Exporting to Your Animation Package

Exporting to Your Animation Package

Once you are happy with the object paths and tracker positions, use the Export menu items to save your scene.

The following options are currently available (note that this list is constantly being expanded; check the web site):

·        3ds max 4 or later (Maxscript). Should be usable for 3D Studio MAX 3 as well. Separate versions for 3dsmax 5 and earlier, and 3dsmax 6 and later.

·        After Effects (via a special maya file)

·        Bentley Microstation

·        Blender

·        Carrara

·        Cinema 4D (via Lightwave scene)

·        Combustion

·        ElectricImage (less integrated due to EI import limitations)

·        FLAIR motion control cameras (Mark Roberts Motion Control)

·        Flame (3-D)

·        Fusion 5

·        Hash Animation:Master. Hash 2001 or later.

·        Houdini

·        Inferno 3-D Scene.

·        Lightwave LWS. Use for Lightwave, Cinema 4D

·        Maya scene file

·        Mistika

·        Motion – 2-D

·        Nuke (D2 Software, subsidiary of Digital Domain)

·        Particle Illusion

·        Poser

·        Realsoft 3D

·        Shake (several 2-D/2.5-D plus Maya for 3-D scenes)

·        SoftImage XSI, via a dotXSI file

·        Toxik

·        trueSpace

·        Vue 5 and 6 Infinite

·        VIZ (via 3ds Max scene)

SynthEyes offers a scripting language, SIZZLE™, that makes it easy to modify the exported files, or even add your own export type. See the separate SIZZLE User Manual for more information. New export types are being added all the time, check the export list in SynthEyes and the support site for the latest packages or beta versions of forthcoming exporters.

General Procedures

You should already have saved the scene as a SynthEyes file before exporting. Select the appropriate export from the list in the File/Exports area. SynthEyes keeps a list of the last 3 exporters used on the top level of the File menu as well.

Hint: SynthEyes has many exports. To simplify the list, clickScript/System Script Folder, create a new folder “Unused” in it, and move all the scripts for applications you do not use into that folder. You will have to repeat this process when you later install new builds, however.

There is also an export-again option, which repeats the last export performed by this particular scene file, with the most-recently-used export options, without bring up the export-options dialog again to save time for repeated exports.

When you export, SynthEyes uses the file name, with the appropriate file extension, as the initial file name. By default, the exported file will be placed in a default export folder (as set using the preferences dialog).

In most cases, you can either open the exported file directly, or if it is a script, run the script from your animation package. For your convenience, SynthEyes puts the exported file name onto the clipboard, where you can paste it (via control-V or command-V) into the open-file dialog of your application, if you want. (You can disable this from the preferences panel if you want.)

Note that the detailed capabilities of each exporter can vary somewhat. Some scripts offer popup export-control dialogs when they start, or small internal settings at the beginning of each Sizzle script. For example, 3ds max does not offer a way to set the units from a script before version 6 and the render settings are different, so there slightly different versions for 3dsmax 5 and 6+. Settings in the Maya script control the re-mapping of the file name to make it more suitable for Maya on Linux machines. If you edit the scripts, using a text editor such as Windows’ Notepad, you may want to write down any changes as they must be re-applied to subsequent upgraded versions.

Be aware that not all packages support all frame rates. Sometimes a package may interpret a rate such as 23.98 as 24 fps, causing mismatches in timing later in the shot. Or one package may produce 29.96 vs 29.97 in another. Handle image sequences and use frame counts rather than AVIs, QTs, frame times, or drop-frame time codes wherever possible.

TheCoordinate System control panel offers an Exportable checkbox that can be set for each tracker. By default, all trackers will be exported, but in some cases, especially for compositors, it may be more convenient to export only a few of the trackers. In this case, select the trackers you wish to export, hit control-I to invert the selection, then turn off the checkbox. Note that particular export scripts can choose to ignore this checkbox.

