Tracker motion controls Vs. 3D tracking… any info?

[Scott Roberts]

Have you looked at Motor from Imagineer Systems? Very cool.

https://www.mokey.com/products/motor/

Color Grading presets for After Effects, Premiere, etc., plus free presets and more.

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[Aaron Bear]

Thanks for the link, Ill check them out. Hopefully itll help answer some of my questions.

-Aaron-
“Wherever you go, there you are”

[Aaron Bear]

Im still a bit confused. It looks like Motor is a great auto-rotoscoping tool, or one that makes rotoscoping a heck of a lot easier. Im not quite sure, based off the video on that site, how the tracking data could be used in AE. It looks to be that all of Imagineer Systems are seperate programs, so Im a bit lost as to how Imagineer and AE might work together.

Idealy Id like to find a tracker that could change the perspective, rotation and scale of layer/comp. Maybe Im going about this wrong, but the only good example I can think of is the wall scene in the Ryan Vs. Dorkman 2 light saber battle (3:10 – 3:46)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-is63goeBgc
Apparently they used the Boujou 3d tracker so did all those effects digitally.

-Aaron-
“Wherever you go, there you are”

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[Sandman01]

I’ve worked with PfTrack from PixelFarm (https://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/products/products.aspx?PID=3) and I’m very satisfied by it. It’s kinna expensive. If u want a simpler solution try SynthEyes (https://www.ssontech.com/index.html).
U should check the video tutorials and the manual to get a better understanding of how this tracking programs work.
They export the tracked data in a Maya format (.ma) which can be imported in After Effects.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Algae,

It sounds like you need Mocha by Imagineer systems – it has all the roto features of Motor, but more indepth planar tracking and the ability to export data to AE, Flame, Quantel kit, Fusion, Shake, etc. Very powerful by the looks of it. I think there may be some awesome discount offers on it at the mo if you look around…

A 3D tracker (like Boujou, etc.) is what you’d need if you needed true 3D positional data for use in a 2D app. For tracking 2D objects in AE I reckon Mocha is your app.

Let me know how you get on with it if you get it – I’m hoping to purchase next week. There’s a beta on their site that might be worth a look..

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[Andy Blondin]

I would say that most 3D tracking software are just as easy to use as AE’s tracker. However, they can go alot deeper. All of them have auto trackers are pretty automatic. 3D tracking is an art in itself. I would suggest that you would also want to have a 3d app in your pipeline too though. I would suggest Synth eyes or matchmover SD, or PF hoe to start. Hope that helps.

[Darby Edelen]

[Algae998] “dealy Id like to find a tracker that could change the perspective, rotation and scale of layer/comp. Maybe Im going about this wrong, but the only good example I can think of is the wall scene in the Ryan Vs. Dorkman 2 light saber battle (3:10 – 3:46)”

You want a 3D point tracker. These will generally export to a variety of 3D formats, but the one that plays nice with AE is a Maya ASCII (.ma) file. When you import that it imports a composition with a Camera and a few Nulls (that correspond to tracking points). Then 3D layers in AE should respond to the ‘virtual’ camera in the same way the real world responded to the ‘real’ camera =)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Aaron Bear]

Alright, so if Im understanding this correctly…
Once the tracking has been rendered as a .ma file and opened in AE, you still need to import the tracked footage, then add the effects needed.
For the process of tracking a stationary object, like the wall, is a 3d tracker really needed? I ask this only becuase I know AE’s corner-pin tracking method seems to scale, track and rotate, as long as there are visable enough points to track.

Thanks for the info so quickly, its really been helpful!

-Aaron-
“Wherever you go, there you are”

[Joe Murray]

We just used Syntheyes on a project and it did an amazing job. Tracking marks left the frame and still it managed to figure out how to match position with the shot because of all its other reference points. Much better than 2D tracking. Are you shooting the wall or creating it in AE as well?

Joe Murray

[Darby Edelen]

If the wall is not moving then it’s a matter of matching the perspective correctly and not tracking. If you have any parallel lines to work with in the footage you should be able to either use a Corner Pin effect or a 3D layer to match the perspective.

It gets slightly more complicated when you have Lens distortion. If you have lens distortion (straight lines appearing to bulge in the footage due to field of view) you can use a Lens Distort effect to correct the bulging in the original footage, then cut and paste that Lens Distort effect to the footage you’re trying to match and invert it (you may need to pre-compose first to match the size of the footage).

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA