Motion Tracking

[aflack]

The arch company has just won a project for an urban redevelopment and they want to be able to get a someone to walk around this town filming where new building are propossed, how-ever as they walk past they want the building to appear and stay in the right position as the camera moves. I am pretty sure this is called motion tracking.

 

Does anybody have any expierence with this maybe using Max, I must admit I have no idea how easy this is to do at all?

[Christopher Nichols]

I would suggest learnign some new software... there are some great tools that you can use now a days. Ever since "automated" camera traking came around, it made it a LOT easier. Back in the old days (3 years ago) the only really good option was Boujou and it was $10k. Now there MUCH a cheaper versions of it, as well as a program called SynthEyes which is very popular these days mainly because it is very cheap. Also, you may want to look into RealViz...

 

Here are some links to look into... this woudl eb the order I look at them in:

 

http://www.ssontech.com/

http://www.2d3.com/jsp/products/product-overview.jsp?product=7

http://www.realviz.com/3d_camera_tracking_software.htm

[Devin Johnston]

If you don't want to buy any software and you already have Max 7 or 8 it comes with its own motion tracking program. One of the things you’re going to need to make sure of is the quality of the video that is being shot. You’re probably not going to want to use just regular video shot from a regular video camera. Your going to want to spend the money and get someone to shoot some high quality uncompressed digital video.

[Christopher Nichols]

If you don't want to buy any software and you already have Max 7 or 8 it comes with its own motion tracking program. One of the things you’re going to need to make sure of is the quality of the video that is being shot. You’re probably not going to want to use just regular video shot from a regular video camera. Your going to want to spend the money and get someone to shoot some high quality uncompressed digital video.

 

I actually have not used the matchmove tool in Max in a long time. Not sure if this is still the case, but it was manual (a lot harder and long to do), slower, and painful. Boujou was the magic bullet (as my friend called it) for a long time. I think SynthEyes is basically Boujou at a normal price.

 

Things to watch that are difficult ro track:

 

- Nodal Pans... where the camera is stationary and panning across or up and down. 3D trackers can't deal with that, and there are special conditions that can help you, depending on the software.

- Wide angle lense. The lense warping makes it a challenge, tou may need to flatten the image before tracking. Some software has the ability to flatten the video for you.

- Interlacing. Make sure you de-interlace the video before you do it

- Compression... see Maxers notes.

[Noise]

I could not recommend Syntheyes as recommended by CN enough and its cheap.

[mblar]

for all our tracking we use syntheyes. or should i say one of the dudes in our office uses it.

 

he gets really nice smooth results with it and lately has been outputting the data to after effects as well as max for some really cool mograph effects.

 

we use HD footage though, and the extra resolution really seems to help, both with getting the data and comping a nice clean image.

 

peace.

[lambros]

Max is definately out of the question. Options are: Boujou bullet, Matchmover pro, Syntheyes and the PF range of tracking programs. There is an extremely cheap version of PF Hoe (I think I bought it at less than 100€ or something) which will give you automated tracking with just one exporter (you can choose your program).

All the bug guys (boujou, matchmover, syntheyes, pf track) are suited for professional work, but bear in mind that you will have to experiment a lot to get decent and useable results. And as said, your footage should be of premium quality (DV is a semi-professional option, you will get better results with uncompressed video)

[William Alexander]

http://digitallifetv.com/blogs/digitallifetv/archive/2006/01/24/4956.aspx

 

Look for the Alex Lindsay segment....Boujou and pixelcorps training info worth a look see IMHO

 

Episode 29...segment1

[pipjor]

i've used SynthEyes, it's easy and acutally kinda fun...

[bjornkn]

Apart from being asy and cheap, SynthEyes is also very fast, which really is very important with this kind of software. The first time I used it I thought it had just done some preliminary setup things - but it had actually finished, in a fraction of the time I had spent trying to get it to track in Icarus (which is now called Pixelfarmtracker, PFtracker or something similar), with very good results:)

[aflack]

So to get this straight you use Syntheyes to work out your camera path and target path which you can then export into Max? From here you render in the animation into the movie?

 

Sorry I haven't had a chance to have a look at the syntheyes site yet. Thanks for your advice though.

[aflack]

Had a read through the Syntheyes website and it sounds great and very easy.

 

Are there are tutorials out there on what to do once you have the camera path and have exported it to Max. I was just wondering, when you open the camera path in Max does it come is there an option to set it to the right size or do you have to scale it up or down and rotate it? This would mean that when you shot the original footage you would have to have exact positions for the start and end point of the camera?

 

Sorry I'm a real begineer at this.

[thomas+son]

I have read somewhere(?) to stick with a single fixed lens 28mm? it will make the calcs for the motion capture go quicker. Thomas+son

 

ps. Instead of video, you may have a better option- shoot the existing buildings then use as a map on simple boxes. this way you can get any view and any angle very quickly.