3d camera tracking using after effects & blender - motion tracking tutorial
camera tracking is a really powerful tool that let's you get so much cool stuff done, and with Blender 2.8 's motion tracking tool it's too easy
First and foremost, 3D camera tracking is different than typical point tracking, basically the end goal of camera tracking is to get a 3d representation of your camera that matches it's movements in your footage so that you can drop any elements into your scene and have it look like it's actually there!
Practically this is used in loads of ways - not just for placing 3d elements in your moving footage. If I wanted to replace the screen of my monitor for example, I have 2 main ways to go about this. The first way that most people go with is planar tracking (which is tracking flat surfaces - like a screen) and then sticking my screen replacement onto that plane and calling it a day. The second route (and the better one if you can swing it in my opinion) is to motion track your camera so that not only can you replace the screen, but can also throw some 3d lights in to give your new screen accurate glare and make it feel more like its part of the footage!
Sometimes you can get a pretty decent 3d camera track using After Effect's 3D Camera Tracker effect, but honestly, most of the time it's either just not accurate enough or isn't able to track the camera at all. That's why despite this being an After Effects tutorial... we need to branch out a bit and track the camera more accurately in a different program. I've used Boujou, PFTrack, and Mocha Pro in the past (which are all dedicated tracking tools) but because they're pretty expensive we are not going to be using one of them. I recently learned that Blender - yeah, the free open source 3d software - actually has motion tracking tools that've gotten really good over the years, so I did some tests, learned some learn'n and I was pretty surprised... It's actually really good! So that's why I chose Blender to track our footage with for this tutorial.
Now don't get discouraged if you're new to Blender, this is still a tutorial for After Effects after all, so I approach everything in Blender keeping in mind that you may not have any experience with the program.
Here are the key points of the tutorial:
- Bring the footage into Blender by exporting it as a jpg sequence from After Effects
- Start adding tracking points to our footage, having some 4 sided clearly defined shapes helps a ton with perspective tracking by the way (for example a business card laying on your desk).
- It's important to have points or objects that we can track at different distances from the camera - To get a good camera track, the software uses the points as well as how they move in relation to each other - the parallax - in order to figure out how the camera is moving accurately. So having all of our tracking points on the monitor won't be very good.
- We solve the camera and see how confident Blender is with it's track, there are a couple ways we can improve this step by pruning tracking points that have low confidence or add more quality points.
- After solving the camera, we export the data to After Effects (Blender can give us an After Effects camera as well as Nulls to match all of our tracking points!)
- From there we can do whatever we want in After Effects! We have a tracked camera! - as an example I show you how to replace my monitor with a trippy tunnel type thing as well as show you how to add in lights to create fake screen glare like I mentioned up top!
Here's a link to the photo I made to help with tracking my monitor in case you'd like it:
imgur.com/a/rUUdhMz
my microphone
amzn.to/3BllGfV (affiliate link)
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timestamps
0:00 - intro
1:49 - export from after effects to blender
2:35 - tracking our footage
7:29 - solving the camera
10:03 - orienting the camera
12:19 - exporting camera data back to after effects
13:04 - creating the 3d screen demo
tags
motion tracking, after effects motion tracking, tutorial, motion tracking tutorial, vfx,motion tracking after effects, camera tracking, 3d camera tracking, after effects camera tracking, camera tracking in blender, blender camera tracking tutorial, camera tracking blender, adobe after effects camera tracking, blender 3d camera tracking, 3d camera tracker, after effects tutorial, blender tutorial, 2.8, blender 2.8, blender camera tracking, match moving, perspective
I hope this after effects and blender tutorial was able to help you motion track / 3d camera track your footage a little easier! I know it looks a little complicated but I tried my best to show you easy camera tracking in blender 2.8
Пікірлер: 45
why not png instead of jpeg?
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
hey good question! I sort of answered this in another comment but basically since we aren't extracting the image sequence, importing into blender, and then rendering it again, the slight quality loss from exporting as JPG vs PNG won't factor in to our final render (since we're only using the image sequence to track and get our camera data) so using either format won't really be an issue. That being said there's no harm in using PNG and no inherent gain from using JPG (other than file size I supposed) so for the sake of covering all bases, I should've used PNG in the video!
this channel is a hidden gem. love your work!
Your videos keep getting better and better man! Keep up the good work :)
Your videos are insanely in depth and equally easy to understand. Thank you so much
Production quality is amazing
your videos are awesome man, keep it up. I'm learning so much :)
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks Ben! Glad to hear it!
finally found a quality video... insta sub
Thank you.
You're a wizard.
Great video. The one who disliked the video must be the monkey head of Blender.
this is awesome! can you do a tutorial on how to create digital vfx makeup with blender+after effects?
