Not so much a “Technical” problem - but I don’t know how to do this-
Imagine having built a model of a house with a fountain out front. Imagine, further, that you’ve placed the fountain at the “Zero” point of the SketchUp world (where X-Y-Z join - I don’t know what that’s called)…and opening the scene creates a view from the front door.
Now, I have an assignment where I need to match a photo of people standing on the porch [behind me]. How do I turn the opening ‘match-photo’ view around - in order to start that process?
Before I brought in the ‘photo’, for matching,… I set the camera to an approximate angle, close to the matching photo - but when I brought it in, the camera snapped around to center itself on the ‘Zero’ point.
Do I have to rotate the whole (and rather extensive) model to match SketchUp’s Photo-Match opening angle?
Yes - it’s a pain in the butt:The only way to do it is to move the model so that the origin is within the photo.
However, you can take some shortcuts and use some work-arounds; personally I would take a selection of the model that is relevant to the photo match (select and copy) then open a new SU model and paste it so that the origin is relevant - then use the photo match in this new model.
Once done I would then use the “Project texture” where relevant and copy/paste back to the original model.
Thanks, guys,… but here’s a little detail I overlooked: The people, I’m trying to ‘match’ into my model, are only photographed from mid-chest up - meaning I have no way (that I can figure out) to set the yellow-square ‘origin’ down on anything. I do have warehouse 3D figures as place-holders, in my scene, and am trying to insert green-screened head & shoulders where the place-holders are.
I can’t show you anything because it’s for a film,… an independent film. As a work-a-round, I currently have a transparent plane, with the photo-to-be-matched on it, trying to line them up with the place-holders, but am struggling with the camera lens settings.
It sounds like you do have a hurdle to get past. The thing about Match Photo that you also need to consider is that in order to set it up correctly, you have to have an uncropped image with horizontal lines running off to two vanishing points on the horizon. If the image is only of people, Match Photo is not the right option.
Perhaps you can make your own 2D people and use the photo as a source for textures. If the photos you have are only chest up, maybe just pick out the faces.
Yup, a hurdle indeed. It would be great if SketchUp had some sort of “Perspective-Matching”,… but my case is probably rare. I’m creating background plates for a video green-screen shoot - so we’re talking about more than still photos. Hopefully, the D.P. will have camera information that will help.
This image was released (on Facebook), shown as an early ‘test’ in compositing, so I can show it here. This is not the shot I’m struggling with but, again, the setting is less than full figures, and the camera position was guessed at.
That’s what Match Photo is but in the image you shared, for example, there isn’t anything useful to match the perspective from.
You could import the image and trace the actor to make a cutout like the 2D people in the 3D Warehouse but you’ll have to use your imagination for the lower half. Of course these will be just sort of cardboard cutouts when you get them to SketchUp so they’ll only be good from one angle. It’ll be difficult to make them useful even with Always Face camera enabled for the components.
