New tutorial! Remove wrinkles using Fusion's Planar Tracker

Hi everyone,

I just created a new tutorial on how to use Fusion Studio's Planar Tracker for wrinkle removal.
Of course this technique can be applied to other 'beauty work' as well.
I hope you enjoy it.

Cool. Just yesterday I used the planar tracker for the first time to do blink removal.

Imagine a 24 minute long talking head corporate piece with no blinking...

Hi everyone,

I just created a new tutorial on how to use Fusion Studio's Planar Tracker for wrinkle removal.
Of course this technique can be applied to other 'beauty work' as well.
I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for this. Really cool stuff. I'm following you on Youtube. Cool.

Hi Sander,

Cool video indeed Though I'd probably (surely actually) do it in Mocha Pro (standalone) or in Mocha UI OFX in Fu8 (or even Resolve), I've watched it without sound so far but I'm used to this type of action anyways and perfectly see what you're doing and it's clear.

However, one question remains; putting aside the fact that the obvious purpose of the video is to use a new feature, what's the real difference between 8 and 9, would it really be a bigger pain to achieve this in Fu8 in your point of view ?

[Stephen Horwat]

Did you happen to try the hybrid tracker to see if the results are better/worse in this particular situation? The hybrid tracker attempts to track all the pixels in pattern while the point tracker just tracks features. In theory, I would have expected better results from the hybrid tracker, but in practice, things do not always follow theory.

what's the real difference between 8 and 9, would it really be a bigger pain to achieve this in Fu8 in your point of view ?

Hi Sam,

I'm pretty sure that you could do most of this in 8, but 9 makes it so much easier. In 8 I would have to track something else than my actual forehead because there are no clear patterns, in 9 I could just select the part that I need to fix. In 8 I would have to use f.e. the Grid Warp to make the 'clean image' conform to the movement of my eyebrows, in 9 the stretching/squashing of the planar track took care of that almost by itself. So, yes it would be a much bigger pain to achieve this in 8.
This video is less than ten minutes and nothing of the actual operations is sped up. (I did make a few cuts when I mispronounced a word, but the work is all done in real time) No way I could've done this in 8 in 10 minutes.

Did you happen to try the hybrid tracker to see if the results are better/worse in this particular situation? The hybrid tracker attempts to track all the pixels in pattern while the point tracker just tracks features. In theory, I would have expected better results from the hybrid tracker, but in practice, things do not always follow theory.

I didn't try it while doing this, since I expect the default values to work best when someone provides me with a new tool. I just went back and redid the track with the hybrid tracker and the result was actually worse. I don't know why that is, but the track was much more erratic.

[Stephen Horwat]

Thanks for trying! There are various advantages and disadvantages to the two different tracking methods and I haven't had a chance to try any face tracking yet so I was curious. I'm not sure there is any "best" tracking method, rather what is best based upon the shot that needs to be tracked and how much time the user wants to spend.

PS. Thanks for making the video, it was awesome!

We can say that it (planar tracker) is on the way to Mocha's level now, with much less options, but you can get around with other nodes.
The 8-10 minutes challenge is to be compared to Mocha actually, since it is its full field of competence. I think that in the strict same example, it takes less in Mocha and the same time if using an external cleanplate (provided you know Mocha and therefore the cleanplate trick allowing you to super fine do whatever you like on a frame in photoshop as a reference).

Whatever, I'm very glad this planar tracker is in Fusion now, no need to get out of fusion for basic stuff; and thank you again for your demo.

The Fusion Planar tracker is a lot faster than working in Mocha. If if tracks your shot then it is easier and faster to use. If it does not track it well than you can try Mocha. So far I have been amazed at how well the planar tracker works in Fu9.

Been using Mocha since it's initial release, and it is a good tool, but it hasn't changed much in years.