Andrew Shanks
Forum Replies Created
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If the 3d solve isn’t working (and it sounds like a bit of a tough solve if the only reference plane is a wall), you could try using the 2D export to clipboard (selecting tracking points that are as near as possible to where you wish to insert your new element, …if you choose a few points in syntheyes it will average their movement to a single 2D position track). In AE, create a new null, paste the position data to it. You can then parent whatever layers you like to the null and they’ll follow that pasted movement (you could apply the data straight to whichever layer you’re wanting to track to the scene, but thats always a bit more cumbersome, in that you then have to use the anchor point on the layer to move the element round, …when the element is parented you can just drag it to change it, and if you have multiple elements they can all reference the same position data, yet have the ability to have their own positions easily tweaked and animated in relation to that parent movement. The 2D track technique will only work if the camera is truly a tripod shot, if its handheld you’re likely to get a small amount of 3d movement of the camera which will make your 2D tracked planes look wrong. I suggest you post your query on the syntheyes forum (from the parent companies site) as Russ (the guy who wrote the software, really helpful guy) or one of the other pro matchmovers there might be able to give you a better technique to use.
Goodluck!andrew
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Zooms are always a bit of a problem for matchmovers (as the way they work is based on parallax, …i.e. a camera or object moving in a scene in relation to something else in the scene (giving foreground/background separation), …with a simple zoom (locked off camera), you don’t get that, thus the software can’t do a true 3D solve, …it can to a rough guess at what a zoom lense is doing if you tell the software its a zoom lense and that its on a tripod and maybe give it some measurements of known objects in the scene, …but in my experience 2.5D works as often as it doesn’t work 50:50), Syntheyes handles 2.5D better than many (boujou freaks usually if trying zooms), but it still has issues. What are the problems you’re getting? Are you having slipping? If so maybe check your co-ordinate system is setup right (i.e. your floor plane is where the floor should be). Theres a good general workflow tutorial here on Cow that goes through the syntheyes process (with some good tips).
cheers,
andrew
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Yes, syntheyes will export to After Effects. It uses a special version of the maya exporter (simplified) to do this (in syntheyes it is labeled After Effects export via .ma). I also had a hand in writing the 2D after effects exporter for syntheyes, which again can be handy in certain circumatances (as its very quick at tracking multiple 2D points and you can export either individual tracker movements or select multiple ones (which syntheyes will average, …this can be handy for stabilization). If you have a look in the syntheyes help file under exporting to your animation package, it has further suggestions for corner pinning work.
Hope that helps.Andrew
🙂
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Frischluft generally provide plugins for both platforms, so I’d be inclined to email them and ask if a Mac version is on the way (it might be that they’ve only got the PC version ready at this point, I’d hope that they’l be providing an OSX version of it, …its a very new plugin).
As for other options, I haven’t heard of any other plugin that can do quite the same thing for AE, …but some stop-motion and claymation software can allow you to do live chroma keys using DV camera input, so maybe have a look around those (there are Mac and PC apps around, but i couldn’t give you much info about the Mac based ones).
Sorry I can’t be of more help.Goodluck!
Andrew
🙂
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Hey Pearl,
heres the way i work, I use a feed from the camera (going via firewire, …and converter if its an analogue feed) directly into After Effects using the great little plugin “Lensfeed”
https://www.frischluft.com/lensfeed/introduction.phpI suggest downloading the demo and having a play to deside whether it will work for you (if its not for you, scroll past this blurb to my next comment). Basically lensfeed is a filter, so you make a new solid in a composition (of relevent resolution), apply the filter, then it will select the first video source it comes across (if you have multiple video sources you can select which one, ….indeed by using instances of the filter on 5 layers you can have in theory have 5 live feeds in your composition. Feeds show up just like a normal after effects layer, ….except they keep updating. This means you can apply any after effects filter or transform you like to it (as if it was a normal source layer). Its not a realtime feed (i.e. don’t expect 25 or 30fps, more like a couple of frames a second), but its enough to setup lights and check things such as eyelines, etc. I usually apply keylight, do a rough one click key, then display the matte, …even on a good key this will show up weak areas for the gaffer to fix, ….once thats done you can do a quick tweak of the keylight settings to see that it will key okay.
