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Aerial real estate motion tracked property lines
Good afternoon! I am starting to shoot more aerial real estate video where clients are requesting motion tracked property lines. I am able to camera track, add a solid and camera, and use the pen tool with stroke to draw out the lines. For some shots this works, however, most the 3D effect causes the sections of the lines that are close to the camera appear large and blurry whereas the sections off in the distance are barely visible.
Is there a way to motion track a property line that is the same weight no matter how far it is from the 3d camera?
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9 Replies
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try the write on effect. i think thats what was used in this oddly convenient project https://videoh
ive.net/item/mov-lines/22547648 -
Thanks Richard! I’ll have to do some more research into this. Googling “write on effect after effects” hasn’t provided the info I was hoping for, more handwriting text focused. The video you linked shows something that I believe would work very well, however I don’t know how to create that. Again, more research on my part is needed.
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I’ve spent some time working on this issue. What I discovered was that setting a tracked solid and camera then using the pen tool to draw the property line with a stroke resulted in very pixelated lines that were close to the camera. Instead, after tracking the camera, I created a null then a shape layer. I drew the property lines with the pen tool and stroked it. This reduced the pixelation but the perspective issue is still present. Lines near the camera appear much larger than lines off near the horizon.
I’m not sure how to address this in after effects. The only idea I have at this point is to shoot for the property line overlays. Keeping the drone higher and angling the camera down more should “flatten” things giving me more of a google earth view and the property lines should appear more the same size.
I just wish there was a way to address this in the software as I like keeping the drone lower and shooting with some sky in the frame.
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You could stagger the lines so that closer lines uses a thiner stroke.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Thanks for the response! What do you mean by staggering the stroke? A quick google search didn’t turn up anything. I’ll dig more into it as well.
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In other words don’t do it all in a single line – use multiple lines, and set the lines on the grid that are farther away from camera to a thinner stroke. There might me a little tiny “jog” where each line joins, but shouldn’t be too obtrusive.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
That’s a great idea! Thank you very much. I’ll give that a go and report back.
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in the comp that you have your camera track and the solid with the mask on it, remove the stroke effect (so you just see the solid), and then hide the drone footage layer.
bring that comp into a new comp and add the drone footage too (bellow the comp with the camera track and solid — so you basically have hat you had before).
now select the camera track comp and choose layer>layer styles>stroke. layer styles>stoke should add a stroke around the alpha of the masked solid in your camera tracked comp, but not have any perspective to the stroke.
to show only the stroke (and not the masked solid) twirl down the layer styles>blending modes>advanced blending property and set the fill opacity to 0%, and I think you’ll get what you are after.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Thank you very much for the response. This is completely new to me, I’m excited to give it a go! I’ll report back once I get some time to try.
You all are great. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to share your knowledge, I greatly appreciate it.
Jon
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