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Double Stuffed Tracking Walkthrough

Double Stuffed Tracking Walkthrough

on Mar 29th 2013 with 45 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Requirements: PF Track (for the second half). You can purchase the product here.
Download Source Files

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 8 of 12 in the The Complete Introduction to Motion Trackers Session
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We’ve seen lots of tutorials on how to do basic planar tracking, but this tutorial demonstrates how to use 2D planar tracking and 3d tracking together. We’ll use this technique to create 3d graphics that pop off a board held by the author as he walks.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in March 2010.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 143MB

 
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By

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It all began when Jake was 6-years-old when he started making films with his uncle’s video camera. Throw in the fact that he had hamsters as pets all of his life; it was inevitable for Jake to create an epic trilogy about Copain The Hamster and his journey from Paris to Halifax. With a collection of effects-driven shorts, Halifax began taking notice of his specialization with compositing, green screen work, on-set FX direction and motion graphics. Jake was soon snatched up by Hatch Post to shine a light on Halifax in the world of visual effects and the advertising scene.  

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  • Andy

    Impressive preview – will watch the tut once I’ve delivered for this deadline!

  • majorek

    WOW!! Amazing !

  • Dave Collins

    I have to say the same thing as Andy, Great Preview! I also have to say when I saw the Hatch Post logo come up at the end it was a nice surprise to see the East Coast representing.

  • http://www.carlosbatllo.com Carlos Batlló

    Really useful, thanks!

  • Will

    Very cool. What did you use to make the card that you were holding?

    • http://www.owensproductions.com Jake Owens
      Author

      thanks for the feedback!

      To make the board, I just used a piece of foam board (sturdy enough so it wouldnt bend and ruin the track when I’m moving it around) and I wrapped it in neon green bristol board (which is great for keying as it’s very bright so you dont have to worry about lighting it very much)

      :)

      Jake

  • http://vfx.lv 5p1r17

    Very very very useful !
    Appreciate for sharing!

  • William Cannavaro

    The best tuto i´ve ever seen since last year.

    Excellent man!
    And Thanxs.

  • very nice!

    thats very cool ! do u have ur works on vimeo ? i like that last clip with the big watch !!

    looks like the 3d tracking in the tutorial wasnt really accurate ? (cant really tell from the playback though)

    why not using the original shot with the 3d tracking software..i dont get that..big quilt thing..
    u had good tracking data from the green board..and u want to use that messy big patchwork ?

    • http://www.owensproductions.com Jake Owens

      Hey! thanks :)

      I dont have my work on vimeo… just on my site.. http://www.owensproductions.com

      the reason why I didnt use the original shot is because PFtracks everything in your shot, unless you mask off a part not to track… so isolating the board and telling it to ONLY track the board can be pretty difficult, but mocha removes that step. However, I’m not the most knowledgeable with PFtrack… I just use the basic features, so if there is a way to isolate only the board easily, please let me know!!! I use the big messy patchwork cause it’s lots of information and patterns that pftrack can easily get a hold of :)

  • Ramakant Mallah

    Thanks for Inovative tutorials

  • http://www.creativearmada.com JNothing

    This is brilliant! I love this!

  • mohamed

    this is gr8 i will watch it and download it
    thanks ma8

  • carlos

    The tracking at the end is not done correctly, is it because you sped through PF track? I did’nt understand your “aligning” in PF track, what were you aligning to? You really didnt go deep into that.

    • http://www.owensproductions.com jake Owens
      Author

      Hey! I just sped through it yeah… with the tutorial I’m making the assumption people know how to do basic tracking with pftrack and know how to align the points in 3d space to get the scene geometry (making sure the x and y planes match up to the up and down of the board. that being said, I did just “rough it” and you could definitely add so much more to the accuracy of this (adding measurements, etc)

  • Raoul

    Sweeeet ! =)

  • Leo Renna

    Thanks! Finally a good tutorial on mocha!

  • naim alwan

    thanks man, I enjoyed that :)

  • http://www.youtube.com/wrenthereaper wrenthereaper

    yeah this is really good! inspires a lot of ideas!!

