www.ssontech.com

[Meshman]

Hi, folks. I'm new to these forums and am just a novice with SynthEyes. I'm having some difficulty importing my SynthEyes scene into Lightwave and hoped someone here could clue me in on what's going wrong.
I track the shot, make some adjustments, do some tests with the 3D objects provided in Syntheyes, and everything looks okay. When I export the file and try to bring it into Lightwave, I get error messages: Lightwave can't find the plate (shot) used in the scene, even after several attempts to direct Lightwave to where the file is. It also tells me it's missing the "animloader plug-in" it needs to open the file. Eventually, it loads the trackers and camera data, but not the background plate. I manually load the shot into the scene, and try some tests by adding stationary objects into the scene and exporting a quicktime movie. There is a lot of slipping and sliding going on that I did not detect at all in SynthEyes. I am using Lightwave 9.2 on a Powermac G5.
Any suggestions or advice that can help me resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance. [/b]

[kenekeu]

I'm relatively new to SynthEyes too so take this with a grain of salt. I am on Lightwave 8.5, haven't sprung for 9 yet, and I get a similar message, and have to find the clip a few times. Eventually it loads, I have never seen the animloader message. Sorry I can't help with that one.

Regarding slipping, so far I have found that there are really only two ways that can happen. The first is the most obvious, that objects simply aren't placed in the correct location, usually relative to the ground plane. I almost killed myself on a shot untill I realized that I had the object placed a few feet under the ground plane.

The second thing that happened to me was that I was shooting HD in 24 fps but it was recording it in 59.97i. So what was happening was there were two of the same frame, then three of the next, then two, then three and so on. When I put the footage through SynthEyes it tracked fine, compensating for the strange frame rates but when I put the footage into Lightwave and did my render it was tweening the 3D objects during the duplicate frames. So in essence I would have the object moving in every frame while the background was stopping and starting. This looked like slipping but was just a major frame rate error. I took the footage into Shake and did a reverse 3:2 pull down and got true 24 frames, then it tracked like a champion.

Hope that helps.

Oh, what do you think of Lightwave 9.2? Is it worth the upgrade or should I hold out?

[Meshman]

Thanks kenekeu for your response. I do wonder if your frame rate could be a factor or not. I need to look into that a bit. I believe the objects position was correct to the ground plane. Wish I knew why Lightwave can't find the background plate and why I get the error messages.
I haven't used Lightwave 9.2 much yet (It's actually gone up to 9.3 now), but it does have some advantages to 8.5.
Hard to say whether you should update or not, not knowing what you do with Lightwave, and what your budget is.
It's camera blur is improved. It plays nicer with ZBrush. You can edit edges in modeler. Improvements in texturing and some bug-fixes. I'm told the renderer is better, but I haven't tested it yet. Have you checked out the videos and info at Newtek to see what's been added? If not, check them out.
Thanks again for your suggestions.

[ssontech]

The simple explanation is that Lightwave doesn't read your file format. Image sequences will almost always be more reliable.

Another thing to look at is whether in setting up the footage yourself, you didn't set up the overall aspect ratio.

See also http://www.ssontech.com/content/diagno.htm

[Meshman]

Thanks, Russ! I'll check into that. Didn't think Lightwave would have a problem reading a .mov file since it exports .mov files.