Syntheyes and AE – motion tracking

[Matthew Woods]

I’ve actually used Syntheyes and AE together several times, and it works well. I think what you are doing wrong is parenting your tracking layer to the Null generated by SynthEyes. The nulls don’t actually move, they represent points in space in the scene and the camera moves, so parenting to the null isn’t going to change anything. What I usually do, is copy the position data of the null in the scene I want place my object near, and paste that into the 3d position property of the layer I want to add to the scene, then scale that layer appropriately. Also, make sure that your composition is set to view through the camera that Syntheyes created.

[Matthew Woods]

Try this tutorial:

https://www.ssontech.com/content/setoae.htm

[Michael Goraj]

Thanks for all the input I really appreciate it.

I actually used that tutorial for my basis and it didn’t work. What Russ does is simply drop his image on the timeline (and sets the image proportions, etc.) and it connects to the tracker data immediately. When I drop it in, the connection isn’t made. I followed his steps verbatim and the program doesn’t respond.

The only difference between his and my footage is that his is rotating motion within the screen and mine is footage moving toward a stationary object that moves off the screen.

[Michael Goraj]

P.S. I will try to copy the position data of the ‘origin’ null and see how that works but I don’t understand why when Russ drops the image it automatically connects and mine just sits dormant. I would expect it at the least to move, shake, warp, skew, etc.

[Michael Goraj]

Maybe I am mistaken but how do I “set to view through the camera that Syntheyes created?”

[Matthew Woods]

When you export the shot from SynthEyes as a .ma, and import it into After Effects, it comes in as a composition with a bunch of 3d nulls representing tracking points, and a camera layer. When you drag your original footage into that composition as a 2d layer backplate, it should line up and you should see the nulls moving in sync with the background footage when you scrub the timeline. To place an image into the shot, you must make sure it is a 3d layer, (has the little 3d cube box checked) and that you are looking through the moving camera. If you saw the nulls moving when you scrubbed, then you are probably looking through that camera. If there is only one camera in the shot, you usually are looking through it, but you could be in front view or something. You can change cameras with the little dropdown tab at the bottom of the composition window.

[Michael Goraj]

Thanks again for your help. I will attempt this later and let you know how it goes.

As a side note I exported the tracking data using the maya preset/extension as well and tried to import it into maya but I got an error message saying there was missing data. What could that be?

[Michael Goraj]

Matt-

If I were to pay you would you write a tutorial for this based specifically on my footage?

It would have to include steps in Maya about creating a photo-realistic sign for compositing in AE.

I have the sample clip of what I was trying to achieve as well as the raw clip used as the background that I can post on youtube and/or send to you.

I can’t explain what happened when I copied and pasted the position keyframes of the tracking data onto the object layer. The closest thing I can say occurred is that the object disappeared and in its place the data turned into a flying ribbon that made random movements at a rapid pace.

[Matthew Woods]

I don’t know if I can help you there. I don’t have much Maya modeling experience. I’m mostly an AE guy. I used synth eyes for a piece we were doing on Shipbuilding where I had to composite text into the shots, many of which had radical camera moves. An example is here:

https://homepage.mac.com/mattness/LaserCutter.mov

You are welcome to post your assets and I’ll take a look at them.