Setting the Units of an Export

SynthEyes uses generic units: a value of 10 might mean 10 feet, 10 meters, 10 miles, 10 parsecs—whatever you want. It does not matter to SynthEyes. This works because match-moving never depends on the overall scale of the scene.

SynthEyes generally tries to export the same way as well—sending its numbers directly as-is to the selected animation or compositing package.

However, some software packages use an absolute measurement system where, for instance, Lightwave requires that coordinates in a scene file always be in meters. If you want something else inside Lightwave, it will automatically convert the values.

For such software, SynthEyes needs to know what units you consider yourself to be using within SynthEyes. It doesn’t care, but it needs to tell the downstream package the right thing, or pre-scale the values to match your intention.

To set the SynthEyes units selection, use the Units setting on the SynthEyes preferences panel. Changing this setting will not change any numbers within SynthEyes; it will only affect certain exports.

The exports affected by the units setting are currently these:

·        After Effects (3-D)

·        Hash Animation Master

·        Lightwave

·        3ds max

·        Maya

·        Poser

Before exporting to one of these packages, you should verify your units setting. Alternatively, if you observe that your imported scene has different values than in SynthEyes, you should check the units setting in SynthEyes.

Hint: if you will be exporting to acompositing package, they often measure everything, including 3-D coordinates, in terms of pixels, not inches, meters, etc. Be sure to pick sizes for the scene that will work well in pixels. While you might scale a scene for an actor 2m tall, if you export to a compositor and the actor is two pixels tall that will rarely make sense.

Image Sequences

Different software packages have different conventions and requirements regarding the numbering of image sequences: whether they start at 0 or 1, whether there are leading zeroes in the image number, and whether they handle sequences that start at other numbers flexibly.

For example, if you have a shot that originally had frames img1.tif-img456.tif, but you are using only images img100.tif-img150.tif of it, SynthEyes will normally consider it as a 51 frame shot, starting with frame 0 (img100.tif) or, withFirst frame is 1preference on, as frame 1 at img100.tif.

Other software sometimes requires that their frame numbers match the file number, so img100.tif must always be frame 100, no matter what frame# they normally start at.

SynthEyes gives you the option to pad the beginning of IFLs with extra copies of the first frame, so that the SynthEyes frame number matches the image frame number, by turning on the Match frame#'s preference. While this sounds simple, it will cause trouble for many of the exports. It is especially a problem if you do not have the unused frames, as is often the case.

By being aware of these differences, you will be able to recognize when your particular situation requires an adjustment to the settings—typically when there is a shift between the camera path animation and the imagery.

Generic 2-D Tracker Exporters

There are a number of similar exporters that all output 2-D tracker paths to various compositing packages. Why 2-D, you protest? For starters, SynthEyes tracking capabilities can be faster and more accurate. But even more interestingly, you can use the 2-D export scripts to achieve some effects you could not with the compositing package alone.

For image stabilizing applications, the 2-D export scripts will average together all the selected trackers within SynthEyes, to produce a synthetic very stable tracker.

For corner-pinning applications, you can have SynthEyes output not the 2-D tracker location, but the re-projected location of the solved 3-D point. This location can not only be smoother, but continues to be valideven if the tracker goes off-screen. So suppose you need to insert a painting into an ornate picture-frame using corner pinning, but one corner goes off-screen during part of the shot. By outputting the re-projected 3-D point (Use solved 3-D points checkbox), the corner pin can be applied over the entire shot without having to guess any of the path.

Taking this idea one step further, you can create an “extra” point in 3-D in SynthEyes. Its re-projected 2-D position will be averaged with any selected trackers; if there are none, its position will be output directly. So you can do a four-corner pin even if one of the corners is completely blocked or off-screen.

By repeating this process several times, you can create any number of synthetic trackers, doing a four-corner insert anywhere in the image, even where there are no trackable features. Of course, you could do this with using a 3-D compositing environment, but that might not be simplest.

At present, there are compatible 2-D exporters for AfterEffects, Digital Fusion, Discreet (Combustion/Inferno/Flame), Particle Illusion, and Shake. Note that you will need to import the tracker data file (produced by the correct SynthEyes exporter) into a particular existing tracker in your compositing package.

