A promotional video for the LMA Environmental arts department turned experimental.
Having already made one attempt at implementing 3D objects into 360 footage the year prior, I reentered the rabbit hole when Martin asked me if I could make a video to attract some new talent to the academy for next semester. This time a little more ambitious than simple dark silhouettes shuffling from behind trees, I decided to take a crack at some physics elements as well.
By this time some resources had started cropping up regarding 360 in blender, so I wasn’t completely on my own anymore, scrounging through internet forums at 2 AM. Some of the effects still took a sleepless night or two – trying to figure out why the shadow catcher simply does not work despite absolutely everything indicating it should, but what cannot be made to work can be made to look like its working.
Overall I’m quite happy with the effect achieved, even if it does show some cracks in the paint and there are some things I might do differently now. The initial concept for the idea involved the rite of passage between the Art Academy of Latvia and Latvian National Art Museum, but in all honesty devolved into seeing what I can make happen when handed a 360 camera.
The video can also be looped when right-clicked, which makes me think this might be interesting to try with short-form content.
Gear and software used:
- GoPro 360 MAX – capturing footage
- Blender – CG visuals (sphere, environment, lighting)
- Adobe Premiere – Processing raw footage and rendered frames, editing video for YouTube.
- Adobe After Effects – Removing visual artifacts from original footage
- 360 encoder – Re-encoding equirectangular footage for upload