Free or not that expensive 3d tracker for fusion?

Hi,

I am a beginner with fusion, but have used After effects a while, and I am familiar with Cinema 4d.

I am mainly a photographer and color corrector, but since my company is small, I often do lots of stuff. Love to learn new stuff.

I color correct with Davini Resolve and have the studio version. It is great to work with nodes, and that is the reason for looking into fusion. I am starting to get a hold on how it works now. I also own the a membership of Adobe Creative cloud. I use After effects and the 3d camera tracker quite often when working with motion graphics.

Are there any free 3d trackers or not that expensive one that works great with Fusion? I am on a mac and are trying out the beta of Fusion 8. Or do I already have some tools through Adobe that can help me with this? Or should I just stay with the 3d tracker and the messy layers in After effects?

Best regards,
Eirik Nicolai Heim
Crux Film
Tromsø, Norway

SynthEyes hands down.
Cheap and one of the best around.

But you can't beat free:

http://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckle ... ?f=6&t=427

Won’t mind some planar tracking in Fusion by default.

Thank you for tips.

How do you find the 3d camera tracker in AE vs SynthEyes or Blender?
Should I just continue using AE for quick tracking work, like logo placement or other graphics in footage?

Well, I can only speak for Blender... Once you get used to the horrible UI and if you plan your shots, I find the camera tracker very powerful and fairly easy to use.
Here's a test I did a couple of months ago...

I think a 3d comp software needs to have a 3d tracker...my 2cents.

Nice one Stefan!

I would also really like to have a 3d tracker inside of fusion. Love the nodes, and willing to sacrifice a bit for the nodes.

Yeah, but what's about Resolve's 3D Tracker shared with Fusion, wouldn't it be nice? Like we've seen After Effects uses the same Warp Stabilizer as Premiere. I think it'd be cool if some features from Resolve intersect with some Fusion Has, Like trackers, transforms, Merges, DNG Raw settings, import/export settings, etc!

Like we've seen After Effects uses the same Warp Stabilizer as Premiere. I

After Effects had WS since CS5, while Premiere introduced it in CS6. It was the other way around


Is Blenders Tracker a bit "improved" by now? Not talking about the quality of track which is pretty well, but the usage of it. The "automatic tracker placement" in Blender never really worked for me, and adding trackers manually is somehow cumbersome. I had issues tracking some shots that were no problem in SynthEyes or Foundrys CameraTracker before, where 200 trackers are placed (and sometimes deleted afterwards) automatically.
To me, Tracking feels like Fusions biggest pitfall an the moment. The 2D Tracker doesn't work that good either

The 2D Tracker doesn't work that good either

The 2D tracker is exceptionally accurate and has a great frame to frame adjusting modes.

It's just that it is too simple/limited tool nowadays and we need planar and camera solutions inside Fusion.
It would really boost the software popularity and usefulness imo to have those inside Fu's node platform, and it's about time already.

Is Blenders Tracker a bit "improved" by now? Not talking about the quality of track which is pretty well, but the usage of it. The "automatic tracker placement" in Blender never really worked for me, and adding trackers manually is somehow cumbersome.

most of the time you would rather use "user tracks" then the "automate tracking" in syntheyes or pftrack or 3dequalizer, so there is nothing to improve i think. well it would be nice if the blender tracker could solve shots with varying focal length = zoom shots

The 2D tracker is exceptionally accurate and has a great frame to frame adjusting modes.

It's just that it is too simple/limited tool nowadays[..]

Even with all its limitations, a 2D Tracker still can solve many, many things. So far I just found the setup of the Tracker cumbersome and simply not really good in the results. I'm happy to learn how to get better tracks, the way I do it in Nuke just doesn't seem to get me proper results here.

most of the time you would rather use "user tracks" then the "automate tracking" in syntheyes or pftrack or 3dequalizer, so there is nothing to improve i think.

In fast shots, user tracks are simply very slow and a pain to setup. Any Blender Tracker Tutorial only seems to care about shots were every tracker is always in the shot, which is a bit utopic and most of the time far from reality. That also makes it hard for me to get the whole tracking process in Blender, as it isn't shown very well :/
however, automatic tracking in SynthEyes and Nuke nearly always did the trick for me, so far at least.

