Camera mapping a comic: the Ward trailer

It has been a while since I dabbled in the awesome fun of camera mapping. Recently I bumped into a good reason to get back to that invigorating topic: the comic Ward was released. Marissa Delbressine was working on a trailer for her comic and she thought having a camera mapping of Ward's cover would be an awesome addition. Marissa threw me a pretty smile to which I couldn't say 'no', so I went to work on it. (Marissa happens to be my girlfriend, so I guess without the pretty smile I couldn't have said 'no' either... ;) )

Here is a compilation of the shots I made of the cover of Ward, plus shots of the meshes used to make this scene:



Marissa used a couple of these shots in the complete Ward trailer, which you can see below. Note that most of this trailer is not camera mapped: I was personally only involved in the shots at 0:43 and 1:12. All the 2D art and the rest of this trailer were made by Marissa and co. I think the result is great: making a trailer for something as static as a comic is difficult and I think Marissa did a great job of bringing it to life. It helps if you know Dutch and can read the text, though... Anyway, here is the complete trailer:



It has been several years since I last wrote about camera mapping on this blog, so let's do a quick recap of what this technique is. The idea is to project a 2D image onto a 3D model, so that you can do 3D camera movements through this 2D image. To do so, you have to first split the image into layers, and then create simple, rough 3D models to represent the objects in the image. Here is how this was done for Ward:


The process of creating the camera mapping of Ward. I only did the 3D parts: colours were done by Shanna Paulissen and splitting into layers and extending them by Iris Adriaansz.

Those who make 2D animations will likely recognise most of this: camera mapping is a more advanced version of a technique that is often used by 2D animators; they also split the scene in layers to create a 3D effect. The difference between this simple layers approach and full camera mapping is that with camera mapping the 3D models aren't just planes: they are real 3D objects that roughly mimick the shape of the 2D objects. This makes the 3D camera movements much more convincing, since the scene is not just a collection of cardboard planes anymore.

The main reason I think camera mapping is such an exciting technique, is that it allows for 3D graphics to achieve unique 2D looks. 3D graphics can look like many things, but there are very few 2D styles that normal 3D graphics can do well. The roughness of a brush or a pencil stroke is something that only really works in 2D, and camera mapping makes it possible to get that look in 3D.

Another benefit of camera mapping is that it only requires very simple 3D models. The details are all in the drawing, so you don't need to model everything and can get away with crude approximations of the real 3D models. Most work in camera mapping is in dividing the scene into proper layers in Photoshop. If the artist already works in layers, this can be a relatively simple thing to do.

The big downside of camera mapping is that objects have no backside, so the camera cannot rotate all around them. In the case of games this makes camera mapping mostly useful for games with limited camera movement, like 2.5D platformers, or games with a perspective like Diablo. In fact, the awesome Diablo III uses quite a bit of camera mapping, but disappointingly refuses to use the technique to create a truly unique art style.



Since it has been so long since I wrote about camera mapping, here are the camera mappings I did a couple of years ago:

• Camera mapping the Evil Pope
• Captain August got camera mapped!
• Camera mapping tips and tricks

I hope to come back to camera mapping some day to create some real-time game environments with it. I already have one quite far finished, but instead of finishing it I always end up spending my spare time on Cello Fortress and writing blogposts, so I don't know when I will actually get to that.

Let's end this blogpost with some blatant marketing for Ward, which is an awesome comic and it currently available in stores in the Netherlands. Marissa drew some amazingly detailed and beautiful art for it, so check it out! Ward is only available in Dutch, and is sold in specialised comic stores and at Bol.com and in the Eppo Webstore.

The endless possibilities of art styles

Last Wednesday I did a five-minute presentation at Ignite Amsterdam 4. Since I care a lot about the point I was making there, I have created an online version of it. Enjoy!

Eufloria

Proun

Zonderling by Marissa Delbressine

If you yourself are experimenting with unique styles, then please post a link below, since I would love to see them! ^-^

Ow, by the way, while sitting behind my computer I heard/hurt rumours that today is Christmas, so:

(Awesome image by Elsje Bakker)

Camera mapping tips and tricks

While experimenting with camera mapping, I learned a lot about how to use this technique, so I figured I'd share some of what I've learned here!

1. The Camera map modifier

This is the cheap and simple hint: 3D Studio MAX has a modifier specifically for doing camera mapping and it is called, surprisingly, the Camera map modifier.

