First of all, there are a few ways of doing this. I could have spent a whole lot of time and did the whole thing in CGI like the clip posted earlier (guy making all the balls in one shot). It's not terribly hard, just super time consuming to make it look right.
So for this, I did it the old fashion VFX way. I really did shoot it on my iPhone, my good cameras are at work. So the quality was already going to suffer but it's just for fun so whatever. Minimal camera movement makes things easier, so I needed to plan it out. I wanted to move the camera to throw you an extra curve ball but I needed to do things in a certain sequence, to make things easier on myself.
So first I lined up each to masse into the pocket. I needed to do this first to limit camera movement.
So I masse'd each of the balls into the pocket, just give them a little twist. So once they're all in the pocket, I came over to talk to the camera without any camera movement.
Then, again with no camera movement, I banked three balls over towards the pocket. If you notice, there are hole reinforcers on the table. I used those as reference to where I did the masse shots, so I made sure to shoot the same 3, 5, 6 and 7 at the appropriate donut. I also banked in numerical order so I didn't forget lol
So, after I banked all three balls and did my talking, I move the camera (which really was an iPhone on top of a garbage). As you can see, all of the balls I banked, are still on the table. Again, I wasn't trying to make them, only aim at the donuts and get the object ball movement into the rail.
So now, again without touching the camera, I go over and masse the 7 into the pocket like the others. Then come around and shoot the cueball into the 7 at the same hole reinforcer that I masse'd the ball from.
So now I bring everything into the computer. For this technique, I only really need to use the application Adobe After Effects.
In After Effects, I edit things together roughly so that it's only in a linear story that makes sense. Because I filmed things slightly out of order, I need to now chop it up and back to how I want you to watch it.
Now I got to each shot that I bank into the rail and erase the ball once it hits the rail. This is done by layering a blank shot of the table with the shot of me banking. Once it hits the rail, I layer the blank table on top and use/animate "masks" for what I want and don't want you to see.
Now, using the same layering technique, I add the masse shot for each, at the time when each of the shots in the rail. I then take these shots and cut everything but the ball out, using a feathered mask that tracks with the ball into the pocket. I do this whole things for each of the 4 shots. It's not very hard just takes time. Because I used an iPhone, the lighting would automatically adjust which made matching the layers tricky and you can probably see some of my mistakes.
Now for the tricky part. I moved the camera. While moving the camera, all of the balls I had banked are still on the table. I probably should have removed them before moving the camera but I wasn't thinking. So, I needed to remove these balls in post. So I tracked the camera movement. The Xs on the screen here represent the data from where in 3d space things are. If you saw this from the top or side view, you would see the room laid out in dots and the depth of the room. It's just telling me where the camera was and in relation, where all of the objects it's able to detect are in space. With that data, I can map things onto the 3ball or the 5 ball, the rail or even the liquor bottles on that counter back there. (BTW, I just bought this house and the basement is under construction. Don't judge, the people had an older kitchen in the basement) But anyway lol... With this data, i was able to track cloth over the pool balls on the table and make it look decent. I actually didn't do a great job because the iPhone didn't handle the lighting well. Either way, it was fine and convincible enough.
If I would have done the whole video hand held and not resting on the trashcan, I would have needed to camera track the entire scene and would have made things 10000% harder, but 10000% more believable.
So that's pretty much how I did this video. It probably won't make a ton of sense and you need an application like After Effects and years of experience to make it look legit. Like I said, I remember in like 12th grade making a video of me kicking a basketball about 60 yards into a hoop. I did basically the same thing with my limited knowledge and that was about 15 years ago. Fastfoward, I now do similar work for a living, just a different application. Again, it's not super hard, just not that easy to wrap your head around compositing it all together and most of that comes with experience.
So honestly, Bob's attempt wasn't that far off it's just a lot more complicated than that. He got the layering part down, just doesn't know how to mask or track and isn't using the proper tools.
So for this, I did it the old fashion VFX way. I really did shoot it on my iPhone, my good cameras are at work. So the quality was already going to suffer but it's just for fun so whatever. Minimal camera movement makes things easier, so I needed to plan it out. I wanted to move the camera to throw you an extra curve ball but I needed to do things in a certain sequence, to make things easier on myself.
So first I lined up each to masse into the pocket. I needed to do this first to limit camera movement.
So I masse'd each of the balls into the pocket, just give them a little twist. So once they're all in the pocket, I came over to talk to the camera without any camera movement.
Then, again with no camera movement, I banked three balls over towards the pocket. If you notice, there are hole reinforcers on the table. I used those as reference to where I did the masse shots, so I made sure to shoot the same 3, 5, 6 and 7 at the appropriate donut. I also banked in numerical order so I didn't forget lol
So, after I banked all three balls and did my talking, I move the camera (which really was an iPhone on top of a garbage). As you can see, all of the balls I banked, are still on the table. Again, I wasn't trying to make them, only aim at the donuts and get the object ball movement into the rail.
So now, again without touching the camera, I go over and masse the 7 into the pocket like the others. Then come around and shoot the cueball into the 7 at the same hole reinforcer that I masse'd the ball from.
So now I bring everything into the computer. For this technique, I only really need to use the application Adobe After Effects.
In After Effects, I edit things together roughly so that it's only in a linear story that makes sense. Because I filmed things slightly out of order, I need to now chop it up and back to how I want you to watch it.
Now I got to each shot that I bank into the rail and erase the ball once it hits the rail. This is done by layering a blank shot of the table with the shot of me banking. Once it hits the rail, I layer the blank table on top and use/animate "masks" for what I want and don't want you to see.
Now, using the same layering technique, I add the masse shot for each, at the time when each of the shots in the rail. I then take these shots and cut everything but the ball out, using a feathered mask that tracks with the ball into the pocket. I do this whole things for each of the 4 shots. It's not very hard just takes time. Because I used an iPhone, the lighting would automatically adjust which made matching the layers tricky and you can probably see some of my mistakes.
Now for the tricky part. I moved the camera. While moving the camera, all of the balls I had banked are still on the table. I probably should have removed them before moving the camera but I wasn't thinking. So, I needed to remove these balls in post. So I tracked the camera movement. The Xs on the screen here represent the data from where in 3d space things are. If you saw this from the top or side view, you would see the room laid out in dots and the depth of the room. It's just telling me where the camera was and in relation, where all of the objects it's able to detect are in space. With that data, I can map things onto the 3ball or the 5 ball, the rail or even the liquor bottles on that counter back there. (BTW, I just bought this house and the basement is under construction. Don't judge, the people had an older kitchen in the basement) But anyway lol... With this data, i was able to track cloth over the pool balls on the table and make it look decent. I actually didn't do a great job because the iPhone didn't handle the lighting well. Either way, it was fine and convincible enough.
If I would have done the whole video hand held and not resting on the trashcan, I would have needed to camera track the entire scene and would have made things 10000% harder, but 10000% more believable.
So that's pretty much how I did this video. It probably won't make a ton of sense and you need an application like After Effects and years of experience to make it look legit. Like I said, I remember in like 12th grade making a video of me kicking a basketball about 60 yards into a hoop. I did basically the same thing with my limited knowledge and that was about 15 years ago. Fastfoward, I now do similar work for a living, just a different application. Again, it's not super hard, just not that easy to wrap your head around compositing it all together and most of that comes with experience.
So honestly, Bob's attempt wasn't that far off it's just a lot more complicated than that. He got the layering part down, just doesn't know how to mask or track and isn't using the proper tools.
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