• Adobe After Effects

  motion tracking – what am I missing?

  Posted by Brett Nelson on May 5, 2008 at 8:37 am

  I must be missing something obvious. I’m trying to cover part of a background in a shot (an object on a wall). I’ve cut out a matching piece of wall and created an alpha. I’m using this object in a layer as my motion target. When I apply, the graphic is located in the middle of the screen and not tracking.

  Thanks!

  Brett

  Brett Nelson replied 18 years ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Paul Hennell

  May 5, 2008 at 9:31 am

  Have you seen this tutorial – https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=16 if not, it might help you out.
• 

  Joey Foreman

  May 5, 2008 at 2:02 pm

  Sounds like you need to move the anchor point of your target object until it lines up to where you want it.

  Joey Foreman
  Editor/Animator
  Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA
• 

  Brett Nelson

  May 5, 2008 at 2:42 pm

  Joey, that’s what’s confusing. I have tried adjusting the target layer’s anchor point, but it doesn’t track.

  Brett

  Paul, thank you for the tutorial link. I took a quick look at it and will definitely go back and watch it through.
• 

  Joey Foreman

  May 5, 2008 at 4:18 pm

  After applying are you seeing all the new keyframes for the position property of your target layer?

  Here’s another, arguably better way to track. Instead of using track, use stabilize. Target the layer stabilized, and turn on its 3d property. Add a camera and parent it to the stabilized layer. Drop in any new layers you want and activate their 3d property. They will all match the camera movements.
  Good luck.

  Joey Foreman
  Editor/Animator
  Nowhere Productions, Athens, GA
• 

  Brett Nelson

  May 5, 2008 at 6:29 pm

  Joey,
  Before I heard back from you I had already started working through Paul’s tutorial link. It worked beautifully. I want to come back and use your technique on another shot, because it looks like another good way.

  I threw a little noise onto my now-tracking chunk of wall and it looks pretty good.

  Thanks to both of you!

  Brett
• 

  Brett Nelson

  May 5, 2008 at 8:53 pm

  Paul,
  I spoke too soon. This tutorial worked great on my first clip, but it’s giving me a weird rotation on the second using the same steps. Any ideas? In the tutorial, he says to create a null object and then choose position and rotation. Can I choose position and scale instead. I really only want to animate by position, but that doesn’t two tracking points.

  thanks,

  Brett
• 

  Brett Nelson

  May 5, 2008 at 9:13 pm

  never mind. I think my problem was that one of my tracking points was too close to the edge of frame.

  Brett

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