There is also a 2-D exporter that exports all tracker paths into a single file, with a variety of options to change frame numbers and u/v coordinates. A similar importer can read the same file format back in. Consequently, you can use the pair to achieve a variety of effects within SynthEyes, including transferring trackers from SynthEyes file to SynthEyes file, as described in the section onMerging Files and Tracks. This format can also be imported by Fusion.

Generic 3-D Exporters

There are several 3-D exports that produce plain text files. You can use them for any software SynthEyes don’t already support, for example, non-visual-effects software. You can also use them as a way to manipulate data with little shell, AWK, or Perl scripts, for example.

Importantly, you can also use them as a way to transfer data between SynthEyes scene files, for example, to compute some tracker locations to be used by a number of shots. There are several ways to do this, see the section onMerging Files and Tracks.

The generic exports are Camera/Object Path for a path, Plain Trackers for the 3-D coordinates of trackers and helper points, and corresponding importers. You can import 3-D locations to create either helper points, or trackers. This latter option is useful to bring in surveyed coordinates for tracking.

After Effects 3-D Procedure

1.   Export to After Effects in SynthEyes to produce a (special) .ma file.

2.   In After Effects, do a File/Import File

3.   Change "Files of Type" to All File Formats

4.   Select the .ma file

5.   Double-click the Square-whatever composition

6.   Re-import the original footage

7.   Click File/Interpret Footage/Main and be sure to check the frame rate and pixel aspect.

8.   Rewind to the beginning of the shot

9.   Drag the re-imported footage from the project window into the timeline as the first layer

10.Tracker nulls have a corner at the active point, instead of being centered on the active point as in SynthEyes.

After Effects 2-D Procedure

1.   Select one or more trackers to be exported.

2.   Export using the After Effects 2-D Clipboard. You can select either the 2-D tracking data, or the 3-D position of tracker re-projected to 2-D.

3.   Open the text file produced by the export

4.   In the text editor, select all the text, using control-A or command-A.

5.   Copy the text to the clipboard with control-C or command-C.

6.   In After Effects, select a null to receive the path.

7.   Paste the path into it with control-V or command-V.

Bentley MicroStation

You can exporter to Bentley's Microstation V8 XM Edition by following these directions.

Exporting from SynthEyes

1. MicroStation requires that animated backgrounds consist of a consecutive sequence of numbered images, such as JPEG or Targa images. If necessary, the Preview Movie capability in SynthEyes's Perspective window can be used to convert AVIs or MOVs to image sequences.
2. Perform tracking, solving, and coordinate system alignment in SynthEyes. (Exporting coordinates from MicroStation into SynthEyes may be helpful)
3. File/Export/Bentley MicroStation to produce a MicroStation Animation (.MSA) file. Save the file where it can be conveniently accessed from MicroStation. The export parameters are listed below.

SynthEyes/MicroStation Export Parameters:

Target view number. The view number inside MicroStation to be animated by this MSA file (usually 2)

Scaling. This is from MicroStation's Settings/DGN File Settings/Working Units, in the Advanced subsection: the resolution. By default, it is listed as 10000 per distance meter, but if you have changed it for your DGN file, you must have the same value here.

Relative near-clip. Controls the MicroStation near clipping-plane distance. It is a “relative” value, because it is multiplied by the SynthEyes world size setting. Objects closer than this to the camera will not be displayed in MicroStation.

Relative view-size.Another option to adjust as needed if everything is disappearing from view in MicroStation.

Relative far-clip. Controls the MicroStation far clipping-plane distance. It is a “relative” value, because it is multiplied by the SynthEyes world size setting. Objects farther than this from the camera will not be displayed in MicroStation.

