Create Better Quality Depth Maps From 2D Images With New AI Tools

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This video is a quick tutorial that covers creating depth maps with Midas 3.1. via a Google Colab project as well as Photoshop Beta 25.0. Plus it includes a quick run-through on how to use depth maps in After Effects to add a 3D depth effect to 2D images, including linking a virtual camera.
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Times
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - Midas 3.1 Google Colab
4:23 - Photoshop Depth Pass
5:19 - Compare Results
7:35 - Depth Pass use in After Effects
10:20 - Outro
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Tools Used in this Tutorial:
- MidJourney (To create the dystopian cityscape scene with the tree)
www.midjourney.com/
- Midas 3.1 via Google Colab:
colab.research.google.com/dri...
- Adobe Photoshop & After Effects
www.adobe.com/uk/creativeclou...

[@syntheticfauna]

Excellent content! Keep it coming!❤

[@WolfgangScheidle]

Your tutorials are great. Thank you!

[@MobitellSaams-fn9vq]

Siikoako

[@Doctor_Random]

This is great cheers! I had been using Collab to make AI voice models ... I feel the need to move into ai animation:)

[@user-eb8td1qh4o]

great ! quick and simple !

[@snookofficial7211]

Thanks! The photoshop tool seems to be broken in the latest update, at least I can't get it work anymore, shame as it was pretty good.

[@saemranian]

Awesome Thanks for sharing

[@bongomatteo5224]

Super Cool! Thanks for this great info. I noticed that it was saved in PNG format, is EXR available? Thanks

[@welsonfy5246]

Thanks for the video. Can you please post an image transformed into a depth map for download so that I can see the quality of the effect? thanks in advance

[@schmip]

INCREDIBLY INFORMATIVE EXPLANATION. THANK YOU

[@schmip]

BTW MIDAS 3.1 LOOKS BETTER BY A LONGSHOT. PS FANBOYS COPING HARD!

[@MediaOnoff]

Sir, can you tell how the zoom animation will be done in this?

[@tanyasubaBg]

Absolutely brilliant. I like AE. You just got new sub.

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Awesome, thanks so much for subscribing.

[@tanyasubaBg]

@@AIAnimationStudio you are welcome. But I have one question. I have just tried everything that you showed us here with AE and my camera doesn't work. Actually, orbit-around option doesn't work. thanks in advance.

[@AIAnimationStudio]

@@tanyasubaBg . Hey, it should work as expected. Feel free to email via the aianimation.com website and I'll try and quickly help. It may be the 'constantly rasterise' button needs pressing or unpressing. I think (🤞) all the steps and button presses should be covered in the video. (Also the setup in this particular video needs the camera to use the pan tool not orbit)

[@tanyasubaBg]

@@AIAnimationStudio thank you

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Hey@@tanyasubaBg , just looking back at this, I think it might be a simple case of you're using the incorrect camera tool. When pressing 'c' to cycle through the camera move tools, you'd want to use the 'pan' tool in this instance, not the 'orbit' tool, as the displacement map is connected to the position of the camera and not the orientation. Hope that helps.

[@cactusface23]

Would love to see results using ae plugin "depth scanner", although it comes with an extra cost. Thanks for the videos!

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Yeah, that's on the list to do a video with, but wanted to take a non paid plugin approach. I'm interested to see if their 'accurate' and 'highest quality' settings compare.

[@estudiolateral]

BRAVOOOO!!!!

[@aa-xn5hc]

Thank you, also video is not too long

[@rene.rodriguez]

Excellent tutorial. Where the depth map gets wonky when panning a camera, can you paint the depth map to adjust the results?

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Thank you, glad you liked the tut. Unfortunately can't paint the depth map to fix the wonky parts, as it's more just a limitation of the effect. I've been trying out different approaches, i.e. with the more advanced (but free) Displacer Pro plugin for After Effects to see if better results can be obtained. Plus some other ideas, which I'll share if they show decent results. Plus you could make a 3D mesh of the displacement via Blender and bring that into After Effects (potentially via the new 3D file support in After Effects Beta, or use Element 3D) but that still has similar distortion and adds more steps to the workflow.

[@rene.rodriguez]

@@AIAnimationStudio okay, bummer. I thought you could since the depth map appears to be differing values of black and white, but I guess there’s more to it. Thanks for the quick response and keep up the good work!

[@rkgibbons]

@@AIAnimationStudio Curious what your results were with Displacer Pro. Any improvement? Or have you tried AE Depth Scanner? OH....and GREAT tutorial videos dude. Love your stuff!! ...and I'm not gonna be lazy. I'll try the Displacer Pro myself and see.

