[Pascal Reinhardt]

Now that the video is done i wanna post a little summary:

The tracking on the black screen with green markers and pink planes in front worked great with a few restrictions. If one of the pink planes was out of frame it, of course, lost the 3d tracking points. So all the important planes for 3d space should ALWAYS be visible.
And another thing i could’ve done better is to remove the green markers behind/close to the person. Because there were enough other markers and the one that sometimes show from behind the person were impossible to remove, so i had to remove them by hand frame by frame. Keylight 1.2 couldn’t get rid of them perfectly ,it always left a nasty frame around them.

Also, shooting on a black screen seemed good in theory, but because in post so many things changed and different ideas came to mind that it would’ve been better to have a greenscreen to completely remove. And shooting a black screen in a corner wasn’t necessary, because it may have confused the tracking program and it only made sense if in the end, the final shot was also placed in a corner. Even placing just text(for a lyric video) over the invisible walls in post looked kind of weird if there weren’t any walls to give the right spatial feeling.

I also shot on a greenscreen for the same video and just had some green and pink markers in the corners which i could just mask out. This footage proved to be way better to use. The person/talent was mostly to well lit because of the bright greenscreen behind it but it did work and was way easier to handle than the black screen. I shot with 25 frames and had some issues with motion blur over the greenscreen so i would recommend trying a higher framerate.

One more advice i would give for those 3d tracking shots. Film in 4k if possible and rather keep more trackers and planes in the frame. If you go to 1080 in post you can track more markers in the 4k footage and then just crop it down to the actual image you need.
And the most important thing. KEEP TESTING IN PRE PRODUCTION AS MUCH AS YOU CAN! I was on an impossibly tight schedule so i had to do some learning by doing and come up with new ideas because stuff just didn’t work as planned(as usual). But all those mistakes won’t happen the next time;)

[Pascal Reinhardt]

Hey everyone,

good news, and a little problem.

Good news: the tracking now works. I fixed the screen and tracking points and found someone in my city to track it with boujou.

This is what the setup looks like now. A few markes in a 1m grid, and the rest radnom positions + mic stands for better 3d tracking.

So i have the boujou tracking data and the original footage in after effects and technically it works fine. BUT the whole scene is shifted.
So when i put in a text layer and want to simply put it back in z-space, i have to put it back on the z-axis and the x-axis because the whole scene and camera are shifted to the left.
This is the top-view in my after effects window:

it’s quite a time killer to move and rotate everything to fit the camera. I don’t know if that happened in Boujou or in AE. And i don’t know if i’m missing a very simple trick to fix it.
Can i just select everything and rotate it so it’s in the right angle?!

Thanks!

[Pascal Reinhardt]

Ok so i don’t have to have exact distances if i can’t tell it to after effects anyway?
I only have after effects and Mocha and not quite the budget to buy something like Boujou;) Even though i’d love to!

[Pascal Reinhardt]

thanks for the feedback everyone!

Yes, i’d rather spend two weeks fixing everything in pre production and testing instead of trying to fix it in post. Because i think the chances of it looking cheap are pretty high;)

I’m now trying to put alot of markers with neon green tape on the black backdrop, and use mic stands with pink tape on it next to the singer so that the tracker has a lot of points in 3d space. And of course i will test it first and make sure it works.

Just one more question about the 3d tracker in after effects. Can i give it information about the distance between tracking points? because i thought of haveng a few points in a grid with a fixed 1 meter distance and have random markers in between. Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks!

[Pascal Reinhardt]

sorry….here’s the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qhe7IO2hwY

am i too stupid or can’t you edit your own posts?

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[Pascal Reinhardt]

Thanks a lot Greg! I found this video that pretty much explains what you just said. And i never knew that random key markers work the best. I thought this one was pretty helpful!
I’ll see how the result are gonna be. But it’s gonna take a while longer to do the pre production now;)

[Pascal Reinhardt]

sorry to post again, but i don’t know if you can really see it in the picture. The black screen is hung in a corner, so right behinder the singer is the corner of the room. that is why the squares are distorted this way.

[Pascal Reinhardt]

I have a picture from my test footage right here. I had to blurry the singer but the important things are the tracking points in the back.

I did some more research and kind of get the feeling that after effects isn’t able to track this properly. I just keep reading that for a proper 3d tracking a new mocha version or even boujou is needed?!

[Pascal Reinhardt]

Thanks guys. I just did a test shooting and it was kind of sobering. i had two neon tape squares left and right of the singer that were clearly visible. When i tracked the footage in after effects the camera tracker completely ignored the squares and just tracked the movement of the singer. And got everything totally wrong. i don’t know if i should use bigger objects as tracking targets or if it’s just an adjustment thing in after effects. But as for now it doesn’t work at all to track it..

[Pascal Reinhardt]

thanks for your feedback!!

I pretty much decided to go with a black room instead of greenscreen. I think it’s too risky to go with greenscreen and then have keying issues later, because i’m working on a very tight schedule with this one.

And i think i will use tape as a tracking point. I’m just wondering is after effects can track a good 3d movement if it just has to POINTS to refer to. I thought i would make two squares with tape, left and right behind the singer so than the tracker can get the 3d information from the form of the squares. I don’t know if i’m getting something wrong but if you only have two points, or dots etc. than it might not notice if i move AND pan the camera, the distance between the points might stay the same but the distance to the camera varies.

I’ll just give it a try and see what happens. And then i’m gonna need your help again;)

Thanks you!