Importing into MicroStation

1. Open your existing 3-D DGN file. Or, create a new one, typically based on seed3d.dgn
2. Open the MicroStation Animation Producer from Utilities/Render/Animation
3. File/Import .MSA the .msa file written by the SynthEyes exporter.
4. Set the View Size correctly—this isrequiredto get a correct camera match.
   1. Settings/Rendering/View Size
   2. Select the correct view # (typically 2)
   3. Turn off Proportional Resize
   4. Set X and Y sizes as follows. Multiply the height(Y) of your image, in pixels, by the aspect ratio (usually 4:3 for standard video or 16:9 for HD) to get the width(X) value. For example, if your source images are 720x480 with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the width is 480*4/3 = 640, so set the image size to X=640 and Y=480, either directly on the panel or using the “Standard” drop-down menu. This process prevents horizontal (aspect-ratio) distortion in your image.
   5. Hit Apply
   6. Turn Proportional Resize back on
   7. Close the view size tool
5. On the View Attributes panel, turn on the Background checkbox.
6. Bring up the Animation toolbar (Tools/Visualization/Animation) and select the Animation Preview tool. You can dock it at the bottom of MicroStation if you like.
7. If you scrub the current time on the Animation Preview, you’ll move through your shot imagery, with synchronized camera motion. Unless you have some 3-D objects in the scene, you won’t really be able to see the camera motion, however.
8. If desired, use the Tools/3-D Main/3-D Primitives toolbar to create some test objects (as you probably did in SynthEyes).
9. To see the camera cone of the camera imported from SynthEyes, bring up Tools/Visualization/Rendering, and select the Define Camera tool. Select the view with the SynthEyes camera track as the active view in the Define Camera tool, and turn on the Display View Cone checkbox.

Transferring 3-D Coordinates

If you would like to use within MicroStation the 3-D positions of the trackers, as computed by SynthEyes, you can bring them into MicroStation as follows.

1. You have the option of exporting only a subset of points from SynthEyes to MicroStation. All trackers are exported by default; turn off the Exportable checkbox on the coordinate system panel for those you don’t wish to export. You may find it convenient to select the ones you want, then Edit/Invert Selection, then turn off the box.
2. In SynthEyes, File/Export/Plain Trackers with Set Names=none, Scale=1, Coordinate System=Z Up. This export produces a .txt file listing all the XYZ tracker coordinates.
3. In MicroStation, bring up the Tools/Annotation/XYZ Text toolbar.
4. Click the Import Coordinates tool. Select the .txt file exported from SynthEyes in Step 1. Set Import=Point Element, Order=X Y Z, View=2 (or whichever you are using).

Transferring Meshes

SynthEyes uses two types of meshes to help align and check camera matches: mesh primitives, such as spheres, cubes, etc; and tracker meshes, built from the computed 3-D tracker locations. The tracker meshes can be used to model irregular areas, such as a contoured job site into which a model will be inserted. Both types of models can be transferred as follows:

1. In SynthEyes, select the mesh to be exported, by clicking on it or selecting it from the list on the 3-D panel.
2. Select the File/Export/STL Stereolithography export, and save the mesh to a file.
3. In MicroStation, select File/Import STL and select the file written in step 2. You can use the default settings.
4. Meshes will be placed in MicroStation at the same location as in SynthEyes.
5. You can bring up its Element/Information and assign it a material.

To Record the Animation

1. Select the Record tool on the Animation toolbar (Tools/Visualization/Animation)
2. Important: Be sure the correct (square pixels) output image size is selected, the same one as the viewport size. For example, if your input is 4:3 720x480 DV footage, youMUSTselect640x480output to achieve 4:3 with square pixels (ie 640/480 = 4/3). MicroStation always outputs square pixels. You can output images with any overall aspect you wish, as long as the pixels are square (pixelaspect ratio is 1.0). Note that HD images already have square pixels.
3. Don’t clobber your input images! Be sure to select a different location for your output footage than your input.

Blender Directions

Blender has a tendency to change around frequently, so the details of these directions might best be viewed more as a guide than the last word.

When working with image sequences and blender, it will be a good idea to ensure that the overall frame number is the same as the number in the image file name. Although you can adjust the offset, Blender incorrectly eliminates a frame number of zero.