[@rkgibbons]

@@AIAnimationStudio As a follow-up (to my trial with Displacer Pro), I found the camera movements to be WAY too sensitive. The slightest mouse movement made the effect distort completely. So I wrapped each of the two Camera scripts in brackets and divided the total by 50 (or 100 for even smoother control). So, this is what changed: thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform. Position[0]-2000 --> thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform. Position[0]-2000 The 2000 is just my particular X positional value so will vary for anyone trying this themselves. Then repeated for vertical script. Works like a charm!

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Nice, thanks for sharing that. @@rkgibbons. I got distracted by some other parts of production but will no doubt revisit depth maps again soon as it's such a useful approach. Have you tried out the 3D format import into the After Effects Beta, that adds another alternative approach for add depth to scenes, with a 3D mesh made via somethinglike Zoe Depth. kzbin.info/www/bejne/baaTd4yMhbZoqMUsi=KOL3yREamqGeAmKf&t=771

[@isaiahrobinson100]

does increasing the contrast on the images before inputing them into midas get a sharper or cleaner depth map generation?

[@generaljackson1741]

sometime

[@borarealtech]

Cool

[@changtc8873]

Hello, I have a question. Does Midas only accept image size with 512 x 512? or it can be any sizes? Thank you

[@RamonValdez2014]

Colab 3.1 version accepted my 3K input image and produced a fine quality output, without downsizing.

[@CanalBigMaqui]

Have a Question!, Does midas leaves some files on your pc?. Cause after I used it i have half space on my C: disk and now I only have left 80gb of space, an I dont know where it came from!! HELP

[@AIAnimationStudio]

If installed locally, It really should not have taken any where near that amount of space on your C:: disk. I can only assume something else unrelated happened. Good luck finding the cause. (But you could use Midas via hugging face, or Colab without filling up space on your harddrive (bar the small file you download at the end). Also I'd now recommend checking out ZoeDepth which you'll find on Hugging Face as well.

[@harricoentertainment]

🙌🏾

[@AIAnimationStudio]

🤟

[@Worldize]

Can you edit depth maps?

[@Sketching4Sanity]

Love ✊🏿

[@armondtanz]

I wanted to do a shoutout for a tutorial/hacks. I like your workflow ;). 1. What about PNG sequence? I remember years ago andrew kramer placing smoke/fire effects in and around a scene using depth maps. It was about 6-7 years ago. Example: take your scene, create a png sequence video of it in gen2. Then create png seq of depth maps. Then have ability to add smoke in distance , fire in foreground. Im sure its possible, but again was a while back . Thanks.

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Yeah, you can definitely do stuff like that. (Good old Andrew Kramer Tutorials... 🙌.. I might have to see if I can find his old tutorial to see exactly what you mean). I assume it'll be a similar approach to dropping the character into the 3D space in this video. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qma5omeXndKhbZY

[@armondtanz]

@@AIAnimationStudio ive seen others do it. Basically imagine a cube in an empty room. Now you wanna create realism by having bursts of flames and smoke. In real life the flames & smoke would be infront and behind the cube. I think you would use levels / curve sliders on the depth map and this would cut out the foreground - mid - background areas. In this video in the photoshop AI filters, im sure its using this technique to generate the depth of field . Its applying a mask to the blur in foreground - mid - background.

[@armondtanz]

@@AIAnimationStudio ah. Could it be gradient wipe. Great example here of the masking. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jHutnHaIfdaspNE Ffw to first layer chapter at 2:34

[@AIAnimationStudio]

​@@armondtanz .. Cool!!.. I know exactly what you mean. Great idea for a future tutorial, it's going on the list. I've actually got it going on in an AI short film I'm 'slooowly' making at the mo, with robots in amongst jungle leaves. It's a really useful technique and great way to relatively easily create something that looks a lot more complex.👍

[@izabotin]

Please share the dystopian cityscape scene too. So we can observe the development of diffrent systems in the future and try on other computers

[@AIAnimationStudio]

Great idea. I've added the dystopian cityscape, plus another image to download for free via this link aianimation.com/tutorial-06-create-higher-quality-depth-maps-with-ai/

[@jordanlotus188]

nice

[@clamojoat8543]

right now nothing compares to depth scanner maps

[@redman458]

Considering Depth Scanner includes MiDaS, ZoeDepth, and now Depth Anything builds in their models, I find that notion kinda silly. What Depth Scanner does provide is a better post processing pipeline for editing and 3D conversion.

[@derekhaller1835]

Unfortunately there seems to be a TypeError on the Midas server.

[@JJUmusic]

same here! not sure what the error means TypeError: expected size to be one of int or Tuple[int] or Tuple[int, int] or Tuple[int, int, int], but got size with types [, ]

[@yechanjung3626]

same here..

[@BarneyLikesBeer]

Does anyone know if there is a fix for this? are there any good alternative collabs that can be used instead?