Motion Tracking test #1

Artwork Blender Tests
1

Hi there, I’m new! :smiley:

Here’s a little test video I did using Voodoo motion tracking and Blender.
I’m pretty new to all this stuff, because I’m mainly a musician who wants to produce his music and musicvideos himself :no: , so please bear with me.
Model by TiZeta.

CU

2

Awesome work, you mind sending me a link to where you learned that, it looked really good.

3

I’m seeing a lot of sliding there man.

Check to make sure your solution is good, do this by deleting bad trackers and adding good ones.

Then make sure your model is actually sitting exactly on the surface, not hovering slightly above or below it.

4

like it - much better than the usual cube on a table tracking attempts.

there is a little sliding but overall it seems pretty solid.

5

What the hell?
I didn’t get results even half that good with voodoo!
I must have done something wrong.

Great work!

Did you use a HD camera?

6

wow, that was good… lighting and shadows spot on… sure your just a musician? :smiley:

7

thx. Yeah, I’m mainly a musician … but a damn nerdy one! :smiley:

8

I used the Voodoo default settings and only reduced the number of tracking points to 300 to save time. I didn’t even delete the faulty tracking points.
But I had to adjust the focal length in Blender from 37 something to 39 something

No, not HD, just my digital Ixus in 640 x 480.

thx

9

Ok here’s a very short tutorial on how I did it:

Preparations:

  • Convert the filmed footage to a TGA sequence

Voodoo:

  • load it into Voodoo
  • You probably have to adjust the focal length and fps in Voodoo, but I didn’t do it
  • I reduced tracking points to 300 to save time
  • Track sequence
  • Export to Blender 2.4x (!) (Blender 2.54 gave me an error while trying to execute the 2.54 script)

Blender:

  • Load and execute the script in Blender 2.49
  • Save the resulting *.blend
  • Open the blend in 2.54 and rotate all objects to match the ground plane to make things easier
  • Unhide the tracking point cloud if it’s hidden
  • Load the TGA sequence as background for the camera
  • Insert a test object inside the cloud
  • Disable the focal length keyframes in the graph editor and instead adjust the focal length of the camera manually until the object stops sliding around (I didn’t achieve it 100% as you can see)
  • I inserted a plane where the kitchen table is and a cylinder where the can (protein powder FYI :smiley: ) is. These objects are needed so that the shadows are visible and the cylinder one also acts as a matte.
  • I set the “only recieve shadows” (or similar, can’t remember) in the material options of these two objects so they are invisible but still recieve shadows
  • I added a light (sun) and enabled enviromental lightning. Adjust as needed and match the shadow direction and spread to match the shadows of your filmed footage.
  • When everything looks O.K., render the animation as a TGA sequence with RGBA (with alpha channel) enabled.

Composit the two TGA sequences together in a program of your choice (I used an old version of After Effects) until it looks right.

That’s it!