First ever tracked animation

[Macker]

Hey guys,

Recently completed an animation (just some industrial units - so don't get too excited) for a client that was an incredibly steep learning curve. The client insisted we use drone footage (something we've never done) and add their buildings onto it. I can't share the final animation as it's not in the public domain yet, but I have made a little shot breakdown of a couple of seconds of it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwVBLWtAlLq/

I'm quite proud of it as camera tracking is something we've never done, let alone all the various after effects bits that go along with it; that's not to say it's perfect - it isn't. A significant portion of it was rendered on Chaos Cloud.

Just thought I'd share.

Chris

[Ihno]

Nice! How was it for you? Alot of people hate tracking, I kind of like it. But that may be due to the fact I like technical work often even more than artistic.

And what did you use to track that AE?

[Macker]

Oh man, tracking was like pulling teeth - mostly because aside from that road in the middle of the site, everything is fields - so there were very few points on the survey that I could use to align things with. Another thing thing that I hadn't accounted for until the morning I turned up on site to meet the drone guy was the fact that we were (obviously) filming empty fields - so trying to guess as best you can where the proposed buildings would be was a real struggle!

[Edit] Yes, the camera tracking was in AE.

[Ihno]

Hahah yes it can be a pain and I'd imagine the beginning of this shot in particular.
I had a big tracking project a while back. 20 mins of film, filmed in a green-screen studio. It was about 180 shots.
And beforehand I tested a few trackers: Sinth-eyes, blender, fusion and 3D-Equalizer. (so no AE experience there)
And hands-down 3DE is awesome and none of the others were even close to that!!
You'd need a couple of days to learn it fist. Since its complex and its UI is .. Special (but very effective once you got it).
It costs 200/month. And since then I always say "you want me to track something? OK, that makes 200 more". You're saving soo much time using this. Those 200bucks are nothing compared to that.

[fixeighted]

PFTrack ftw! I've tracked extensively over the years and this is definitely my favourite. I haven't heard of 3DE, which is odd, so can't comment but will now have to check it out

[Macker]

Quick update - it's now in the public domain.

https://vimeo.com/330052854

caveat - we did not pick the music!

[fixeighted]

Cool. Works really very well for the most part - a few judders but then I'm way too picky
And there's not always time to fix everything as I know
Job done!

[cheerioboy]

The interior warehouse shot and the evening shot at the end were my favorites.

[fixeighted]

Yeah, the night transition was actually unexpected and the perfect ending

[M.Max]

This is actually really good for the first try!
Tip: you can add animation layer to the camera to easly correct few slides in the movement with few keys without fighting with the existing keyframes.
AE built in tracking is good enough but sometimes you will need to do it in proper tracking software.
Last week a studio asked me to do 3d tracking for few shots and for some of them manual animating produced even better match than the auto tracking and was quicker to do too

[Macker]

Thanks for all the feedback guys

The night shot was one of those moments in a meeting with the client where we were reviewing all of the drone footage, and they turned to me and said "can we finish on a night shot?" to which I replied "we don't have any drone footage at night I'm afraid" and got back the exact response you'd expect... "can't you just... do something though? surely?"

I threw a curves correction and blue LUT on the footage (we were reviewing in premiere) and they went nuts.

Tip: you can add animation layer to the camera to easly correct few slides in the movement with few keys without fighting with the existing keyframes.

Oh man, I wish I'd known that before! Will definitely do that on the next one!

[Edit] Have just had a go at this, and whenever I add an animation layer to a keyframed camera the existing keyframes appear to do nothing? i.e. the camera resets position and doesn't move???
[Edit] Never mind, I see animation layers can be turned on and off just like normal layers can.

[william.morris]

Hi Macker,

Just came across this post you have done a fantastic job camera tracking 3D model into the drone footage it looks spot on to me!! Great Job!!

I am trying to do exactly the same thing from drone footage on a site not too far from the one you did but in Cardiff. Camera tracking is completely new to me.

I have tried exporting out the tracking points from after effects and importing them into 3ds max.

But as you know the points and camera come in at the wrong scale and camera looking straight down, so you need to scale and rotate the camera, which i linked all together with a dummy?

But I am really struggling with this as I cant get it to line up correctly. Do you have any tips to get thing to line up or is it just a matter of spending ages rotating and scaling until you get it to line up correctly.

would it of been easier to line up had you used professional tracking software such as syntheyes, pftrack....etc?

Much Appreciated.

Thank You

Will

[Macker]

Hi Macker,

Just came across this post you have done a fantastic job camera tracking 3D model into the drone footage it looks spot on to me!! Great Job!!

I am trying to do exactly the same thing from drone footage on a site not too far from the one you did but in Cardiff. Camera tracking is completely new to me.

I have tried exporting out the tracking points from after effects and importing them into 3ds max.

But as you know the points and camera come in at the wrong scale and camera looking straight down, so you need to scale and rotate the camera, which i linked all together with a dummy?

But I am really struggling with this as I cant get it to line up correctly. Do you have any tips to get thing to line up or is it just a matter of spending ages rotating and scaling until you get it to line up correctly.

would it of been easier to line up had you used professional tracking software such as syntheyes, pftrack....etc?

Much Appreciated.

Thank You

Will

Hi Will,

Honestly at this point (having just done another of these animations) we're looking into our options when it comes to tracking software because it's been very time consuming (expensive!). It sounds to me like you've been doing it just as I did - which I think came with a fair amount of beginners luck on the first animation because the second one has proved even more difficult to track.

I'd save yourself the time and get some proper tracking software. I've had a look at syntheyes but their GUI is awful and the demo only lets you export something like the first 3 frames of the track which is utterly useless to test to see if it works. PFTrack seems to be an option but they're pretty tight lipped when it comes to pricing, demo's and so on. The last option I was looking at which was Blackmagic Fusion which has a 3d camera tracker and is quite affordable - but the free version doesn't allow you to use the camera tracker!

We might even start outsourcing the tracking side of things to someone that knows what they're doing.

[Neilg]

I'd save yourself the time and get some proper tracking software. I've had a look at syntheyes but their GUI is awful and the demo only lets you export something like the first 3 frames of the track which is utterly useless to test to see if it works. PFTrack seems to be an option but they're pretty tight lipped when it comes to pricing, demo's and so on. The last option I was looking at which was Blackmagic Fusion which has a 3d camera tracker and is quite affordable - but the free version doesn't allow you to use the camera tracker!

We might even start outsourcing the tracking side of things to someone that knows what they're doing.

Dont use fusion, and you really should give syntheyes a go. The interface is designed from scratch by a man who knows everything there is to know about tracking for a singular purpose. It's very, very efficient.

Give russ an email and see if he will give you a proper trial license, he's a good dude.