1.   In SynthEyes, export to Blender (Python)

2.   Start Blender

3.   Delete the default cube and light

4.   Change one of the views to the blender Text Editor

5.   In the text editor, open the blender script you exported in step 1.

6.   Hit ALT-P to run the script

7.   Select the camera (usually Camera01) in the 3-D Viewport

8.   In a 3-D view, select Camera on the View menu to look through the imported, animated, SynthEyes camera

9.   Select View/Background image

10.Click Use Background Image

11.Select your image sequence or movie from the selection list.

12.Adjust the background image settings to match your image. Make sure the shot length is adequate, and that Auto Refresh is on. If the images and animation do not seem to be synced correctly, you probably have to adjust the offset.

13.Decrease the “blend” value to zero, or you can go without the background, and set up compositing within blender.

14.On the View Properties dialog, you might wish to turn off Relationship Lines to reduce clutter.

15.Use a Timeline view to scrub through the shot.

Cinema 4D Procedure

1.   Export from SynthEyes in Lightwave Scene format (.lws) — see below.

2.   Start C4D, open the .lws file

3.   From the Objects menu, add a Background

4.   Create a new Texture with File/New down below.

5.   At right, click on “…” next to the file name for texture.

6.   Select your source file.

7.   Click on the right-facing triangle button next to the file name, select Edit.

8.   Select the Animation panel

9.   Click the Calculate button at the bottom.

10.Drag the new texture from the texture editor onto the “Background” on the object list. Background now appears in the viewport.

DotXSI Procedure

1.   In SynthEyes, after completing tracking, do File/Export/dotXSI to create a .xsi file somewhere.

2.   Start Softimage, or do a File/New.

3.   File/Import/dotXSI...  of the new .xsi file from SynthEyes. The options may vary with the XSI version, but you want to import everything.

4.   Set the camera to Scene1.Camera01 (or whatever you called it in SynthEyes).

5.   Open the camera properties.

6.   In the camera rotoscopy section, select New from Source and then the source shot.

7.   Make sure “Set Pixel Ratio to 1.0” is on.

8.   Set “Use…” pixel ratio to “Camera Pixel Ratio” (should be the default)

9.   In the Camera section, make sure that Field of View is set to Horizontal.

10.Make sure that the Pixel Aspect Ratio is correct. In SynthEyes, select Shot/Edit Shot to see the pixel aspect ratio. Make sure that XSI has the exact same value: 0.9 isnota substitute for 0.889, so fix it! Back story: XSI does not have a setting for 720x480 DV, and 720x486 D1 causes errors!

11.Close the camera properties page.

12.On the display mode control (Wireframe, etc), turn on Rotoscope.

ElectricImage

The ElectricImage importer relies on a somewhat higher level of user activity than normal, in the absence of a scripting language for EI. You can export either a camera or object path, and its associated trackers.

1.   After you have completed tracking in SynthEyes, select the camera/object you wish to export from the Shots menu, then select File/Export/Electric Image. SynthEyes will produce two files, an .obm file containing the trajectory, and an .obj file containing geometry marking the trackers.

2.   In ElectricImage, make sure you have a camera/object that matches the name used in SynthEyes. Create new cameras/objects as required. If you have Camera01 in SynthEyes, your camera should be "Camera 1" in EI. The zero is removed automatically by the SynthEyes exporter.

3.   Go to the Animation pull-down menu and select the "Import Motion" option.

4.   In the open dialog box, select "All Files" from the Enable pop-up menu, so that the .obm file will be visible.

5.   Navigate to, and select, the .obm file produced by SynthEyes. This will bring up the ElectricImage motion import dialog box which allows you to override values for position, rotation, etc.

Normally, you will ignore all these options as it is simpler to parent the camera/object to an effector later. The only value you might want to change is the "start time" to offset when the camera move begins. Click OK and you will get a warning dialog about the frame range.

This is a benign warning that sets the "range of frames" rendering option to match the length of the incoming camera data. Hitting cancel will abort the operation, so hit OK and the motion data will be applied to the camera.