Even with all its limitations, a 2D Tracker still can solve many, many things.

Oh, absolutely, it's used daily in virtually every shot. As one guy from a vfx studio used to advise the new compositors - "We don't even visit the bathroom without the tracker here."
As an extreme example, I've personally have done a full ground replacement shots(feature film quality) where the camera was orbiting, using only Fusion's 2d tracker and some manual (grid warp) adjusting.

So far I just found the setup of the Tracker cumbersome and simply not really good in the results.

I'd say it's all about a lot of practice and learning from experience, but sure, I guess the tool can use some re-brushing/adding some features, e.g.the notorious stabilize to a reference frame cumbersome setting(though there is a custom solution to it already, thanks to SecondMan from steakunderwater).

You'd find it can track accurately 1,2 pixels vibrations in some modes and settings which will not work for another shot, so need to adjust settings, CC/blur the footage a bit etc.

The whole stabilize-way was a bit strange for me, I watched some tutorial where I needed to add a Transform and link that to the tracker; somehow, that doesn't feel very "fluent" for me, nor very intuitive.

You see, I often use two trackers - one simply stabilizing, the other one de-stabilizing so it's back to normal again. I can achieve that, but ONLY if I put something in the BG-input on the 2nd tracker (e.g. a back blackground) because the node refuses to work properly w/o the BG input set, but has no option to matchmove the BG directly. Then no options for jitter etc... the tracks itself aren't too bad (much better than AE for sure!), but the node could learn some new things

//edit
And that doesn't even cover the 4-corner-pin. I tried that once, a screen-replacement, and it was... well, weird. I can't even explain it properly from memory, but the filtering and positioning of the points was just strange.
It was from a cellphone, so the display to insert was around 300x500px or so. Fusion however didn't seem to like that input, nor did it like crop-nodes, and it was strangely distorted when applied the tracker. Maybe I have to get a bit more into that, but still it's far from ideal to me

The problem with monitor replacement is the lack of perspective in the 4 corner tracker.
It's simply not planar, therefore never going to give the perspective results you need with the tracker.

As for the FG/BG issue, yeah, I agree. if you choose fg only, it 'should' ignore the background.
This is why I always feed the fg into the bg as well.

When we ship with scripts again, we'll have the destabilize transform script, which is what you really want.
It's a single transform node, connected to a selected tracker results.
In the center controls, you can insert an expression for your jitter using shake or custom.

I hate to say 'workaround' because it's just the method that is currently available. That being said, the tracker most definitely needs feature updates, as it's point tracker itself is amazing, but the application of those tracks is a bit dated.

That being said, the tracker most definitely needs feature updates, as it's point tracker itself is amazing, but the application of those tracks is a bit dated.

I wouldn't be so harsh with that - in the most shots on the daily task, a normal 2D tracker is very much everything needed but I agree with you on the "overhaul"

Calling it a workaround may really be a bit mean. Yet, I just don't feel using it that way will be my workflow, rather the "dual input" thing you mentioned.
DaVinci has a new 3D tracker I heard, seems like a planar one (and real fast too!), maybe you should look in that direction... and even if it's not accurate enough for the critical work, it'd be great for garbage mattes

speaking of the destabilize script...

Some things that I've recently stumbled over:

• You can't fully matchmove a mask except for its position since it doesn't have an axis input (speaking of which... separate x/y scale, shearing or even a "brute force" matrix input on masks would also help the Mocha guys to make exporting their stuff to Fusion even more awesome).
• There's a stable Axis but no unstable Axis in the connect to menu (or vice versa - don't remember). Is it the same for both modes? In that case the label could use an update. But I think it's not the same, that's why the destabilize script connects to the stable inputs and inverts the transform, right?
• having default tracker positions isn't that helpful. I would prefer adding trackers directly where I'm currently zoomed into my image instead of zooming out and scaling and dragging the tracker down to where I need it.

