Cloning a car rig

mercphoto

I've discovered I have a lot to learn about cloning. Perhaps any good books, online tutorials, etc? Here is the before, the after, and a crop I made to rid the problem entirely. Thanks for any feedback, tips, pointers, etc.

pathfinder

I guess I never realized you had that much cloning to do in your final processing.

Looks like that would make you very careful what the boom obstructs in the image.

SloYerRoll

Maybe take a shot of the car from the same angle w/o the rig (right before or after you attach the rig).

Use a layer mask to hide/reveal anything you want. Then just clone in the small ammount of detail left from imperfections in camera angle. It would seem a lot less intensive in post that way to me.

NOTE:
The camera angle won't be perfect, so you'll still have to do a bit of cloning, but at least you won't have to create shadows mentally, you can just reference the image w/o the rig in it.

BTW very cool setup! Your gonna have some killer shots when your done w/ this!!

-Jon

gus

Very cool & impressive Bill.

Im currently in the process of making on for my bike.

crankboom

While certainly no expert photoshopper myself, I would say the most important aspect of cloning is knowing the subject. Have a clear idea of what the subject should look like, with the obstructing object removed.

Work in as large a resolution as you can (preferably source image size), and retouch the cloning after resizing to the desired size. Make good use of layers, brushes, and opacity.

You have some hard edges from where you've met up cloning coming from multiple directions -- try using a larger brush at a lower opacity to help smooth areas like that out.

Use parts of the source image where you can. The line for the hood, for example, could be copied from the right of the boom, pasted into place, and adjusted.

I gave it a quick go myself, as I didn't want to give out advice that I myself couldn't follow through with. I grabbed a reference image of a boom-free S2000 so that I knew how the body lines should go. However the bottom portion of the bumper is almost a complete loss, as far as keeping the 'fin' goes. Tried to quickly add one in, but it doesn't look like it's supposed to. I'm sure with some adjustment one could maybe get away with something passable at lower resolutions.



I also often keep a copy of the original, obstructed version at the top of my layers, at 50%, so I can easily refer back to it and see how well the lines match up.

DavidTO

Bill,

I would imagine that there's a lot of common ground between what you're trying to do and this.

mercphoto

crankboom wrote:

I gave it a quick go myself, as I didn't want to give out advice that I myself couldn't follow through with. I grabbed a reference image of a boom-free S2000 so that I knew how the body lines should go. However the bottom portion of the bumper is almost a complete loss, as far as keeping the 'fin' goes. Tried to quickly add one in, but it doesn't look like it's supposed to. I'm sure with some adjustment one could maybe get away with something passable at lower resolutions.

Impressive. Thanks! And I'll look over the tutorial DavidTO pointed to. I have work to do!

wxwax

Is this really how it's done?

Sure seems like an incredibly difficult way to go about getting the shot.

mercphoto

wxwax wrote:

Is this really how it's done?

Sure seems like an incredibly difficult way to go about getting the shot.

Yup, that's how its done. Some people use more robust setups than this (and can get crisper shots, at the expense of even more cloning). See this entire thread, and post 43 in particular:
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=872&page=5

That forum has a few other threads on this very topic.
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1360

See post #8 for a much more elaborate rig:
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1483

ArchiTexas

Cool shot. I've always admired the shots in the auto mags and never realized the set-up was this complicated. Why not shoot from another car that's pacing you ahead and to the right?

jogle

ArchiTexas wrote:

Cool shot. I've always admired the shots in the auto mags and never realized the set-up was this complicated. Why not shoot from another car that's pacing you ahead and to the right?

I've helped out on a couple of comercials and for film or video the car rigs are welded to the frame underneath, then curve up from under the car. Cloning reflections in motion is a real pain and this way your rig is only visable over the motionblured ground.

a bit like this image from one of Bill's threads:



(Mod edit. Changed the shot to a link, we protect copyright and only post our own work on dgrin.
wxwax)

wxwax

mercphoto wrote:

Yup, that's how its done. Some people use more robust setups than this (and can get crisper shots, at the expense of even more cloning). See this entire thread, and post 43 in particular:
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=872&page=5

That forum has a few other threads on this very topic.
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1360

See post #8 for a much more elaborate rig:
http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1483

Cool!

I notice those rigs are built to have as little of the rig crossing the body as possible. Just the clamps, often.

That makes sense, a whole lot less expensive post processing.

mercphoto

jogle wrote:

I've helped out on a couple of comercials and for film or video the car rigs are welded to the frame underneath, then curve up from under the car. Cloning reflections in motion is a real pain and this way your rig is only visable over the motionblured ground.

That's a neat idea. I have seen a rig that clamps magnetically under the car and has all the advantages you state there. But I've heard mixed results about magnetic clamping, and some cars have plastic underneath as well.

One advice I did get on my current rig was to flip the camera underneath the boom. That way the boom covers sky, not car, and is thus easier to clone out.

mercphoto

crankboom wrote:

Work in as large a resolution as you can (preferably source image size), and retouch the cloning after resizing to the desired size. Make good use of layers, brushes, and opacity.

You have some hard edges from where you've met up cloning coming from multiple directions -- try using a larger brush at a lower opacity to help smooth areas like that out.

Use parts of the source image where you can. The line for the hood, for example, could be copied from the right of the boom, pasted into place, and adjusted.

I had issues myself with the hood line and I didn't realize you could clone onto a layer and then move the layer around. Makes sense, though. I had severe problems getting my clone stamp to line up correctly but would be easier to have a "hood layer", where I clone the hood line, mask off just that portion, and then move the layer into position. I'm going to guess one ends up with multiple layers and masks when cloning a subject like this?

jogle

mercphoto wrote:

I had issues myself with the hood line and I didn't realize you could clone onto a layer and then move the layer around. Makes sense, though. I had severe problems getting my clone stamp to line up correctly but would be easier to have a "hood layer", where I clone the hood line, mask off just that portion, and then move the layer into position. I'm going to guess one ends up with multiple layers and masks when cloning a subject like this?

Yeah, go layer crazy. Cloning curved lines like the hood are only really possible by cloning into a layer and moving/rotating them.

Also think about using a seperate layer for any shadows you might have to add back on, use the multiply blending mode and some layer opacity and you can selectively soften the shadows at the end.

Looking at the fin at the front of the honda I thought about creating a small 3d patch to get the right highlight. But then again I've worked on a Jaguar commercial where we replaced the whole car in 3d because it was easier to make it look good.