6.   Select "Import Object" from the Object pull-down menu.

7.   Enable "All Files" in the pop-up menu.

8.   Select the .obj file produced by SynthEyes.

9.   Create a hierarchy by selecting one tracker as the parent, or bringing in all trackers as separate objects.

10.If you are exporting an object path, parent the tracker object to the object holding the path.

Fusion 5

There are several Fusion-compatible exporters. The main exporter is the Fusion 5 composition export, which can be opened directly in Fusion.

The Tracker 2-D Paths export can write all the exportable trackers to a text file, which can then be read in Fusion with the Import SynthEyes Trackers script and assigned to any Point-type input on a node. Select a node and start the Import script from its right-click menu. At present, it appears that you should animate the desired control before importing, then tell the script to proceed anyway when it notices that the control is already animated.

There is also a generic 2-D path exporter for Fusion.

Houdini Instructions:

1.   File/New unless you are addding to your existing scene.

2.   Open the script Textport

3.   Typesource "c:/shots/scenes/flyover.cmd"or equivalent.

4.   Change back from COPs to OBJs.

Lightwave

The Lightwave exporter produces a lightwave scene file (.lws) with several options, one of them crucial to maintaining proper synchronization.

As mentioned earlier, Lightwave requires a units setting when exporting from SynthEyes. The SynthEyes numbers are unitless: by changing the units setting in the lightwave exporter as you export, you can make that 24 in SynthEyes mean 24 inches, 24 feet, 24 meters, etc. This is different than in Lightwave, where changing the units from 24 inches would yield 2 feet, 0.61 meters, etc. This is the main setting that you may want to change from scene to scene.

Lightwave has an obscure preferences-like setting on its Compositing panel (on the Windows menu) named “Synchronize Image to Frame.” The available options are zero or one. Selecting one shifts the imagery one frame later in time, and this is the Lightwave default. However, for SynthEyes, a setting of zero will generally be more useful (unless the SynthEyes preferenceFirst Frame is 1is turned on). The Lightwave exporter from SynthEyes allows you to select either 0 or 1. We recommend selecting zero, and adjusting Lightwave to match. You will only have to do this once, Lightwave remembers it subsequently. In all cases, you must have a matching value on the exporter UI and in Lightwave, or you will cause a subtle velocity-dependent error in your camera matches in Lightwave that will drive you nuts until you fix the setting.

The exporter also has a checkbox for using DirectShow. This checkbox applies only for AVIs, and should be on for most AVIs that contain advanced codecs such as DV or HD. If an AVI uses an older codec and is not opened automatically within Lightwave, export again with this checkbox turned off.

Nuke

The nuke exporter produces a nuke file you can open directly. The pop-up parameter panel lets you indicate if you have a slate frame at the start of the shot, or select renderable or non-rendering tracker marks. The renderable marks are better for tracking, the non-rendering marks better for adding objects within Nuke's 3-D view.

Poser

Poser struggles a little to be able to handle a match-moved camera, so the process is a bit involved. Hopefully Curious Labs will improve the situation in further releases.

The shot must have square pixels to be used properly by Poser; it doesn't understand pixel aspect ratios. So if you have a 720x480 DV source, say, you need to resample it in SynthEyes, AfterEffects or something to 640x480. Also, the shot has to have a frame rate of exactly 30 fps. This is a drag since normal video is 29.97 fps, and Poser thinks it is 29.00 fps, and trouble ensues.  One way to get the frame rate conversion without actually mucking up any of the frames is to store the shot out as a frame sequence, then read it back in to your favorite tool as a 30 fps sequence. Then you can save the 640x480 or other square-pixel size.

Note that you can start with a nice 720x480 29.97 DV shot, track it in SynthEyes, convert it as above for Poser, do your poser animation, render a sequence out of Poser, then composite it back into the original 720x480.

One other thing you need to establish at this time---exactly how many frames there are in your shot. If the shot ranges are 0 to 100, there are 101; from 10 to 223, there are 214.

