Camera view seems to be very huge and view result/render scale is unrealistic

[Anonymous]

***NB: This question is not related to clipping plane issues. I have no issues with clipping planes and they are fine***

ISSUE BELOW:

I created a city with skyscrapers to scale in Maya. I then created a camera and attempted to animate it by keyframing a camera move along the city. The city is to real world scale yet the view of the camera seems as if it is a huge view/huge presence in the scene and looking through it does not seem realistic. I mean, the size of an actual camera is tiny compared to a skyscraper and when I look through a camera at a huge city I expect to see what one would see  - i.e. a proper city to scale. Instead, the skyscrapers appear to be small and the camera seems to be a huge set of eyes looking at the city of tiny buildings.

I hope you understand what I am trying to illustrate to you.

Now with the above said, when I created the camera, I did not tweak any of the camera settings. I just created a camera and looked through it. What ideal settings should I set as a preset rig for example to mimic a real world movie camera so I could see realistic real world scale when I look through it?

[Anonymous]

No one here has experience in this area to advise?

[pshwayka]

If you could supply a picture of the problem it would help. In the attached screencaps, I duplicated some cubes to simulate builldings. The taller ones are 300m tall. With default camera settings, as I move from far to near, the "buildings" seem to scale as expected. Hopefully this is a fair simulation. 

Edit: Sorry, I meant 300m tall.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your input!

In the attached screenshots, each building is 450ft x 120ft x 80ft (137m x 37m x 24m) modeled to scale.

At default camera settings the scene represents buildings standing opposite each other with a street in the middle as per pictures 1 and 2.

I attach picture 3, for which the rights/credit go to Sony Pictures. This was part of a YouTube demonstration of CGI to create a photoreal scene for a live action movie. My difficulty is even though I modelled the skyscrapers in my scene to scale, even when I put the camera close to the building as you can see in picture 2, it does not look anywhere realistically identical to the scene in picture 3 and my scene looks like simply small buildings.

My question is, what camera settings is used to get a framed scene in terms of perspective like picture 3? I mean, removing all the cars and streetlights etc. and only leaving the buildings, why do my buildings in picture 2 don't look like these buildings in picture 3 even though I modeled my buildings to scale to try to make them look like the ones in this industry standard example?

[pshwayka]

Okay, I see what you mean. Have you tried decreasing the angle of view on the camera? That in combination with tweaking the Focal Length might get you what you're after.

[Anonymous]

I tried 45mm-55mm focal length and it did not seem to change the result. Are you able to recreate a shot like the industry standard example using only buildings just to show a sense of scale of grand/large buildings in a scene? I don't know what is wrong here but when I try they all seem to look like a bunch of small extended cubes.

[pshwayka]

I'll give it a try.

[pshwayka]

Load the attached and hit play...is this any better than what you're getting?

[Anonymous]

Thank you, appreciated. Though it looked a bit the same, I have been experimenting with using a lower scale. Instead of modeling to actual scale, using a reduced scale (e.g. 4:1) seemed to make the camera more effective. I will keep trying to research this.

[damaggio]

Let me try to help a little here, if that is a shot done by Sony they are probably using some real camera settings like an Alexa or Red Epic and you can enter those camera lens settings in the camera attributes.

Matt workman is a cinematographer that provides scripts for Maya, I just took one of his classes http://mattworkman.com/blog-1/

unfortunatelly it seems that he's revising his site at the moment.

now I would assume that the Sony shot uses a much wider lens , you can try that , also lenses come in specific sizes and you can look at the manufactures website to see what is used in real movies.

i might have the Red and Alexa settings at home that I can send you later.

[damaggio]

I meant a longer lens , not wider.

[pshwayka]

And I meant "or" instead of "in combination with" when I was talking about tweaking the angle of view or the focal length earlier.

Must be a Monday...or the time change screwed us up.

[Anonymous]

damaggio, thanks for your input here - you guys are really helpful. That sounds really interesting.

Funny question though, is there a way to 'change lens' in Maya cameras by a simple drop down that will have a list of lens types? Or does one 'change' a lens in a Maya camera by editing the some attributes in the camera settings to mimic the real world equivalent?

[damaggio]

Or does one 'change' a lens in a Maya camera by editing the some attributes in the camera settings to mimic the real world equivalent?...this statement is correct, however you can save all your camera presets under "presets" and it will be there for easy changes.

I'm home now and collecting some info for you.

Later.

[damaggio]

So here's a bit more about real world cameras and just keep in mind that the Maya camera is just fine for a variety of renders and projects, real cameras are for people working in film and television where lenses matter.

Matt Workman has this other site where he provides a quick access to some common used cameras and their film back, thankfully Maya now has under camera attributes the camera aperture in mm that relate to real cameras, all you have to do is enter the specific values into the Aperture option, then go back to focal length and adjust to 18, 25 35 50 75 or 100 these are common size lenses.

This is a deeper subject but maybe over time you can dig further on the internet and remember to bookmark his site.

Also there's nothing wrong in just eyeballing to match a shot for your own project, off course if you were working at a studio you would need to follow some guidelines.

http://www.cinematographydb.com/2014/07/digital-sensor-film-back-size-reference/

[Anonymous]

Wow, thanks for this super great set of information. I appreciate your time and knowledge of the subject!

[pshwayka]

Yes...thanks for your help, damaggio!

Also, Roy - you may want to try some of the film gate presets in the film back section...they make some automatic adjustments that may help.

[Anonymous]

Will do; thanks!

[damaggio]

Hey Roy could you post the link to that you tube Sony video, I like doing cities too.. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Sure, please find the link below.

It is a nice clip and shows the camera move in the CG environment through the city which was rendered to create the photorealistic result for the film (well after compositing other elements like fog etc. of course).

My aim is to try to take my time and work on scenes like this and take the advice from this thread etc. and work on getting my buildings to look scaled accurately to look like the result in this clip. I am not concerned about the final render but I just want to ensure the modeling and layout is real world accurate and looks correct.

I don't think this is difficult to achieve once someone takes their time and model the environment to scale and do a nice camera move.

So I would be interested to see if you create anything like this; perhaps you can post back in this thread if you do.

Cheers!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iylcHONHRA