-
Motion Tracking question, please help!
Hi there,
I have been using After Effects for many years but have not touched the motion tracking features. My director wants to do a motion tracking effect of an aerial moving over some sand dunes where each shadowy area of the sand dunes to display different footage. I am trying to achieve this, (we just upgraded to CS3) and I am just lost at the moment. The tracking points I made just seem to be wobbling everywhere even though I chose the contrasty areas. I think he also wants the footage to slant along the z axis, I am not even sure whether After Effects can track 3D layers. Can someone please help? -
3 Replies
-
Hi Roxanna,
OK.. After Effects tracking.. When it works.. it is fabulous.. when it doesn’t it really really doesn’t.
The main problem is that it really does need a good solid point to track to.. There needs to be a consistent point through out your shot. I would imagine that there aren’t too many of these on aerial shot of sand.
There are some adjustments you can make. I like to have the outer box fairly big, it takes longer to work out, but it stabilizes the track better I find, also in the track options try tracking fields, and playing with the adapt feature on every frame and the extrapolate if confidence is below 80%.
There are a few tutorials you could look at here at the cow as well.
With regards to tracking in the z plane. no after effects can’t really do it.. you can try the scale.. but I have never really ad much like.. I think you wold be probably better of with a motion tracker like pf track or boujou.. but these aren’t cheap..
hope this was a help and good luck !!
Alex
-
Your director should have asked lots of questions before shooting. As Alex says, motion tracking footage that wasn’t designed to be motion tracked is expensive. Might be cheaper to rotoscope the footage and match move to the roto.
However, the advanced tracking capabilities in CS3 are capable of producing superb results. You just need to know what all of the obscure settings do and why you need them. suggest you invest in the Adobe Classroom in a Book called After Effect Studio Secrets. Big section on advanced use of the tracking.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
-
This is my first post on Creative Cow and I just want to thank you both for your answers. I think I might have do it by roto and manually match moving. But in the sake of exploring more options, would Mocha AE help me achieve this effect? We might consider a further upgrade if so.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up