that. While you didn’t have a tracker on the corner edge of the table, would you be able to add a faux tracking point to the corner of the table geometry that you lined up yourself? That way you could parent a mask point to said corner and have a really tight mask?

gary hardesty

Great job, Ian! I have a shoot I need help with- cam on tripod/grn screen- can't get the real floor and virtual floor to line up...

Edward Cunningham

dude thanks! I never watched that video all the way through and that was a bit of what I'm looking for. I really have to play around with this!

IanHubert

Ah, I've heard that!! We should check that out next :D

IanHubert

Ooo yeah- so, oh man I have too many thoughts on that! Haha, if I had filmed someone else sitting across from him (maybe even further forward or back), I could do this same process, but just split the video plane and put the other half closer/further away, and it would all just "work" still. In this case, there's already some existing "real" camera motion burning a perspective into the footage, and the digital camera works better the closer to that original camera movement it stays. If you add another piece of footage with random camera movement to it, you'd have to split the difference when animating the digital camera. The nice thing about this process is it basically stabilizes the footage, though, so if it's just handheld without crazy perspective shift, it should work just fine)- All that to say- yeah, tripod shot would probably be easiest, yeah! This is how I went about it for the dynamo dream trailer, kind of a mix-and-match: https://youtu.be/FFJ_THGj72U

IanHubert

Ah! Yeah that's right- sorry! Let me respond to your message :D

IanHubert

Actually that made me realize I should probably make that video public. no idea why I didn't before.

IanHubert

I'm hoping to get through the whole process over the next few videos! We'll see how it goes!

George

great stuff Ian! quick Q: What camera you using these days to shoot your live footage?

Nicolas

Wouhou! Thanks for doing that Ian, you legend!!! I can’t wait for part 2!

IanHubert

An A73! I've been loving it; it's been great for greenscreen work, since it's so light sensitive I can get a fairly deep DOF to keep lots of tracking points in focus (and reduce noise :D)

gary hardesty

I am so much a Blender NOOB! Good at NukeX and others...

IanHubert

AH! That looks great! I love it!

Jeremy McCloud (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 Hi Ian. New fan here. I watched it all the way through and loved it! I’m looking forward to part two. I don’t suppose you could share the green screen footage so we can follow along with it... could you?
2020-05-26 04:20

shonal bose

"The boat shot took like 15-30 hours" believe me i would have taken weeks or probably given up.... but slowly am trying to understand the workflow and practicing it....Cant wait for part 2 ......

shonal bose

same here gary good with nuke but when you implement this work flow in blender...you are blown apart that you can do onscreen comping with 3d and 2d elements...just imagine how many nodes you need to implement in nuke to get this shot done...

akim mohideen

This is awesome, Waiting for Upcoming parts.. Also looking forward for the green screen lift tutorial. Thanks Ian

gary hardesty

Yes, exactly! I have been immersing myself into Unreal Engine, as well as Blender- a lot of new tech to learn, for sure. We are a growing, small indie film company working on our first feature, which uses 90% virtual sets and a lot of VFX. I have been working through my shot list one by one to make sure i can do everything the script calls for prior to bringing in union actors, etc. IAN- is a genius and I have been so impressed with his work (I think I should just hire him full time- then I can just sit back and watch!).

gary hardesty

I am also now waiting for---part 2... :) The biggest challenge I seem to be having is getting the real (green screen floor) and virtual floor to line up well enough, especially when the shot is a locked-down tripod shot- seems like it should be easy to match the two- but it's not. I am especially anal about the real scene and the virtual scene having all the proper foot AO/shadows to make the shoot believable when comped together (virtual floor + extracted green screen).

gary hardesty

Oops- hit send too early on my last reply. The challenge for me is: when a person is walking left to right in front of the camera, everything is OK. When the person is coming toward or walking away- wow, that is really tough! Ian talked a bit about this challenge in an earlier tut. Scaling and overall distance traveled (green screen person, VS the green screen extraction in the 3D scene). I have a ton of trouble gettting all of this to match. In other words- I adjsut scale in blender,e tc., but- seems line the real person and the virtual scene never match up- the person, as they walk away from the camera, for example, are either getting too small too soon (IE: their scale does not match the scale you set when they started their walk), or, the distance traveled by the real person, in the 3D scene, is wrong, for example, maybe they walked 4 feet, but in the scene, the walk covered the wrong amount of distance. As I said, this happens even when scale, etc. is OK at the beginning... I used the fllor, wall and scale alignment in the Blender tracking/solve system, and that seems OK...but...?

gary hardesty

Also- have set the virtual camera to match the real camera (sensor size, etc.) and even mimicked the same height, etc. as the real camera...s till problems. Corrected for lens distortion, etc... All the same stuff you's do for a similar scene in NukeX, Fusion Studio, etc.... I normally use either Syntheyes or Mocha Pro for all my tracking, but would love to do it all in Blender if i can figure out my problems in doing so.