Perfection Awesome Video and your Voice sounds awesome like hell... Did you do this Video / Channel alone? Becuase everything looks totaly awesome and the End
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks! Yeah just me running the channel/ making the videos so I appreciate the compliments haha :) I think Blender and After Effects each have their own benefits. So far I'm only using Blender for 3D related stuff (like my intro) as well as Motion Tracking because it does it so well, I use After Effects for all other vfx related stuff and Premiere for basic editing/cutting. I'm glad you like the channel! :)
@GutherzigTV
3 жыл бұрын
@@AcademyOfEdits In the past +2 years i watched every day +20 Videos. You 100% one of the top 20 best i ever saw. You will become 100% +4 million i am totaly sure about that, just do more Videos. Ah I see thats smart, it makes sense using on each Program whats best. Then I might should focus on learning many programs to use each programms best tools. Also if you like i can give you some recommend KZread channels thats might give real helpful experience how to grow on KZread or might become a streamer. But i think you dont need it, its more like a double check. Your Brand and Color Scheme looks luxury and epic. I wish i could be more usefull, i had many people in RL who started form 0 and got extremly successfull on KZread. Some of them reach the Top in like 1 year, but those who did that for years went even higher. I am not sure whats your gole is (if you want only focus on guides or maybe do other series) but starting this channel was a good idea :) If my english isnt that good, it might because i am form germany :) Edite: btw it looks like your channel is made by a team not by 1 single guy... you awesome! :D
Definitely already at auto-watch status, from me. If you had any more insight on expressions in general, that would be dope.
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
🙏🏽 very much appreciated Alex, I’m in the process of drafting the script for the next video and I’ll be touching on some more expression stuff so hopefully that’ll be helpful!
@galexyphoto5725
3 жыл бұрын
They're always helpful! Looking forward to it.
Thank you so much for the tutorial. I've been loving all your stuff. Do you have a link to the file that you used to track the camera in Blender?
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Glad to hear it Sean! I just uploaded the photo and tossed a link near the bottom of the description to download it! :)
ha bro! you officially owned cg matter. in his tutorial he render png with blender, but I guess it's faster than render ^^ exactly what I've look for and very nice tutorial. Guys like you help me a lot to improve my skills, bc they are zero in my case ^^
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks! Glad I could help you out! :)
Great 👌 thanks for sharing , but I was looking for a pipeline , so that we track in aftereffects and than add 3d object into real world using hdri and all please make tutorial on it bec. I'm using phone for shooting 😂
this tutorial is great - thank you 2 questions - is it better to make the video clip as png clips first rather than screen track an actual video - how do you also place objects in the computer screen would you have to go back onto blender? thank you so much xxxx
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks! 1. Yes it is better to use an image sequence instead of an actual video (helps Blender load and process everything faster) and 2. Yeah, depending on what it is that you wanted to place inside the screen. In the video I just used simple shapes to make the tunnel but if you wanted actual 3d objects in there you best bet would be to place/arrange the objects you want inside the screen in blender, render that out, and then composite it into your footage in After Effects by masking out your screen in your footage
Maaaaan I am still waiting for the cards part!
Hello ! Thanks for the video ! I ve found the addon on blender because now it's not included anymore, but where can i find the ae script file ? Thank you !
@TheJbp83
2 жыл бұрын
Sorry i m just dumb i watched the video to fast x)
i cant pan using middle mouse button how to enable it
Can you please send me the footage that you used in the video because I don't have a smartphone to shoot with
Dude u are fkinn priceless!! I had a shitty track and now i know why i fked up hehehe thnk u
Hold on hold on hold on, you only have 200 subs?? When did you start KZread?
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
Hey now, almost at 300 ;) joking aside that's a tricky question to answer, I've had a couple youtube projects over the years starting when I was like 10 making stop motion videos, BUT I have a decent amount of experience on the platform as my actual job is as an editor for a youtuber haha
@GutherzigTV
3 жыл бұрын
Funny 😂👍
Where did you the add-on in Blender to export to After Effect?
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
It should already be installed with blender, just make sure you have Blender updated! If you can’t find it by using the add-on search box you may need to just scroll through the community add-ons tab manually to find it (I’ve heard sometimes a bit stops it from popping up when searching)
At 14:25, I see what you did there. Noyse!
lmao I bought a plugin to transfer 3D tracking data from AE to Blender just cuz it works so much better for me the blender's tracking
Pretty soon no one will be making games, just tutorials. A whole industry of cgi and everyone just makes tutorials.
Don't' export as JPG, it will introduce softness and compression artifacts, export in a lossless format like PNG, EXR, etc..
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
I totally agree with you (in general) but for this use case we aren't exporting to a jpg sequence, importing to blender, exporting out again, etc etc. All we're exporting back out of blender is the tracked camera data. You're right though, jpg isn't a lossless format so each time we export with jpg we lose a tiny bit of quality, however for what we're doing in blender, it won't make any difference to our tracking
CREA TYLER
am i a god????? i got 0.0 solve rror
@AcademyOfEdits
3 жыл бұрын
you just might be 0.0