Production guidance needed - Capturing Reflections for CG

Question

Hi,
At my work we're setting up a shoot of a handheld device. We'd like to capture the natural reflections to composite with the simulated screen. What's a good production technique for doing this? It seems like tracking markers taped to the device would be helpful for getting the track, but they'd interfere with the reflections. I'd like to see what the AE community recommends. Thanks!

Answer 1

You're going about this in the wrong way. You don't want to preserve the reflections, you probably don't need tracking markers, they only need to be painted out, and you should be shooting something to use as the reflections. Take a look at this How I Did It video from a really good AE artist that spends most of his time as a print guy. Richard Green did a magnificent job with this project and the video shows how he assembled the elements. All of the compositing and tracking for this project could be easily done using Mocha and After Effects. Only the airplane needed to be created in a 3D app. I've done about 30 projects in the last year similar to the one you're describing and Mocha did a perfect job without any tracking markers. You'll just need to block out the reflections which is very easy to do in Mocha.
Pay attention to how they created the reflection maps at the end of the video. and laid them into the production. It's about 1:30 into the film. In most cases you can fake this with much less than 360º photography. You'll get the idea.