Match to Live

The goal of this project was to match a 3D model to its real life counter part . This process involved capturing a well lit scene with the real object . Then modelling & texturing the object  , setting up the camera,lights in  Maya & finally composting everything in Nuke.

Object chosen : Egg

PHOTOGRAPHY:  I used a Nikon 5D Camera to capture  the egg in different compositions and 

lighting making sure the egg fit atleast 25% of the screen .I chose the photograph which gave me a good composition , with least clutter and good lighting .

Next a photograph with a cube placed next to the egg is taken , so that the camera can be matched appropriately in Maya to its XYZ axis to look at the egg 3Dimensionally .

SETTING UP IN MAYA:  Now that the scene has been established , it is time to model the egg in Maya & place it appropriately . The egg was scanned to get a reference for modelling it ,UV's were layed out and  a texture was created in Photoshop to get a few bumps. 

Texture Map . Enlarge image to see the white dots better

UV layout

SETTING UP THE CAMERA: The photograph with the cube is projected to the newly created camera's image plane . The focal length of the camera is set to the same as the camera used &  the resolution of the render settings is set according to the photograph, with the image plane being fit to the resolution gate .Make a primitive cube of size 1x1x1 & move its anchor point to one of the corners touching the lower plane. Then by switching to translate mode , hold down "V" and place the cube's corner at the origin on the grid . 

Now that everything is in place I can use my camera and grid lines to find the right perspective for the egg by matching the CG cube to the cube in the image plane . Once the plane and focal length look right I can replace the primitive cube with my modeled object and start lighting my scene .

LIGHTING : I use 4 lights : Key light , a blue color bounce light for the plate , an orange bounce light coming from the toast  & a fill light , along with these I also used final gather to get the blue hue from the plate.Then the egg is rendered in different layers: diffuse , specular , occlusion , final gather and shadow .

COMPOSITING: The different rendered layers are then composited in Nuke with various nodes . The diffuse , specular and final gather images start off together . Then the shadows , alpha and occlusion are paired together with the reformatted original image . With the help of color correct , blur ,merge and shuffle nodes I was able to color correct and connect the two groups .
And the final composited image looks like the one below .