Sorta...

A big part of any production is not just the objects or characters we create, but also the environment in which they will be in. If you are working on a visual effects project for a film you may not have to worry about a full CG environment because you may be compositing over live action plates. If you are working on an animation project your environment may be entirely CG even if it is designed to be incredibly realistic. How much time and energy you put into the environment depends largely on a few main points.

• Do you have live action plates already?
• Is it a full animation and how many shots are needed?
• If the style is realistic does the environment really exist?
• Even if the environment doesn't exist has a matte painting been created or can it be?

Each of these considerations will guide you to the solution you need. A huge part of any production is how quickly can you achieve the shot? Time is money right? When there is an instance where you do not have a live action plate, the environment needs to be photo-realistic and you can take photos of the environment or can illustrate an image of it you have a tool available to you that will fulfill each of these requirements while being incredibly time-efficient. That process is called camera mapping or camera projection and we will discuss that further in the next section.

As mentioned in the previous section cameara mapping, or sometimes referred to as camera projection, is a method of creating computer graphics environments. Specifically in our case it will be accomplished with a single photograph. Before we get into the process of how to accomplish this let's take a look at an overview of what a camera map is.

Remember! These videos are meant to be a guide to general ideas and topics that will assist you in your camera mapping processes, not a step-by-step guide to the specifics you need for your scene. Learning how to work in production is all about learning how to problem solve.

On that note let's move on to discussing the image selection process and CG camera setup in Maya.

Once we have the image selected and the virtual camera aligned notionally where the physical camera was when the photo was taken we are ready to start modeling the rough geometry that will catch our projection. This modeling process will be done the same way as any modeling task with the only exception that you will be modeling from the perspective of the projection camera for accuracy.

Remember! When modeling for camera projection you don't need every detail and you don't need a lot of detail. Just enough to catch what you need for the projection.

Now to setup the projection

And to remove objects from the image to allow for the isolation of individual projection images so we don't get pass-through repetition.

Now let's finalize our overview of the camera mapping technique.

The camera mapping module runs for only 1 week. At the end of this week (Sunday night) you must post your final playblast and rendered images of your work to the discussion board on UNM Canvas This will allow for your classmates to see how you did. I recommend you post WIP's to the boards throughout the week to get feedback as you work as well. At the end of our camera mapping module you must hand in your final submission of your project as always.

End of first week	WIP images to Discussion boards.
End of second week	Final playblast/images to Discussion boards and final submission for assignment.

Final Submission Guidelines

Produce a playblast of your camera map as well as a few test renders to show how the projection is working. I will be looking into how well your projection is mapped for stretching and correct parallax as well as whether you have any object pass-through repetition.

Submit your file to Assignment 4 on UNM Canvas