Hi guys,
I want to track the deathstar into the sky, I've shot some footage, but I don't really have any good tracking points, so I'm now toying with boujou, which I've never used before.
I've made a video to show you what I'm trying to do and what is preventing me from getting there. I can't seem to do a camera resolve for one....and also I'd like to just export the 2d tracked data as I'm only inserting a 2d image.
Rather then read my ramblings, why not watch my ramblings and you can judge for yourself where I'm going wrong.
Do I just need to reshoot it with better tracking points and stick to adobe after effects or can boujou really help me out?
Re: Boujou and Adobe After Effects by Kevin Dearing on Nov 21, 2008 at 10:49:23 am
Hi Kieran,
I'm not sure if this will help you or not as your situation is a bit different but it may put you onto the right track (no pun intended)...
Andrew Kramer did a tutorial using Boujou and After Effects. In this tutorial he shows how he used Boujou, though he did have specific tracking points... Anyway, if you haven't already viewed it, like I said, maybe it'll help??
Another thing, I recently went through a similar situation and was able to use AE's tracking but only by going frame by frame at points.. What I mean is, I picked my tracking points, let it run and stopped it when I saw it was getting off. On the first frame where my tracking points were off I readjusted the tracking points then tracked forward (or backward) one frame... That worked fairly well, but, as you can imagine, took a good bit of time. My main problem with AE's tracking was in the fact that my footage was purposely shaky and zoomed in.
One more observation about your footage.. AE's tracker seems to work best with good contrast.. Therefore, your Chimney is not a good tracking point. A better tracking point would probably be a tree against the sky.
I'm afraid that's all I've got - I hope it is helpful in some way!
Re: Boujou and Adobe After Effects by Kieran Hood on Nov 21, 2008 at 1:54:15 pm
Thanks Kevin. I'd not seen this tutorial, I've seen alot of his others which are great, this was a really good suggestion. Thankyou.
I'm using boujou to mask out the plane, this might help as Andrew explains that boujou doesn't like moving parts.
You make a good point about AAE's tracker. It does like a proper contrast. I could may tinker with some filters to help it find the edges.
I see Creative Cows very own Pete O'Connell has some track tutorials with a skateboarder and he uses lots of singular tracking points. I'll see if I can maybe adopt that method too.
Thanks again for your help.
Regards,
Kieran
PS: I'll let you know how I get on.
Mocha could be the answer? by Kieran Hood on Nov 21, 2008 at 5:52:40 pm
Hi guys,
I've been exploring this further and found a product called 'Mocha' by Imagineer systems. It looks great, perfect for 2d tracking, unlike boujou which is designed for 3d tracking.
The exciting news is, Mocha is built in to Adobe After Effects CS4!
I'm downloading a trial version of Mocha. I can do some pretty complex shots and allows the tracked feature to run out of shot.
My shot has some trees in the way, it'll be interesting to see how it handles this shot.
