• Adobe After Effects

  help with imported boujou .ban and or boujou .ma file

  Posted by George Caramanna on July 25, 2005 at 6:44 pm

  Im in somewhat over my head with this. I have camera tracking info from boujou and now need to matchmove some Matte footage with the camera track. I import the .ban file and get the reference points. Forgive this beginner question but how do I use these points to match move my footage with the original shot?

  If I import a maya file I have a camera track but am not sure on how to use this either. When I make the camera track as the parent it doenst really match up with the footage that the match move was derived from.

  I have imported the boujou plugin into after effects so it sees the .ban files.

  I have been assured that the camera tracks are spot on.

  Any help or direction as to where I should look would be greatly appreciated.

  Regards

  George

  Chris Smith replied 21 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Chris Smith

  July 25, 2005 at 7:38 pm

  I haven’t used Boujou, but I have used Icarus (now PF Track).

  Do the track. Then after the software found hundreds of tracking points, you right click on one of them that is on the area in 3D space where you want to put your AE layer to give that tracking dot a name for reference. For example, a dot that tracked on a fire hydrant. Right click it and call it hydrant. Then name other tracking dots specific things to help you understand the depth.

  Save as a .ma file (Maya file). Load into Maya. All the tracking points will be converted to Maya nulls. Erase them all except the ones you named. Change their names to fit the AE convention which is:

  null_Hydrant
  null_Sign
  null_Whatever

  Then save as a new .ma

  Bring this into AE. The nulls will become AE nulls. You can then place your AE layers at the same position as the nulls so they are at the right place in 3D space.

  You may have to shrink the layers from 100% down to about 1% because of the differences in scale from Maya to AE.

  That’s how I do it and I get a perfect conversion everytime with a dead on track (assuming it tracked well in the 3D tracking software in the first place).

  Chris Smith
  https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

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