1.   After completing tracking in SynthEyes, export using the Poser Python exporter.

2.   Start Poser.

3.   Set the number of frames of animation, at bottom center of the Poser interface, to the correct number of frames. It is essential that you do this now, before reading the python script

4.   File/Run Python Script on the python script output from SynthEyes.

5.   The Poser Dolly camera will be selected and have the SynthEyes camera animation on it. There are little objects for each tracker, and also SynthEyes boxes, cones, etc are brought over into Poser.

Open Question: How to render out of Poser with the animated movie background. The best approach appears to be to render against black with an alpha channel, then composite over the original shot externally.

Shake

SynthEyes offers three specific exporters for Shake, plus one generic one:

1.   MatchMove Node.

2.   Tracker Node

3.   Tracking File format

4.   3-D Export via the “AfterFX via .ma” or Maya ASCII exports.

The first two formats (Sizzle export scripts) produce shake scripts (.shk files); the third format is a text file. The fourth option produces Maya scene files that Shake reads and builds into a scene using its 3-D camera.

We’ll start with the simplest, the tracking file format. Select one tracker and export with the Shake Tracking File Format, and you will have a track that can be loaded into a Shake tracker using the load option. You can use this to bring a track from SynthEyes into existing Shake tracking setups.

Building on this basis, #2, Tracker Node, exports one or more selected trackers from SynthEyes to create a single Tracker Node within Shake. There are some fine points to this. First, you will be asked whether you want to export the solved 3-D positions, or the tracked 2-D positions. These values are similar, but not the same. If you have a 3-D solution in SynthEyes, you can select the solved 3-D positions, and the export will be the “ideal” tracked (predicted) coordinates, with less jitter than the plain 2-D coordinates.

Also, since you might be exporting from a PC to a Mac or Linux machine, the image source file(s) may be named differently: perhaps X:\shots1\shot1_#.tga on the PC, and //macmachine/Users/tom/shots/shot1_#.tga on the PC. The Shake export script's dialog box has two fields, PC Drive and Mac Drive, that you can set to automatically translate the PC file name into the Mac file name, so that the Shake script will work immediately. In this example, you would set PC Drive to “X:\\” and Mac Drive to “//macmachine/Users/tom/”.

Finally, the MatchMove node exporter looks not for trackers to export, but for SynthEyes planes! Each plane (created from the 3-D panel) is exported to Shake by creating four artificial trackers (in Shake) at the corners of the plane. The matchmove export lets you insert a layer at any arbitrary position within the 3-D environment calculated by SynthEyes. For example, you can insert a matte painting into a scene at a location where there is nothing to track. You can use a collection of planes, positioned in SynthEyes, to obtain much of the effect of a 3-D camera. The matchmove node export also provides PC to Mac/Linux file name translation.

trueSpace Directions:

Warning: trueSpace has sometimes had problems executing the exported script correctly. Hopefully Caligari will fix this soon.

1.   In SynthEyes, export to trueSpace Python.

2.   Open trueSpace.

3.   Right-click the Play button in the trueSpace animation controls.

4.   Set the correct BaseRate/PlayRate in the animation parameters to match your source shot.

5.   Open the Script Editor.

6.   From inside the Script Editor, Open/Assign the python script you created within SynthEyes.

7.   Click Play (Time On) in the Script Manager.

8.   When the Play button turns off, close the ScriptManager.

9.   Open the Object Info panel.

10.Verify that the SynthEyes camera is selected (usually Camera01).

11.Change the Perspective view to be View from Object.

12.Select the Camera01Screen.

13.Open the Material Editor (paint pallete).

14.Right click on Color shaders button.

15.Click on (Caligari) texture map, sending it to the Material Editor color shader.

16.Open the subchannels of the Material Editor (Color, Bump, Reflectance).

17.On the Color channel of the Material Editor, right click on the "Get Texture Map" button and select your source shot.

18.Check the Anim box.

19.Click the Paint Object button on the Material Editor.

