The Shoot

This past weekend I finished the video shoot with The Moon Baby. Over the course of three and a half hours, we shot over 80 clips. A key part of the project was to build a portrait rig that would allow the subject to register her face at the beginning of every clip. The first prototype of this rig consisted of a two way mirror that had registration marks on it. The mirror prototype proved to be inaccurate.

The second prototype, which we used for the shoot, relied on a direct video feed from the video camera, a projector and a projection surface with a hole cut out for the camera to look through.

At the center of this rig was a max/msp/jitter patch that overlayed a live feed from the video camera on top of a still “register image”. This way, the subject was able to see her face as the camera saw it, and line up her eyes, nose, mouth and makeup with a constant still image. See an image of the patch below:

The patch relied on Blair Neal’s Canon2Syphon application, which pulls video from the Canon dslr’s usb cable and places it into a syphon stream.  That stream is then picked up by the max/msp/jitter patch.

Here is a diagram of the entire projection rig:

Soon into the shoot, we realized a flaw with the system: the Canon camera isn’t able to record video to its CF card while its video feed is being sent to the computer.  As a result, we had to unplug the camera after the subject registered her face, record the clip, then plug the camera back in.  We also had to close and reopen Canon2Syphon after each clip was recorded.

Wide shot of the entire setup.

To light the subject, I used a combination of DMX-controlled fluorescent and LED lights along with several flags, reflectors and diffusers.

A Walk in the Woods

In the first milestone I defined five options for objects to capture. I decided to go with ‘A Walk in the Woods’:

I grew up playing in the woods. It was always an adventure – new bugs lay under every rock and dirt could be molded into innumerable forts. I have gradually left the woods behind (as I imagine most of us are doing these days). My goal is to take a simple walk through the woods and record any and all interesting discoveries that I make. These critters, rocks and leaves would then be created as physical models to capture some of that excitement of discovery.

Captures and Lessons Learned

I have performed a number of captures now, some with great success and others with less.

I have a few pointers for capture:

• Lighting if important. Diffused light works better then a spotlight. Captures did well with just the microscope light on.
• The angle of capture cannot be too deep. The objects did best at 30-45 degrees.
• The object surroundings are very important as background objects help the software orient the images. Latter models all have orange clay bases for support and textured background.
• 30x magnification worked well for the objects that I had. Captures work best when the capture can see a wide range of the object’s surroundings
• Taking pictures at different focus depths came out well.
• The more pictures the better. I usually took 40-70.
• Shiny objects don’t do as well
• Small details like bug legs are rarely captured.

Here are some of the results (all models available on my 123D account):

Future Steps

The next hurdle is manufacturing. I am exploring two options. One in 3D printing in plaster. The d-fab on campus has the ability to print color plaster models.

I am also looking into 123Dmake which converts designs to layered models which can then be cut in something like cardboard. This would enable me to create some very large models.