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Mocha or Basic Tracker?
Hey guys! So I’ve been playing around with a bit of tracking in After Effects and i’ve got some pretty nice results and some terrible ones too. What I’m trying to achieve is something like this video https://vimeo.com/17529023 from Marcus Eckert.
I tried AE’s Tracker first and managed to get this https://vimeo.com/27860963 but there was a lot of manual tweaking that had to be done to the individual child objects.
I’ve tried Mocha but it seems like it works by placing footage in Surfaces that have to be tracked to planes.
I’m just trying to get my objects to float above a flat surface (like say, a table). I’ve tried tracking a table by the edges, aligning the Surface to it, exporting to AE, and then parenting the Surface to a 3D object which had previously been rotated to match the perspective in the footage but obviously that didn’t work.
Did that make any sense? This is driving me crazy!
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13 Replies
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I’m sure you’ll get suggestions and tips involving Null objects and planar trackers — however what you need to record the translation of the 3D space is a camera tracker like the Foundry’s.
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/cameratracker/
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I agree with Brian — you need a 3D tracker. There are a number of good ones out there. The Foundry’s tracker integrates directly with AE, which is a nice bonus.
A somewhat limited but effective (and relatively inexpensive) piece of software is pixelfarm’s “pf hoe” (https://www.pfhoe.com). Pixelfarm also makes a much more robust tracker, pf track. I have used Syntheyes (https://ssontech.com/) with excellent results on some complex scenes.
The basic process if you’re using one of these other pieces of software is to (1) track the footage (find elements in the scene, track them for the duration of the shot), (2) “solve” the shot, which creates an animated 3D camera and a cloud of static 3D points that match/overlay the movement of the 2D trackers, (3) place markers, bits of geometry, etc, so you can know where the “floor” “walls” and other elements in your scene are located, and finally (4) export the 3D camera and null objects to AE, frequently as a .jsx script.
Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
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For camera moves that are similar to what you have in your example you can “fake it” using Mocha. Here’s a good example:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/magic_tracking/However I would recommend Camera Tracker from the Foundry as well for a good 3d track.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Mocha should do fine with what you want to do. A Matchmove using 3D Tracking will allow for more options although it’s not necessary in this case.
Your workflow seems funky. If you have tracked with perspective in Mocha, you would then export Corner Pin data from Mocha into AE. This way, your perspective is also matched and you do not need to eyeball a 3D layer to match the perspective.
It sounds like you’ve exported only the Transform data from Mocha and not the Corner Pin data.
To obtain the parallax that you want, instead of having your text stick onto the tracked object, you can offset its position (either X, Y or Z or a combo).
HTH
RoRKIntensive AE & Mocha Training in Asia.
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Wow, thanks for the quick response guys!
Yea, I knew it had to be possible since I’d already tracked with perspective, and I did export the data as corner pin. Let’s say I track the surface of the wooden block in the second video and export the corner pin data with a Surface. Can’t I just position a pre-comp perpendicular to that Surface? But Imma keep trying just in case it’s some minor thing I’m missing. Thanks loads for the help!
Btw guys, the CameraTracker thing looks really good but I don’t think I can shell out that kind of money for something I won’t be using that much.
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[Ray Lee] “Can’t I just position a pre-comp perpendicular to that Surface?”
You could but due to the different perspective (hence movement) between the original tracked surface and the perpendicular surface, you’re going to experience drifting.
Just track the perspective of the surface and corner pin it. Then apply a 3D transform rotation that suits your needs. As long as the rendering order starts with the Corner Pin followed by the transform, you should be fine with this workflow.
Lastly, for your exact scenario, it’s best to track the side of the block facing the camera. You may want to place one or more markers on the said side as the bottom part of the block is not visible. The markers do not necessarily have to reach the edge of the side. As long as the marker(s) are within the same plane, you should be fine.
Then use the Clone tool to remove the marker(s). I like advertisements from print magazines as they usually contain white spaces with other graphics/text (strong contrast) that act as good textures for Mocha to track. Just ensure that the markers are laid firmly on the surface and that they allow themselves to be removed via cloning without too much hassles – the smaller they are while still being able to serve their tracking needs is crucial.
HTH
RoRKIntensive AE & Mocha Training in Asia.
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Okay, I’ve been testing this Mocha out for the day and one major issue I’ve noticed is I can’t make anything a child of the Null object containing the tracked data. I’ve tried the only two options available to me (transform/corner pin).
The transform data doesn’t seem to synch the Null to the footage at all after I paste the data on it. I’ve checked the footage size, frame rate, everything but I can’t get this to work.
The corner pin data works as it should with a Surface but I can’t seem to parent anything to the Null containing this data. The Null is all that’s synching to the footage and everything else ignores the parenting.
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[Ray Lee] “I don’t think I can shell out that kind of money for something I won’t be using that much.”
The Voodoo tracker is available for non-commercial projects: https://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/download.html
Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
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Dude, you’re tripping over yourself with each post. It now seems obvious that you don’t know what Parenting does. I suggest that you read the manual on the topic and then tackle a couple of the COW tutorials.
Then go through the COW’s Mocha tutorials as well as those on the Imagineer site.
Cheers
RoRKIntensive AE & Mocha Training in Asia.
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Uhh, no disrespect or anything but if I didn’t know what Parenting does, I wouldn’t even have been able to do the test video.
I’ve gone through tutorials and it seems like my version of Mocha’s missing some things. Might be a version thing.
Anyway, thanks for all the help. I’ll keep looking around for possible solutions.
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