  • http://hafandhalf.com Haf

    This is brilliantly cool :)

  • philjohnson

    nice tut about tracking, now you should make one about the rest of it. great work.

  • mads

    WoW, this was great!
    Thanks alot for sharing :)

  • sagar

    hey ..that was amazing…reallllllly awesome

  • homing

    Excellent tutorial !

    Dont stop, perfect balance between important information and not getting stuck with to basic training !

  • Hossein

    That Was awesome, Thanks!

    Very Easy do understand.

    God bless

  • http://www.nestorprado.com Heaven Ideas

    Hey!

    I really enjoyed this tutorial! It was pretty neat and gave a lot of insight about cool tracking. I wish I would have seen it earlier and could’ve used it for my last project to spice it up even more!

    You can check out the project in the videos section of http://www.nestorprado.com
    or just see it here: http://vimeo.com/10256582

    Thanks again!

  • Wolkeris

    For my mocha or AE something wrong(or I’m just stupid :D), when i tracking it’s work but when i pasted thoose numbers in AE that solid is too small and i dont know what to do ? maybe someone can help me ?

  • http://www.emdezign.com ehsaan

    i wish i had the basic knowledge to learn this tutorial. god almighty that looks so cewl.

  • MacMan

    The second greatest tutorial I have ever seen!

  • Terminator

    Wow and superb preview. This is the first best tutorial in after effects . u did the best job for the animation student keep doing like this

  • GRBST

    REALLY NICE!!

  • Aaron

    YES!!! I have been looking for a great Mocha tutorial for a while and this is it! thank you so much!

  • Luis Quiñones

    Just amazing!! Thanks for sharing Jake! I’ll try this at home! :D

  • nameless

    mmm poor. its just, just ok…, where is the rest of the effects? are you gonna make tutorials for the rest of effects dude?.

  • nomaeless

    and by the way, add some color correction to your video in youtube. the effects looks in front and the video goes to the background in second plane pretty badly.

  • Juan

    Hey Owen! I couldn’t see the tutorial yet, ’cause I’m on my job, and somehow I’m not able to see this site videos. Anyways, just wanted to congratulate you, I’ve been checking your website, and you have some great stuff !!
    Can’t wait to go home and try this out =D

  • mammut

    hey :)) great tutorial dude ;)) i am just trying it out right now…
    but there is some a problem… after i trace it and try to apply the info
    in after effects it moves the solid couple of inches to the side.
    i’ve made sure the the solid is the same size as the footage aaand the time
    indicator is the very beginning on the comp. i really have no experience in mocha
    so maybe there is some setting that is the reason. also i am using mocha 2.0 could
    that be the problem :? so if anyone can suggest something i’ll be really grateful :]
    and also one more time… i love the idea of the tutorial :))

  • tvandang

    How do i get rid of the marks after the keying in your tutorial? i want to use your method of mocha to this video of “HP out of the picture” but i have a hard time tracking these picture frames.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9vXoWIKpRY

    what would be your technique to do like this video?

    thanks!

    tvandang

  • sagar

    cool ..awesome man….thanks for the great tuts and the great idea
    Inspiring this one i have made some thing …the link is below

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzhoseGguzE

    plz do reply
    thanks
    Bye

  • gabriel perez

    dude you should make a tutorial on how to model some of this things on a 3d program btw thank you great tutorial :D

    • http://www.bing.com/ Lurraine

      An answer from an expert! Thanks for contriubintg.

  • SHUVRA

    But you didn’t tell how to remove those black plus symbols :(

  • Farhad

    Hi
    Thats Amazing
    But you didn’t tell how to remove those black plus symbols
    and could you do me a favor plz?
    how can i find Full Project ?
    if you have , could you send it to me?

    Regards

  • James

    Great job Jake! I’m getting more and more into tracking work and this was very helpful. It was cool to see the Halifax logos come up in the preview, and as a fellow Haligonian I am happy to see there is some great FX work going on locally. I look forward to trying out some of your techniques.

  • Rahul Patil

    CAN WE MAKE SECOND-HALF WITH CameraTracker (AE plug-in) …..!! IT IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT PF TRACK ……..PLZ KINDLY REPLY