20.Click on File/Display Options and change the texture resolution to 512x512.

21.You may want to set up a render background to overlay animated objects on the background, or you can use an external compositing program. Make the Camera01Screen object invisible before rendering.

22.In trueSpace, you need to pay special attention to get the video playback synchronized with rest of the animation, and to get the render aspect ratio to match the original. For example, you must add the texture map while you are at frame zero, and you should set the pixel aspect ratio to match the original (SynthEyes's shot panel will tell you what it is).

Vue 5 Infinite

The export to Vue Infinite requires a fair number of manual steps pending further Vue enhancements. But with a little practice, they should only take a minute or two.

1.   Export from SynthEyes using the Vue 5 Infinite setting. The options can be left at their default settings unless desired. You can save the python script produced into any convenient location.

2.   Start Vue Infinite or do a File/New in it.

3.   Select the Main Camera

4.   On its properties, turn OFF "Always keep level"

5.   Go to the animation menu, turn ON the auto-keyframe option.

6.   Select the Python/Run python script menu item, select the script exported from SynthEyes, and run it.

7.   In the main camera view, select the "Camera01 Screen" object (or the equivalent if the SynthEyes camera was renamed)

8.   In the material preview, right-click, select Edit Material.

9.   The material editor appears, select Advanced Material Editor if not already.

10.Change the material name to flyover or whatever the image shot name is.

11.Select the Colors tab.

12.Select "Mapped picture"

13.Click the left-arrow "Load" icon under the black bitmap preview area

14.In the "Please select a picture to load" dialog, click the Browse File icon at the bottom --- a left arrow superimposed on a folder 

15.Select your image file in the Open Files dialog. If it is an image sequence, select the first image, then shift-select the last.

16.On the material editor, under the bitmap preview area, click the clap-board animation icon to bring up the Animated Texture Options dialog

17.Set the frame rate to the correct value.

18.Turn on "Mirror Y"

19.Hit OK on the Animated Texture dialog

20.On the drop-down at top right of the Advanced Material Editor, select a Mapping of Object- Parametric

21.Turn off "Cast shadows" and "Receive shadows"

22.Back down below, click the Highlights tab

23.Turn Highlight global intensity down to zero.

24.Click on the Effects tab

25.Turn Diffuse down to zero

26.Click the Ambient data-entry field and enter 400

27.Hit OK to close the Advanced Material Editor

28.Select the Animation/Display Timeline menu item (or hit F11)

29.If this is the first time you have imported from SynthEyes to Vue Infinite, you must perform the following steps:

a.   Select File/Options menu item.

b.   Click the Display Options tab

c.   Turn off "Clip objects under first horizontal plane in main view only", otherwise you will not be able to see the background image.

d.   Turn off "Clip objects under first horizontal plane (ground / water)

e.   Turn off "Stop camera going below clipping plane (ground / water)" if needed by your camera motion.

f.    Hit OK

30.Delete the "Ground" object

31.If you are importing lights from SynthEyes, you can delete the Sun Light as well, otherwise, spin the Sun Light around to point at the camera screen, so that the image can be seen in the preview window.

32.You may have to move the time bar before the image appears. Vue Infinite only shows the first image of the sequence, so you can verify alignment at frame zero.

33.You will later want to disable the rendering of the trackers, or delete them outright.

34.Depending on what you are doing, you may ultimately wish to delete or disable the camera screen as well, for example, if you will composite an actor in front of your Vue Infinite landscape.

35.The import is complete; you can start working in Vue Infinite. You should make probably save a copy of the main camera settings so that you can have a scratch camera available as you prepare the scene in Vue Infinite.

Vue 6 Infinite

1. Export from SynthEyes using the Vue 6 Infinite option, producing a maxscript file.
2. Import the maxscript file in Vue 6 Infinite
3. Adjust the aspect ratio of the backdrop to the correct overall aspect ratio for your shot. This is important since Vue assumes square pixels, and if they aren’t (for all DV, say), the camera match will be off badly