Shawn Miller
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Accidently hit the like button… sorry. If no one has suggested it, try re-installing your graphics card driver. 🙂
Shawn
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[Max Jackson] “My average pixel error is over 4 pixels. Even if this is the wrong tool to try and use, I’d like to know why I’m not using it properly or why I can’t seem to get any decent tracking points out of this scene.”
Hi Max,
I think the biggest issue here is that you don’t have enough ‘good’ features on the face for a solid object track. Usually, you would want a variety of high contrast features distributed along the surface of the object you want to track. Otherwise, the software can’t tell the difference between something that is on the side of an object as opposed to something that is on the front of it. That’s why we usually put markers on the face of the talent for shots like this.
As Roland points out, the AE Camera Tracker doesn’t do object tracking. IMO, your best bet to complete this shot is to go back, practice the effect then re-shoot it if you can. If you’re interested in doing more effects like this, you might want to consider picking up Tim Dobbert’s excellent book “Matchmoving: The Invisible Art of Camera Tracking”. It covers in good detail most of the things you need to understand, in order to get these kinds of shots up and going. There are also a ton of “head tracking” tutorials out there, most are okay, but you can get a pretty solid idea of how the more successful shots are setup just by watching them.
Thanks,
Shawn
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It might be helpful to see a clip or a frame grab from the footage in question. 🙂
Shawn
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[Chris Kenny] “…VFX shots haven’t gotten any cheaper to do, that’s an instance of expectations advancing faster than technical capabilities — and you deal with it, in this case, by just spending twice as much.”
Not necessarily, Chris. Compute and labor costs have gone down, so well planned VFX shots that have been done before are much cheaper to produce now. That’s why televison and low budget films can afford to do more VFX shots now, compared to just a few years ago. Where costs haven’t gone down is on the dev side. If a director wants to do something that’s never been done before (like much of the 3D capture in Avatar), or if they want to do something familiar but at much higher quality (like Tranformers 3), then costs will be much higher.
Shawn
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[Walter Soyka] “Quartz Composer’s not dead yet!”
lol – fair enough, but it does seem odd to put it on a list with motion design applications.
[Walter Soyka] ” Is anyone using Fusion or Nuke for pure motion graphics?”
Here and there, yes. But in those cases, you’ll likely find that it’s because of a request from a producer, or because someone on the client side has been convinced that something just can’t be done in AE… at least not at the same level of quality. You know, it’s like the Maya/C4D thing. 🙂
Shawn
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[Vishesh Arora] “Motion Design applications include:
Adobe After Effects
Eyeon Fusion
Nuke
Autodesk Combustion
Apple Motion/Shake
Max/MSP
Apple Quartz Composer
Various VJ Programs
Smith Micro Software Anime Studio
Adobe Flash”You might want to scratch Combustion, Shake and Quartz Composer off the list. 🙂
Shawn
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[Stephen heppell] “I’m looking to buy some software to make animations and do motion graphics, and I know After Effects would be a good choice- but it’s a little pricy- can anyone recommend something a bit cheaper?”
It depends on what you want to do. If you’re just looking to work on your own projects, or finish work for other people, then it won’t matter what software you use. However, if you’re looking to work in a collaborative environment (film or video), then you will probably need to learn AE, Photoshop and Illustrator. Luckily (as Walter points out), Adobe’s Cloud Subscription can be had for $50.00 a month, so learning AE (+ Adobe’s supporting applications) is a lot less expensive than is used to be.
Where do you want to go with motion graphics, are you looking at doing this for a career, or is this more of a hobby?
Thanks,
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Well, what would OS support from Apple look like?
I was talking more about hardware support, like, “my computer exploded into a ball of fiery bits, send me a new one” type of support. ;)”
I was also thinking of the computer meltdown scenario.. if you take your machine to a shop in the Windows world, the first thing a tech wants to know is if you have a legal copy of Windows. If not, they won’t do more than replace faulty hardware or format your system drive. I was wondering if it was the same on the Apple side. If your Hackintosh goes South, can you still have it serviced by an Apple certified repair shop?
[Jeremy Garchow] “Have a look at the Psystar case.
In a place like Germany, it’s OK to sell a non Apple branded computer with OSX due to a EULA loophole in German law:
https://pearc.de/ueber-pearc-eng-1?parentid=72&parentname=ueber-pearc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PearC“
Interesting stuff, thanks for the links.
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I can also build my own Mac. I’d much rather pay for peace of mind via support, but that’s just me.”
I have seen more people bulding Hackintosh computers, can you still get OS support from Apple if you do that? I ask because I genuinely don’t know.
I do agree that buying from a solid SI goes a long way to keeping your sanity, I have a few vendors that I favor myself. I guess I also like the freedom and cost effectiveness of building my own machines. I have fantasies of building my next workstation myself… time will tell if I actually have time to do it. 🙂
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Is it really more power for less money?”
Technically no, I suppose. But you can get faster processors, more powerful graphics cards and more RAM in a PC. So it seems that this can only be true if you compare what’s available on the Mac to similar a PC.
[Jeremy Garchow] “When you start building “big iron” from the likes of HP with enterprise Xeons, the prices are very similar.”
Only if you limit your options to one of the large systems integrators like HP or Boxx. There are other SI’s to choose from though, plus the option to build your own… which is a lot cheaper.
Shawn