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Overview Of The Foundry’s New “CameraTracker” Plug-in – Part 1

Overview Of The Foundry’s New “CameraTracker” Plug-in – Part 1

on Aug 9th 2010 with 18 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Download Source Files

In the AE Part 1 of this 3 Part Series we will learn about The Foundry’s new CameraTracker, We’ll look at how it can be used to extract 3d data from shots, which can assist us in placing 3D assets into scenes. Additionally, we’ll cover how to use the AEtoC4D Script to export our 3D data to Cinema4D.


For Part 2, head over to CGtuts+ where we’ll export our scene to Cinema4D so we can build the 3D lightrays in true 3D space.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 162MB

 
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Originally from Southern Vermont, Marc is now going to school in Pennsylvania where is also a freelance Editor and Visual Effects Artist. He just finished working on the feature: A Lonely Place for Dying. Check out his blog here or follow him.  

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  • http://www.lokerweb.ch rachid

    very nice done!

  • Gunathilaka

    wow….. This is great

  • jink

    looks good, but that camera movement was way too simple. actually test the plugin to see if it can handle more complex moves.

  • http://www.methodd.com Evangelos Moly

    Cool but the shot was WAAAYYYY too easy to track and could be done even without tracking !

  • Adam Blumert

    Everything can be done without tracking ;d

  • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway

    Right on, Marc. Thanks for that sneak peak. Should be an interesting plugin to play with.

  • Lyndon

    So gonna cop this if its not more than pfhoe track… >:)

  • Eric

    This looks like a promising alternative to some rather expensive softwares… Is there a way to export to 3Ds Max?

    • http://twitter.com/colorcram Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Yes there is. There are a couple scripts to export 3D parameters to programs like Maya and 3DSMax. Try this one:
      http://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=991

      • daniel

        hey Marc when i go to the link you gave me for the 3DSMax script, when i hit the link to download it from the forum all i get is a page full of weird text..help?

  • http://twitter.com/colorcram Marc R Leonard
    Author

    Ah yes I see.
    Right click, and save file as, or save link as.
    It will save it as a .jsx file
    Try that!

  • illd

    Thank you very much Marc!
    there are some nice compositing tips. But i am not sure about the 3D Data translation to C4D. It seemed somehow to be offset. After you imported the 3D Render it clearly didn´t fit exactly. Do you think this is an user or application error?

    • http://twitter.com/colorcram Marc R Leonard
      Author

      illd,
      I understand your concern. It’s a bit of both application and user. The thing you must understand that these precise cross overs can be off by only 5 or so pixels, with will result in it looking imprecise. For instance: The trackers could have been tracking the backside of the window sill, or the front, or maybe on the wall RIGHT at the intersection. This variance can make it hard to recreate a scene EXACTLY the same. I also didn’t do any type of lens correction to take away lens distortion, this VERY well could have played a part as well. The bottom line is, it’s hard to get things PIXEL perfect exact unless you place your own tracking markers. In this case when working with flexible things like light it is good enough even though it was off by 5 or so pixels.
      Hope this was helpful, thanks for watching!

      Marc

      • illd

        Hey Marc,

        that makes sense. Thanks for explaining. I just dl a demo of the tracker and will give it a try with a free camera move…

  • Willem

    Yes, nice overview, but i want to see how it holds up when tracking a free camera move, preferably with lots of detail, like a nature scene.

  • http://twitter.com/colorcram Marc R Leonard
    Author

    I’m sure it would work great. The biggest thing is getting the most parallax possible, and cleaning the bad tracks.

  • Itay

    Cool!

  • Chen

    My point cloud looks really blocky. I’m running CS5.5 on mac. Any Ideas guys?