In preparation for the new academic year, I spent Friday capturing assets for the VFX delivery I have planned for my Level 6 BA (Hons) Media Production students at The University of Brighton.
I was keen to explore accessible and fast ways of capturing data, so that students could reproduce the results in their own work without the need for overly cumbersome and sometimes cost prohibitive equipment.
In between, rain showers and following the recording of 4K DCI video footage for matchmove, I captured a Geometry (Geo) scan using a Free app on my phone: Scaniverse. The results are processed on the phone itself and the geometry and materials generated can then be shared via the cloud in various formats. The scan is relatively low resolution but is more than adequate for Shadow Catchers with reprojection of original footage.
Additionally, I captured 12 bracketed exposures using the consumer-level 360 camera by Insta360, the Insta360 One X2. You do not have that much control with the camera, but I was able to use the shutter speed setting to capture multiple stops, one by one. These 360 images where then combined into a single HDRi (.EXR) via Photoshop, but there are free alternatives for merging HDRi images.
I tested all of this by combining the GEO and HDRi with matchmove data in Blender 3D (Version 4.1). I used Blender for everything from Track and Solve, to Reconstruction, reprojection, lighting, rendering and compositing.
The rough 'Bash Comp' below shows a quick test of the results.
Test Render
CG 'Bash Comp' Render
Original Plate
Captured Data
Geometry Scan (GEO) captured with Free Scaniverse app
360 Equirectangular HDRi captured with Insta360 One X2 camera
