Adjusting track markers

[Simon Bonner]

Hi Dave,

The track should have applied position keyframes to your new layer. Rotation keyframes too, if you’ve tracked multiple points. If you select the layer and hit U, which will reveal all modified properties and show you your keyframes. If you change the values of any of these keyframes, you will modify the track point.

You can do this before you apply your track too, on the tracked footage layer. But if the track is off for a number of frames, it’s best to retrack. You can retrack single frames at a time, so it’s not a case of having to start entirely from scratch.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysfx

[Dave Gots]

thanks simon. yeah, the track bounces around a bit so i guess i’ll re-track. just wanted to be sure, thanks.

and along these lines, what’s the trick to getting the layer that you’re cornerpinning onto a bg plate to lay properly onto that plate without it getting skewed so much. i’m tracking something into a picture frame, using a perspective grid, and my points aren’t exactly symmetrical, so it’s getting squished pretty good. really, i want to apply the cpin without it squashing my fg image. know what i mean?

i know in other software, there’s some type of trick where you can invert the cpin curves on your hero frame, kill the rest of the points and apply that so that your image inverts again to it’s original form, but will stay that way throughout. what’s the trick to getting this done in AE?

thanks much.

dave

[Dave Gots]

Thanks Dave,
But when you cornerpin something, doesn’t it take the four corners of the image you’re pinning and make them equal to the 4 corners of your perspective grid? so everything gets squashed.

I read somewhere that the plate res and the image you’re pinning’s res needs to be the same, but I tried that and it squashed it even more. know what i mean?

[Dave Gots]

thanks dave,
i understand what you’re saying, but the object i’m pinning doesn’t extend all the way out to the corners of the plate, as it would be if i was comping a 4×3 insert into a 4×3 TV set. it’s literally, a medium shot of a guy holding a round picture frame and then i’m inserting a new picture into the frame and tracking it with the shot. but, my new picture isn’t 2048, as is my plate. my picture is, say, 400×300, and the cornerpins aren’t exactly symmetrical to the picture frame i’m tracking it in. it’s a big, square gangly frame (with a round center where the pic goes), and the points that i can track aren’t lined up. there aren’t any track markers on it. so my track points are like this:

* *

* *

so you can see, when i apply cpins to perfectly square insert, it’s going to skew my image in an undesirable manner. sorry i can’t post a pic of it right now. it’s on a box somewhere else. hopefully i’m explaining it OK.

so what i really want is to NOT skew the image by the corners of the cpin, leave my insert at 400×300, slide it and scale it into place and then have it track with the 4 corners.

know what i mean?

thanks again.

[Dave Gots]

sorry, those markers i put in to my last post didn’t come out as i had typed them. they were supposed to be further apart and not evenly spaced. yeah, i don’t have mocha, just AE. sounds like i need to go with 2 pt track versus a 4 point track. i’ll give that a whirl.

thanks for the help!

dave