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An
introduction:
A lot of people
don't understand what motion tracking is. It's used in basically every
movie which mixes cg with live action.
Motion tracking should be invisible. It's not an especially creative process,
but it is necessary any time you need to matchmove a cg element to a moving
background plate. Motion tracking is the REVERSE ENGINEERING
of the CAMERA MOVEMENT of any shot, based on nothing
but pixel luminance and RGB information, and how it changes from frame
to frame.
There are different methods to tracking: you can track a small area of
pixels (in After Effects, for example) and match a cg object into that
one location. (2D tracking) You can track the entire frame, using areas
of pixels scattered throughout, and can place one or more cg objects in
3D space. This is 3D tracking, which allows for parallax and complex camera
movement.
What I will be demonstrating is basically 2D tracking, because it was
shot on a tripod (there is no parallax). However, the same method applies
to full-fledged 3D tracking.
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This
tutorial will cover:
•Tracking
•Matting
•Calibrating
•Setting the origin and orienting 3D space
•Bundle Adjusting...
•Importing tracking data into Blender
•Importing tracking data into After Effects
Now, something to remember is: I am NOT an expert. I may be doing a number
of things wrong. In fact, there's a good chance that I have no idea what
I'm talking about (in some sections, at least).
Downloads:
The tutorial is split up into 6 sections. You can download each section
individually, in different formats, or you can download a zip file of
the series. The Divx format I used is called 3ivx D4...
The Program:
Distributed with permission from The
Pixel Farm. Remember, this software is for educational use only.
Mac OS X:
Icarus.zip-- 55.6 mb
Windows: Icarus.zip--
44.2 mb
Individual Tutorial Downloads
Zip Downloads
(same as above)
Divx: Icarus
Video Tutorial Series-- 64.2 mb
QuickTime: Icarus
Video Tutorial Series-- 137 mb
DV File Downloads
(this is the video file I tracked and stuff in the tutorial, if you
wanna follow along)
Stream_Encounter.zip--
19 mb Blender Import Script (what I used to import tracking data to Icarus)
Icarus Import Script
for Blender 2.41
--8 k (credit goes to Alfredo de Greef)
Hope this proves useful to some of you!
--Colin |