2. Do not model object edges

The edges of the object should come from the image itself, not from your model. The reason for this is that polygons have straight, hard edges, while drawings have more blurry and zigzagging edges. You cannot really create a blurry, brushed edge using polygons. Using the image's transparency for the edges also makes modelling a lot easier, since you don't have to model the objects as precisely. The image below shows that you can even just stretch the polygons as far as you like.



I guess with sharp photographs of buildings it may work to model object's edges, but with the kind of art I have been working with, doing object edges exclusively through image transparency looks way better.

3. Split into many layers

To use transparency, you will need to split the image into a lot of layers. This greatly depends on the type of scene you are doing, but in general, the more layers you have, the easier it is to make your 3D scene. For the Evil Pope I used three layers (head, body, thorns), while for Captain August I used a whopping 28 layers! Splitting the original image into all those layers and drawing the parts behind layers was a lot of work, but was also absolutely necessary to make it look good.



4. Put a curve on everything

If you map an entire character to a flat plane, then it will look like a cardboard cut-out as soon as the camera starts moving. Putting the arms and such in separate layers is important, but it also works wonders to simply bend objects to roughly mimic the shape of the real character. Don't overdo this, though, for if you look too far from the side at an object, it will squash the lines of the original drawing too much, decreasing the 2D effect.



5. Animating after the mapping

Once an object has been camera mapped, you can animate it any way you like. For the little video of August, I rigged the bodies and arms of the characters with bones to be able to rotate and bend their arms and heads. This works surprisingly well, without breaking the illusion of a 2D drawing. For the Evil Pope, I was even able to change the character's expression without using any new drawings. This was done by morphing the mesh of the face into different expressions. The only things that I animated with extra textures are blinking and closing eyes. Everything else is just morphing, bending and moving the 3D models.

Last words on camera mapping for the moment: I'm thinking of trying camera mapping in a small real-time 3D game prototype to create a totally unique and awesome graphical style. I'm looking for a concept artist to design that with, so if you think you can draw a lively outdoor environment in a rough, colourful impressionistic style, maybe a little bit like this or this or this or this or this, then please do contact me at joost@ronimo-games.com!

In the meanwhile, I've headed back to working on Proun for a while! :)

Captain August got camera mapped!

Last week's camera mapping experiment tasted like more, so here we go again! What lured me back to camera mapping is the possibility to do 3D animation and 3D camera movements, while the end result still looks like a real 2D drawing. No lame cell-shading effects here, this looks like real hand-drawn awesomeness!

This time I picked an image that doesn't get much more 2D: one from Captain August, Roderick Leeuwenhart's webcomic! This image features lots of things that look gorgeous in 2D, but are incredibly difficult in 3D. For example, it features a completely broken perspective (just look at the dome at the top!) and thick white outlines against groups of objects (instead of per object).

For this image I wanted to emulate the subtle animations in Anno 1404's beautifully animated story screens. This is all about breathing life into a still image.

So, in short: I modified a still image and turned it into this animation:



The 3D version of this scene is pretty funny to look at it, since it is difficult to even recognise where the characters are:





Those who know my work, may know that I already visited Captain August a couple of years ago. At the time I made a full 3D model of him and it's fun to see how that type of 3D results in a totally different style. I like both techniques, and they serve totally different purposes.



While doing these camera mapping experiments, I learned a lot about how to tackle that stuff, so next week I will post some tips and tricks for the technique!

Camera mapping the Evil Pope

I recently discovered a technique that is used a lot in 3D graphics: camera mapping. It makes it possible to do 3D movement with a 2D image without having to recreate the entire image in 3D. I greatly enjoy playing around with this method, so I took a drawing by Marlies Barends and turned it into a 3D animation with facial animation and such.

The cool thing of this technique is that the result really looks 2D. Pause the animation on any frame and it may have been a drawing. Recreating something in 3D rarely maintains the 2D feel of the original, so I think this is pretty cool. :)

Also, all the examples of this technique that I have seen use environments. I guess others have tried animating characters this way as well, but to me this is a new usage of camera mapping.

It's a bit of a weird technique to explain, so please just have a look at the video and the image below to see how it works.





By the way, the music under the video is a quick track I was playing around with and felt like putting under it. Its main sound is a choir with a lot of distortion. Somehow my distorted mind thinks almost anything sounds cool with distortion...