Andrew Shanks
Forum Replies Created
-
Short answer is there is only one 3rd party tracking plugin I know of for After Effects (I played with the demo ages ago, but it didn’t seem to be as accurate as the stock stadard version), …but most of us that want more powerful tracking, look to matchmove software that works as a stand alone application, …PFHoe and Syntheyes both export 2D tracking data in an after effects format as well as full 3D matchmove camera data in maya format that after effects can use.
The after effects tracker is okay when you get to know it, …the key is to look for well defined high contrast areas in your image (corners are great), then do at least two tracks, …one forward, then select the same feature again and do a second track in reverse, …use an expression to average them, and there you go, you should have a less jittery, good track in most cases. 🙂 Other thing to remember is if you have a feature that goes off screen and you wish to continue the track on another feature, hold down Alt (or Opt on the Mac) and drag the feature box to the new target feature, …the little crosshair feature target will remain heading in the direction it was going, so your path remains unbroken even though the feature is now wandering off onto the pasteboard off the side of the screen.
Goodluck! -
Short answer is there is only one 3rd party tracking plugin I know of for After Effects (I played with the demo ages ago, but it didn’t seem to be as accurate as the stock stadard version), …but most of us that want more powerful tracking, look to matchmove software that works as a stand alone application, …PFHoe and Syntheyes both export 2D tracking data in an after effects format as well as full 3D matchmove camera data in maya format that after effects can use.
The after effects tracker is okay when you get to know it, …the key is to look for well defined high contrast areas in your image (corners are great), then do at least two tracks, …one forward, then select the same feature again and do a second track in reverse, …use an expression to average them, and there you go, you should have a less jittery, good track in most cases. 🙂 Other thing to remember is if you have a feature that goes off screen and you wish to continue the track on another feature, hold down Alt (or Opt on the Mac) and drag the feature box to the new target feature, …the little crosshair feature target will remain heading in the direction it was going, so your path remains unbroken even though the feature is now wandering off onto the pasteboard off the side of the screen.
Goodluck! -
There is a thread from a couple of days ago covering this. Check it out. 🙂
-
There is a thread from a couple of days ago covering this. Check it out. 🙂
-
PFHoe certainly looks the pick for price/features if you’re not doing anything above SD rez. I’d definitely give the trail a go.
Just have to speak up though, Syntheyes works great! …I use it for both 2D tracks (will export after effects position data for a selected tracker or average of many selected trackers, which can be handy for steadying a mildly dodge 2D track) and for full 3D matchmoving (I like its mix of manual and auto features, which puts it somewhere between matchmover pro and boujou, but without the pain in the pocket). The lastest version is pretty darn stable on my system (and I hit it hard), another nice thing is the creator of the program also listens to user input (not many companies where you get emails directly from the main creator of the app!). Give the demo a rev if you want to see if it would work for you (but if you’re just doing casual stuff at SD, I think PFHoe is probably the choice for you, …both have trial versions, they’re the best way to test things, …Syntheyes has a lot more features and support for high resolutions, and we use it a lot, but yeah, for a casual comp its probably overkill). -
Hi Elvis,
I had a play using the suggestions you made, and things look very promising (adding quite a bit of randomness really does give the bee’s a sense of being alive). I think I might need to change my source particle image though (as I quite like the effect I’m getting when I go a bit OTT with the random setting, getting random particles flying back close to camera, ..unfortunately I scaled the image a little too small to look good at that close a scrutiny). Thanks for the suggestions. 🙂Cheers,
andrew
🙂
-
Yes, a great suggestion, here are the links to those threads on zit zapping.
-
There are various ways of doing this. The most usual is good old rotoscoping (frame by frame painting) based on the tried and true magazine retouch technique of air brushing (although in this digital age you’re usually you are using the clone tool rather than airbrush of any type). Films such as the last Harry Potter had some compositors assigned to doing pimple removal, and a lot more films are starting to use digital work in post to fix blemishes not concealed by makeup at the time. So yeah, short answer is using the clone tool (with a feathered brush shape). Another (more silent era, black and white film) technique is the softening off of the persons complexion as a whole (they used to do this with leading ladies in old films, using soft lighting, lense filters, etc), …you can do similar in after effects by glowing out the highlights a little (the way I do it is to duplicate your footage layer, on the upper layer add a fast blur (check the “repeat edge pixels” checkbox and choose a value of about 25), change the layers mode to “screen” and then alter the opacity to taste.
Hope that helps!
andrew
🙂
-
I’m a kiwi, but concider Canada my second home. As listed by others here, Toronto is big (not just with the fact some of the big boys of software developers are there, but its kind of the hub of Canadian made films), having said that, Vancouver is known as Hollywood North, and it has this rep due to the number of stateside productions that skirt over the boarder and film in BC, often using companies in Vancouver to help with post production (visual effects houses such as Stargate Films, and Technicolor).
Depending on the type of animation work you’re looking at, Electronic Arts (EA) also has their motion capture studio in Vancouver (I’m not sure what other animation facilities they have there, I only know about that one beacuse a friend of mine who was a stunty on LOTR did a couple of stints over there for the games of the films). Canada seems to have a very strong film industry, Toronto and Vancouver seem to be the busiest for work, and Montreal would be next on the list from what I’ve seen.
Goodluck!andrew
🙂
-
As Chris says, AE6.5 Pro has the final effects plugins as standard (CE), copying the parameters across from the m100 final effects version should work exactly the same. Boris I believe now owns all of Media100’s assets (hence why the website is probably in poor state of repair), …but am not sure about the licencing of the final effects bundle, whether Boris gets rights to it as well (as the original creators of the plugin set must have retained technology rights as they now provide a licence to Adobe for the normal versions, and they sell a pro version of the same plugins too (available to buy at all the usual online plugin suppliers).