Tracking on a Jib Shot

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave Horwell] “I’ve got to put some writing on a beach, I’ve made the text in photoshop and I just need to match the jib camera move… I’m running a demo of cs6 until I sign up for the cloud so I don’t have mocha. Any tips would be gratefully appreciated !”

Have you tried the new 3D tracker?

See this introductory video by Todd Kopriva [link].

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Dave Horwell]

I did have a look but it rather over-complicated what i hoped would be fairly straight forward

Dave Horwell
Avid & FCP Editor

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave Horwell] “I did have a look but it rather over-complicated what i hoped would be fairly straight forward”

The 3D tracker is pretty straightforward to use (see the video I linked to), and it may give you much better results than you’re getting with the point tracker, faster and with less manual intervention.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Dave Horwell]

Your tutorial is great, thank you, it’ll definitely be useful. Sadly this shot seems to lack contrast, i only get a handful of tracking points, mostly on the walking figure rather than than the pebbles on the shore.

Dave Horwell
Avid & FCP Editor

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave Horwell] “Your tutorial is great, thank you, it’ll definitely be useful.”

That’s from Todd Kopriva, Adobe employee and AE genius.

[Dave Horwell] “Sadly this shot seems to lack contrast, i only get a handful of tracking points, mostly on the walking figure rather than than the pebbles on the shore.”

That could explain why you’re having so much trouble getting a good track with the point tracker, too. You might have to step through the track frame by frame and correct it where it goes off the rails.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Dave Horwell]

One final question for today. If I’ve used the camera track how can I bring in an object and ‘fix’ it to one the the after effects created tracking points ? Thank you !

Dave Horwell
Avid & FCP Editor

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave Horwell] “If I’ve used the camera track how can I bring in an object and ‘fix’ it to one the the after effects created tracking points ?”

Once you’ve tracked the footage, with the layer selected in the timeline panel and the 3D Camera Tracker effect selected in the Effects Controls panel, hover the mouse around the comp viewer and locate a point at or near the spot you want to stick your object to. Right-click (or control-click) and choose Create Null and Camera.

With the new moving camera, all 3D layers will track now.

Copy the position from the null and paste it on whatever other 3D layer you like to get it roughly positioned in 3D space. Tweak its orientation and position as necessary to fine-tune the location.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You can increase the contrast of a clip prior to tracking. ALso, CS6 provides a new Parenting feature – Shift+Parent. To get this to work, you select your designated child layer and parent, as per usual, using the pick-whip AND add the Shift key.

Shift+Parent forces a layer to inherit all the Parent’s transform (minus Opacity) properties without any translation. Shift+Parent is ideal when you want to ‘fix’ a layer onto a null/solid/text created with AE’s 3D Cam Tracker or Nulls created with mochaAE/Pro’s Camera Solves.

HTH
RoRK

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