When you can’t get a feed, or the feed is of poor quality due to the nature of the firewire source, the standard practice is to take a digital still (at aprox resolution, …i.e. 2k for film or HD, less for broadcast, …approximate other camera settings too if you can, …and save using fine jpeg, ….don’t go raw, as that will give you too crip a result, you want a bit of grunge in there just for safety to keep you on your toes) of the set. I usually get the DP to take the camera and take a shot from below or in front of the camera lense prior to first take on a new setup (then I rush away, copy to my laptop and do a test key in After Effects to make sure we’ll have no problems in post).
You can of course capture your footage using a non-linear system too (and even do the rough keying in there as you wish. So yeah, many ways to do the job. But I definitely recommend using the matte view (black and white alpha) to show the DP and Gaffer when setting up a greenscreen shoot, …they love being able to see where possible problems could lurk.
Goodluck!!
Andrew
🙂
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Hey Chris!
I confess I’m stuck in PC-land these days so don’t have a G4 or G5 to use commotions hardware acelerated tracking on, …hmmm, have been looking at getting my own shake seat on a mac so maybe old commotion will get a dusting off for some tracking duties (great it comes with both pc and mac versions in the box, …certainly used to be the most accurate 2D tracker, and the ability to send keyframes to AE was always great). I worked on a feature film last year with a friend of mine and he was using the roto-import plugin, using commotion for rotosplining then importing those into the final composites he was doing in AE, …worked a treat. Will be interesting to see what the curious gfx licencing will give AE in terms of tracking and roto abilities.
As for expressions, they’re not too horrible, …I too dabble in scripting only when necessary, …but thankfully AE tries to guess what you might be wanting to do based one you using the pickwhip to drag and drop on a parent attribute from another layer (then you can add basic maths to that to get the result you want), …the whole pickwhip thing reminds me of the way parenting of attributes in shake works (although its been a while since I played in shake so I might be mistaken, but i seem to remember it using a similar way of operating). Anything more complex you can usually find a template on one an AE expressions site or from other users on the forum, …I got the tracking averaging template from a user on cow, and now just call it up whenever I’m trying to smooth a track (the track forward then track backward of the same target, works a treat to smooth out the little bits of jitter that the high subpixel sampling introduces in AE).I hope that AE7 does address the compositing users (high on my list is floating point and revamping the flowchart view into a proper nodal interface, …something that isn’t technically that difficult as nodal is the way every compositor runs under the hood, compositions being like nested trees, …only real addition would be the provision of some basic nodes (such as layer linking varieties, maybe premult, transfer mode node (or could be handled with witin the source layers own node preferences), and a transform node (that takes care of all of AEs normal transform options). All dreams at this point, but I will be annoyed if AE7 is more geared towards motion graphics without improving visual effects workflow/toolset).
we wait and see.
cheers,
andrew
🙂
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Hey Chris!
I confess I’m stuck in PC-land these days so don’t have a G4 or G5 to use commotions hardware acelerated tracking on, …hmmm, have been looking at getting my own shake seat on a mac so maybe old commotion will get a dusting off for some tracking duties (great it comes with both pc and mac versions in the box, …certainly used to be the most accurate 2D tracker, and the ability to send keyframes to AE was always great). I worked on a feature film last year with a friend of mine and he was using the roto-import plugin, using commotion for rotosplining then importing those into the final composites he was doing in AE, …worked a treat. Will be interesting to see what the curious gfx licencing will give AE in terms of tracking and roto abilities.
