Painting out tracking dots

Hi,

I'm sure there is a simple answer to this, but i'm fairly new to Fusion.

Im painting out some tracking dots on an actors skin, my track has worked great, I'm painting the dots out with the clone tool frame by frame. It looks great but its taking an age. Im wondering is there a way of connecting the clone to the tracker or something similar? Something like this would speed the process up no end!

Thanks in advance!

Simon

There definitely is a way to do that.
It works best if you plan ahead.
First: do your track.
Second: add a paint-tool, set the stroke type to 'stroke' (not multistroke) the apply mode to 'clone'
open up the 'stroke controls' and there RC on the Center and select 'connect to' and connect the x/y position of your track. THEN paint out the dot you've tracked and tadaah - the paint tool *should* follow the dot while cloning from the constant relative position. Depending on how much movement there is, this should get you a big piece of the way there.

Thanks for the reply! Very helpful.

Hmmm. It is not working form me.

When I connect it to center position and paint, center values go back to default (0.5, 0.5) and stoke name change from lets say Stroke1 to Stroke2 etc.

Any ideas what I do wrong?

It is working for me now, but I don't understand, why it can be only attached to the exact place of tracking and offset can't be added.

Greetings

Off-set can be added, it's just a little more difficult to do it afterwards, because as soon as you connect the center, the painting will 'jump' to that new position and you have to reposition all the work you did.
Doing it this way is easier - in the end.

Sander
Any chance that you could provide a little more detail of how this is done?
I cannot get it to work.
Thanks

You could also try tracking the dot, attach a polygon mask to the track, then offset the ftge with foreground over bkgd of merge tool.
This mostly works best when the image around the tracking dot is uniform - but it's a quick and easy option, plus being able to animate the polygonal mask or more than one mask is helpful if an object passes in front of the tracking dot.

Sander
Any chance that you could provide a little more detail of how this is done?
I cannot get it to work.
Thanks

John,

Do you have a couple of frames available to share that you're working on? That would help provide you with a more specific answer.

THEN paint out the dot you've tracked and tadaah...

DOH! I wish this thread started 2 weeks ago, before I did it the wrong way. Painted the dot out, THEN attached to the tracker, THEN re-positioned it. Now that you showed the correct order I ask myself why didn't I see that?

Thanks!

There definitely is a way to do that.
It works best if you plan ahead.
First: do your track.
Second: add a paint-tool, set the stroke type to 'stroke' (not multistroke) the apply mode to 'clone'
open up the 'stroke controls' and there RC on the Center and select 'connect to' and connect the x/y position of your track. THEN paint out the dot you've tracked and tadaah - the paint tool *should* follow the dot while cloning from the constant relative position. Depending on how much movement there is, this should get you a big piece of the way there.

Sander
OK I think I have figured it out.
I have a simple set up of a face with a pimple as in your previous example code back in June?. My face has a shake on it.
(BTW I could not get your code to work. When posted there was no tracking data and on trying to repeat the tracking i got an error relating to Bins and had to abort.)

I think my mistake has been not to set the clone reference point (Alt Click to get the cross) BEFORE I connected the Tracker. Does this seem like a good explanation?

Also when Connecting the tracker I need to connect it to
TRACKER TrackerPath/Position.

Other Options like
TRACKER UnsteadyPosition or
TRACKER Tracker1:UnsteadyPosition are not correct.

In your quote you refer to the X/Y position of the track. I could not find anything labeled x/y.

But it now works for me.
Many thanks.

There definitely is a way to do that.
It works best if you plan ahead.
First: do your track.
Second: add a paint-tool, set the stroke type to 'stroke' (not multistroke) the apply mode to 'clone'
open up the 'stroke controls' and there RC on the Center and select 'connect to' and connect the x/y position of your track. THEN paint out the dot you've tracked and tadaah - the paint tool *should* follow the dot while cloning from the constant relative position. Depending on how much movement there is, this should get you a big piece of the way there.

This works great and did get me a big piece of the way there.

I have some frames where I just want to nudge the stroke a few pixels one way or the other, but I can't figure out how to do that.

I thought maybe the spline editor. The keyframes all appear as little "locks" and don't move. I've done some searching around but haven't figured out if a) I am on the right track and if so b) how to unlock them.

Anyone point me in the right direction?