How to track rectangular shades

[Dave Baum]

Hi, yeah either motion tracker or you can use Mocha AE which is built in within After Effects. It’s worth spending a little bit of time getting to know that as it will give better results a lot of the time I think, but is a bit more complicated to setup. I use it a lot so feel free to reply if you have a query and I’ll try to help

[andy Jackson]

Thanks Dave! I’ll defo have a route on Mocha and thank you thats kind of you ..

Cheers!

Andy

[andy Jackson]

Hi Dave,

OK so I sorted a good track in Mocha ..

When I create track data .. it applies it perfectly to the actual layer with Mocha on.

But when I try to apply the tracking Data to a Null Layer it just doesn’t do anything ..

Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance 🙂

Andy

[Andy Kiernan]

Mocha by default creates corner pin data, so works fine if you apply it to a, for example, solid layer the same size as the comp. I believe there is a drop down box in the mocha effect to change the data type to transform though which will work on your null

[Dave Baum]

Hi Andy

As said by Andy K above, it’s probably trying to “corner pin” on the null object, and there is nothing visible there, so even if it’s working right it won’t look like much is happening

You could try changing it to “transform” and apply that to the null instead. That would give you position, scale and rotation keyframes for the null. You could then use that null to control the position (tracking) of your new sunglasses covering. The options for what layer to apply the tracking data to are at the bottom of the effect (“Export Option” and “Layer Export to”)

You could also use the tracking data to create a mask or a matte which you could combine with the tracking

Hope it helps a bit

[andy Jackson]

Hi, thanks for your feedback, I have applied the “transform” and elected my null for the data ..

but It doesn’t seem to apply anything .. If I use transform and don’t select the null, the data is applied to my layer .. Could I copy that data to another layer?

I’m guessing it should work when applying to the null though ..