As for expressions, they’re not too horrible, …I too dabble in scripting only when necessary, …but thankfully AE tries to guess what you might be wanting to do based one you using the pickwhip to drag and drop on a parent attribute from another layer (then you can add basic maths to that to get the result you want), …the whole pickwhip thing reminds me of the way parenting of attributes in shake works (although its been a while since I played in shake so I might be mistaken, but i seem to remember it using a similar way of operating). Anything more complex you can usually find a template on one an AE expressions site or from other users on the forum, …I got the tracking averaging template from a user on cow, and now just call it up whenever I’m trying to smooth a track (the track forward then track backward of the same target, works a treat to smooth out the little bits of jitter that the high subpixel sampling introduces in AE).I hope that AE7 does address the compositing users (high on my list is floating point and revamping the flowchart view into a proper nodal interface, …something that isn’t technically that difficult as nodal is the way every compositor runs under the hood, compositions being like nested trees, …only real addition would be the provision of some basic nodes (such as layer linking varieties, maybe premult, transfer mode node (or could be handled with witin the source layers own node preferences), and a transform node (that takes care of all of AEs normal transform options). All dreams at this point, but I will be annoyed if AE7 is more geared towards motion graphics without improving visual effects workflow/toolset).
we wait and see.
cheers,
andrew
🙂
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I don’t agree with some of your points Chris, the 2D tracker is fine (I use both Commotion and Combustion I hasten to mention, and i do a lot of 2D and matchmoving), …as for manipulation of keyframes, thats what expressions excell at (the most useful expression I use is for averaging a forward track with a reverse track to get a silky smooth average). I used to love commotion, and its tracker has always been one of the best, …but using it now, well, its far too slow, …I have 3D matchmoving software that can complete a whole scene with hundreds of track points in the time it takes to do one (so that combined with only 8 bit support means commotion now doesn’t get a look in, ….although i still dream of superclone being re-incarnated in AE one day, …and yes, tracking to mask points would be good too).
As for colour correction, we do have colour finesse (which is very powerful), …but yes, I have to confess that even though its one of the better correctors around, its soooo painful to use it in After Effects, …would be nice to either have better integration of it (i.e. it works in the after effects interface direct) or for AE to have its own version.
As for AE7, …yeah, I’m upset its not out, …but I actually figure the delay might be due to them integrating things for recent acqusitions (including macromedia, and curious GFX). Curious GFX is a good (if a little querky in its GUI) rotoscoping program, that if integrated properly, should give us all the rotoscoping goodies we’e been craving.
Cheers,
andrew
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I don’t agree with some of your points Chris, the 2D tracker is fine (I use both Commotion and Combustion I hasten to mention, and i do a lot of 2D and matchmoving), …as for manipulation of keyframes, thats what expressions excell at (the most useful expression I use is for averaging a forward track with a reverse track to get a silky smooth average). I used to love commotion, and its tracker has always been one of the best, …but using it now, well, its far too slow, …I have 3D matchmoving software that can complete a whole scene with hundreds of track points in the time it takes to do one (so that combined with only 8 bit support means commotion now doesn’t get a look in, ….although i still dream of superclone being re-incarnated in AE one day, …and yes, tracking to mask points would be good too).
As for colour correction, we do have colour finesse (which is very powerful), …but yes, I have to confess that even though its one of the better correctors around, its soooo painful to use it in After Effects, …would be nice to either have better integration of it (i.e. it works in the after effects interface direct) or for AE to have its own version.
As for AE7, …yeah, I’m upset its not out, …but I actually figure the delay might be due to them integrating things for recent acqusitions (including macromedia, and curious GFX). Curious GFX is a good (if a little querky in its GUI) rotoscoping program, that if integrated properly, should give us all the rotoscoping goodies we’e been craving.
Cheers,
andrew
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Hey dude, don’t apologise, can be frustrating when something small like that happens. I suspect that your composition window has been switched to maximize (like in all windows windows (?:-) and Mac windows, at the top right hand corner of the window box are 3 tiny icons, one usually minimizes the screen, one toggles between maximized (full screen) or floating windows box, and the final one closes the window all together (they are in that order left to right in windows). Simply look over to the top right hand corner of the screen (in line with the menu bar) and click on the middle tiny icon (represented by two overlapping pages when in full screen mode), things should go back to normal. 🙂
When in full screen mode, if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can use it to zoom in and out of your image and holding down the space bar while left clicking allows you to move around the image window (where normally you’d have scroll bars, …this is a quicker navigating method).Hope that helps!
andrew
🙂