3d tracking test

cantoloupe · Post by **cantoloupe** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:16 am

first time i've used icarus, tracked it and tested is in blender 3d,

the camera's supposed to be shaky, i was testing how accurate it could be,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4bWyjZF_zw

comments?

wildstorm · Post by **wildstorm** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:44 am

Jesus how did you track that so well??? Thats pretty awesome!! I have Icarus also and I've been following a tutorial on Icarus which was made by Colin Levy of Peerless Productions and I'm not getting the kind of results that your getting. I don't have Blender but I do have 3D studio max 8. Could that be the problem? Great job on the motion tracking

aaronv2 · Post by **aaronv2** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:03 am

camera matchmoving is extremely hard. occasionally you get a freak shot where the move you did can be calculated really easily usually just a curved dolly but icarus is number one i still think... aparently syntheyes is the "BEST" nowadays but this is a really good shot because its a free move which is much harder... you wanna give us a quick rundown of what you did to get your track?

Bodysnatcher · Post by **Bodysnatcher** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:11 am

OMG! is this the first post from aaronov that is not dripping with sarcasam!? only joking! I must say I am impressed, never thought about using it before but the potential is staggering!

wildstorm · Post by **wildstorm** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:40 am

I wonder if he used the auto track feature?

DEDFX · Post by **DEDFX** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:41 am

impressed even though I don't know how easy/ or hard that was, I wanna use Icarus now.

cantoloupe · Post by **cantoloupe** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:45 am

first off, you can find icarus here: http://www.peerlessproductions.com/tuts ... carus.html
and blender here: www.blender3d.com

first i took the footage of my dining room, ,

then i imported with final cut, then took that footage into the calibration unit of icarus.

i put on auto track, which automatically tracks all the points that have the most contrast in the scene.

for the settings in icarus i had on freemotion, static focal point, and standard aspect ratio.

after it tracks, which is somewhat frustrating because icarus isn't exactly efficient with you ram, you have to calebrate it.
basically icarus will take the motion of the tracking points relative to eachother to place them in 3d.

once calibrated, you have to orient the scene, otherwize the camera won't know where to go, origanally, i thought you could just press "orient scene" and be done, which ends up just messing with the camera, turns out theres more to do:

in order to orient properly with icarus, you must tell it where the Y axis is, do this by placing two "parallel" (in 3d space) lines (finding two parallel lines in you footage works best,) this fixes the 3d space up really well, then to polish it off i ised "bundle adjust" which is really necessary or you get some serious glitches.

thats basically how i did my track, you have to be really pacient with it aswell, i had to track mine many times to get the proper settings down,

once you're done, you can export into after effects, blender, or any 3d program.

PS: aaronv2, i saw your tracking video, i was wondering, what 3d software did you use?

aaronv2 · Post by **aaronv2** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 4:05 am

Im not saying this sucks because camera matchmoving is extrememly important to effects... with any moving shot you will need to match the camera to intergrate your effects whether they are 3d or 2d its important.

I used Lightwave for my 3d... It looks real because i took a HDRI with a fisheye lens and made an environment map. then filmed the camera moved and used the environment map in the 3d app... perfect reflections

cantoloupe · Post by **cantoloupe** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 4:08 am

oy thanks, i'll try that out, yea that one looked really good

Firestorm · Post by **Firestorm** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 7:47 am

That's an astonishingly well-done job of motion tracking... Good job.

Jimbobsquarepants · Post by **Jimbobsquarepants** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:32 pm

i downloaded blender it woz really hard 2 use. can any1 help? ive never done cg before

wildstorm · Post by **wildstorm** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 7:35 pm

Jimbobsquarepants wrote:i downloaded blender it woz really hard 2 use. can any1 help? ive never done cg before

Hey welcome to the boards. Here is a link for you to check out.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=91

This should help you out with using Blender.

cantoloupe · Post by **cantoloupe** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:31 am

oy, yea, so the tracking worked well, but my main problem is matching the lighting,

this particular one was rather haphazard, so i was wondering:

is there any way (in AE) to match the resolution of the composited CG, with grain or something? otherwize this thing sticks out like crazy

aaronv2 · Post by **aaronv2** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:05 am

you can either match the lighting in your 3d program by studying the footage you have and looking for lighting artifacts. You can also use a HDRI of your scene as mentioned before. AE also supports HDRI now so if your using after effects 3d it can render accurate lighting also.