About the corner pinning thing Rick mentions two posts up: I think the problem is that Fusion's Tracker as well as the corner positioner tool will transform the whole input image to fit into the area defined by the four corners/trackers. In many cases, however, you don't want this.

You have a logo that doesn't conform to the aspect ratio of your footage or you have a piece of cleanplate that matches the plate perfectly on a specific frame. Corner-pinning this in Fusion is a pain (eyeballing, perspective positioner, copy&pasting coordinate values around, losing quality, etc), that's why I once wrote the corner pin Fuse which supports source coordinates.

Since I lack any programming knowledge concerning filter processing there are aliasing artifacts in extreme cases but it was also more a GUI proof of concept. However, the tool has been developed on the pigsfly forum based on user feedback so if Blackmagic wants to turn it into a native tool... the groundwork is done

speaking of the destabilize script...

Some things that I've recently stumbled over:

[list][*]You can't fully matchmove a mask except for its position since it doesn't have an axis input

I don't quite understand this, the destabilize script only works on transform and merge,so you can matchmove a mask via feeding it into transform and connect its center,angle and pivot to tracker's steady position, angle and axis and invert the transform (either manually or via the script). Or feed the mask into the tracker directly and set it to matchmove fg.

If you mean that you can't fully matchmove a mask via connect to, then yes, a polyline mask doesn't have a separate axis control.

You're right, the transform tool workaround is possible. But then it's no longer a mask and combining it with subsequent rotos requires the bitmap mask tool.

About the corner pinning thing Rick mentions two posts up: I think the problem is that Fusion's Tracker as well as the corner positioner tool will transform the whole input image to fit into the area defined by the four corners/trackers. In many cases, however, you don't want this.

My solution for that is to use perspective position and not corner. This will extract the region into a full screen static image. You can then comp anything you want over it, aspect, size etc.. won't matter.
Then immediately after that, I use a copy of the same tracking in corner tracking mode.

This even allows me to 'scale' the tracked background within the corner track. For instance monitor may have tracking markers on the corners, with perspective track, you get an extracted screen that you can now scale up to hide the trackers, add your foreground and reflections etc..

Autodesk Matchmover = Free
Or Mocha.

Autodesk Matchmover = Free
Or Mocha.

Matchmover is pretty much dead, which is why its free (bugs/limitations and all). Mocha still doesn't have a true robust 3D tracker. If I remember correctly, it's judging camera based solely on planar tracks which can be problematic, especially if you have issues with having enough surfaces to work with. Also, Mocha Pro, which has 3D tracking isn't free. I'd recommend buying it as a great overall piece of software but I wouldn't rely on it for 3D tracking.

Matchmover is pretty much dead, which is why its free

Free does not = dead product!

It's not dead but it has been abandoned. The ad app store has a support link but it points to a list that doesn't include mm. It does have a good manual and there is quite a bit of training on yt and some pay stuff, but it's also quirky and until you learn the quirk-workarounds it's crashy. I think mm would be viable for learning but not something to depend on. I used it long enough to work through the manual but in retrospect i would have been better off dling the syntheyes demo and starting there - which is what i'm doing now.
So far syntheyes (demo) has been stable and fast. It has very good documentation and many hours of free training. Tech support has been excellent.

In the land of Autodesk it usually does.

Matchmover is pretty much dead, which is why its free

Free does not = dead product!

Would anyone know how I could set-up some type script that mimics the functions of MochaImport+?
Its an amazing script for After Effects & Nuke that offers modified corner pin & warp functions, such as a locked \ stabilized pre-comps using data provided from Mocha or Mocha Pro.

I know Mocha 5 improves copying shapes to Fusion but I miss this ability to track a corner pin in mocha, stabilize it, do comp work (bullet marks, warping, fire etc), and then reverse the stabilization and it falls right back into place, including motion blur if tracked correctly.

Little workflows such as this are the small things keeping me from jumping completely to Fusion from AE & Nuke, although Im hoping to find workarounds \ similar methods as Im really starting to see the power of Fusion

Any suggestions appreciated!