COVID Dystopia: Bell Jars

I animated the bell jar scene by turning the foreground person towards the camera to show he is wearing a mask. I thought I was done but when I looked at this image for the post, I found out I didn’t paint out his legs from the background layer. This makes his left leg look a bit broken. It is a subtle thing, but since I know it is there I will correct it today.

I also used ZOE Depth on the scene which allowed for a clean truck in. ZOE is however confused by glass. The people are interpreted correctly in space but the bell jars flatten out towards the background. Even stranger the round gall orbs on top of each bell jar act like spikes extending forward in space.

With the limited camera move and lack of movement up or down I was able to minimize the odd depth. The bell jars are warping a bit as well. I might redo the scene using the Black and white depth maps I already created. I will be able to move the camera more up and down and the animation will composite fine into that shot.

Every day I discover more about what works and doesn’t work with this new depth map technology. Trail and error and experimentation are my way to figure out what works for each scene.