Not sure if this the right place to post this but I’m currently working on my first contribution to blender - a corner pin node, I’ve implemented two parts as a proof of concept (a lot of cleaning up to do). The first part is the node itself and the second a quick panel for copying data from trackers in the movieclip editor. There is still quite a bit of work to do but I wanted to get feedback from users about if it would be useful!
I would suggest posting this in the compositing sub-forum and the coding section.
I would like to see the name of the tracker allocated to each point’s window in the node.
Is your “base image” the background or tracking source? what is the effect of Inverse? Great work though will make corner pins much easier.
Yes, that would be really useful, even though it’s not that hard to make it manually, every development that eases the steps to do a 4 corner pin is welcome!
And I second 3pointEdit, the tracker name would be great…!
What happened to this?
This should already be in Blender.
This is how it is done in AE.
The work-around of creating a plane with hooks and an orthographic camera is inelegant and doesn’t sell Blender for VFX very well.
This should all be possible in the compositer without rendering.
Any update?
With this renewed interest I’m having another look.
I’ve changed it completely to use a movie clip and a object from that clip which it will pull the first four trackers from to get the corner positions.
I’m considering the need for motion blur, probably in the form of outputting motion vectors for input into the vector blur node. How essential do you think this is?
Over what area would the vectors be generated? I like this idea as you could send motion blur to mask shapes but how would you determine the amount of blur? I guess that it could not respect depth but a proper solve would do that.
Also it would be nice to be able to use more than one group of 4, for successive plane tracks on the same clip. For example if replacing many tv screens in a shot.
Is there a video somewhere that shows us how that work ? What it is useful for ?
I must admit I am a bit puzzled as i don’t know what corner pins are…
Yeah I’m not sure it would quite work because these would be 2d screen space motion vectors but the vector blur takes 3d motion vectors and depth and reconciles them. Might have to do motion blur myself in the node if needed.
You can always add more than one tracking object to clip. One problem with more than four tracks is that they must be in the right order and that might get quite confusing if you have multiple set of tracks. Objects also have names which would be a lot less confusing IMO.
MMhh OK, thanks ajeakins.
Do you have a version I could test out?
I need to be able to set and keyframe the corner points from a script I’m writing.
Yes!
Thank you so much. this is going to be a life saver!
A quick question. How did you learn how to add a node into the compositor, and how difficult was it. There is so much that I have wanted to add to the compositor, but have no clue how to get started.
-Thanks,
very much!
@terrachild Not yet but making good progress, should have a patch soon.
@mslarsen Well, if you know a bit of C/C++ it’s not the coding that’s hard, it’s finding all the places you need to add code to! Once I’m done I’ll post the diff and maybe make a wiki page with the process. I figured it out by ack’ing the source for the names of nodes that already exist and following the calls around…
Omg bootstrap from open source is sad. No docs?
To be fair there is this but it’s pretty out of date… http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.4/Doc/How_to/Add_A_Node
I think core developer is pretty swamped introducing py nodes etc.
There are some cool effects which are made much easier by a feature in the AE - CC Power Pin effect.
It is a reverse corner pin that is labeled "Unstretch ".
If you’re not familiar with that, it lets you set four corner positions in an image, and then stretches that section out to the current project resolution. It is very handy.
Is that possible as a feature?
Any progress on this?
I’m also VERY interested in progress on this. I’d be willing to test it and suggest features. Maybe instead of the numerical fields, having a spot to choose tracks from a drop down list, the way you do in a Track Position node. Then, even better, having offset numerical sliders under that for the X and Y of each track point. I’d be happy to mock up what I mean, if that doesn’t make sense.
But this node REALLY interested me, and would improve Blender a lot! Please keep going on it!
Just got back from Siggraph today after talking with Ton and the developers, as well as the CEO of Imagineer Systems - Mocha.
I explained that I am creating an Addon for importing all of Mocha’s tracking data into Blender. I already have it working the old-school way of creating a plain in the 3D view for corner-pinning, but that is not the proper way of doing it. If you don’t have time to complete your code, there are several coders in L.A. near me that could complete it for you. Thanks.