Zach Hoy

just seeing this has made me realize how much more I'm capable of doing as a solo - keep up the inspiration

shonal bose

Oh my god same here we are a production company getting a pilot ready for a T.V show... we are shifting to unreal and blender due to post production cost....we do set dressing in clarisse ifx and comping in nuke.....but thanks to nanite and lumen things will change for the better keep me update d..on how things are going on your side...all the best for our project...

gary hardesty

That is great!!! We use basically the same kind of pipeline. We were using Houdini a lot, not trying to do all of that kind of effect in Blender. We have a 12 camera Optitrack rig that we use for Mocap, as well as for bringing our live camera into Unreal Engine... I think we can do 95% of what we require between Blender and Unreal Engine. I am not sure if I will try and comp in the above, or maybe continue to use Nuke, as I know it well.

gary hardesty

All the best for your project as well and hope you have a great time and make a few $$$ Let me know how you progress.

Tony Rizo

Thanks for this, it has really helped me take my own skills to a new level.

Kash

Hey great video thanks! I think it is better to key the green screen in another software. I personally suggest Davinci Resolve, it is free and also industry-level software. maybe you can add that in future videos.

KAVN

Hey Ian, any ETA on when we getting part 2? No pressure, especially with the whole thing goin' on

IanHubert

Oh hey yeah! Sorry about that; I'll try to get it out by the end of the day. The last week's been kind of wild. :)

Mugrapher

Thank you Ian for this , Can't wait for part 2

Kai Christensen

This is absolutely amazing. I cannot (emphasis on cannot) wait for part 2

Kai Christensen

This video accomplished more in 28 minutes than i have in my entire life

Kai Christensen

Just wanted to say that Copy Location -- Copy Rotation -- Parent to camera stabilization/normalization technique was particularly interesting to me. Spent a good twenty minutes just now trying to get my brain to have some sort of intuition for what those steps are actually doing, but I think I get it now and wow, that's very cool. Thanks for the neat trick (among all the other incredible neat tricks I've already learned)

Zachary Macintyre

Man, the technical elegance of this workflow is something else. Motion tracking, scene recreating, then normalising footage so you can redo the camera move, and then make the whole scene to fit the composition of that camera move. Awesome stuff!

Kai Christensen

I do have one question. What makes the Copy Attributes add-on different from using copy location and copy rotation constraints? After doing my own testing I can clearly see they are different, but I can't wrap my head around what exactly Copy Attributes is doing differently.

Pudding Motion

So you use blender as main software for keying?

IanHubert

Oh! Sorry I missed this- as far as I know, the copy attributes option just basically moves/rotates object B to whatever object A is doing, but they're not linked at all. If you change object A it won't affect B. With the constraint, anything you do to A will be dynamically linked to B. Does that make sense?

IanHubert

I use a lot of after effects, but mostly out of habit :D

Kai Christensen

No problem, and thanks--I suspected it was something like that! Makes more sense now. As always your content is top-notch, sir!

Pablo Estrada

thanks a lot for the tutorials im using now blender and ue4, i want to be you on vfx in ue4

Raja Cronous

file green screen...model please link download

Raja Cronous

Ok Ian tanks..Indonesia language terima kasih he he

noor hicaru

you and video copilot are the best

Boil Man

Question: I filmed a dolly shot starting with an ECU and pulling out. Obviously this is significant movement along the Y axis which poses some challenges with the parenting image to camera and moving through other objects in the scene without them all moving significantly which defeats the purpose of the track. Any work arounds to set this up in 3D viewport or will I have to do most of my comping in AE or Fusion?

simon wu

What should I do if I lit a green screen badly and it won't key? Roto?

Ozzie

Sadly yeah, at this point in modern filmmaking it's typically more common to rotoscope green screen footage rather than keying

JJ House

Hi Ian, when I try to import the image sequence as a plane, my texture is showing up pink. To the best of my knowledge I followed along directly with your workflow. Any idea what may be happening on my end?