CGTalk - Tracker concept

InfraRed

01-23-2003, 01:33 PM

Hi

Just so that I am not insane or about to waste alot of time and hair, will someone confirm that this is correct or wrong??

To match live footage from a digital video camera with a CG element using Combustion and Max;

1. Take footage
2. Open in Combustion and apply tracker
3. Export tracker ascii file
4. Open up in Max and set camera to move as per the tracker file
5. Render scene
6. Bring rendered scene into combustion and composite footage and cg together.

Is this correct or simply wrong? If it is correct, how does the camera in max receive the tracker information?

thanks very much. I have to make a decision on this soon, so I need to know if we can do it !!

Regards

N:p

lightwolf

01-23-2003, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by InfraRed

4. Open up in Max and set camera to move as per the tracker file
5. Render scene
6. Bring rendered scene into combustion and composite footage and cg together.

Is this correct or simply wrong? If it is correct, how does the camera in max receive the tracker information?

Hi, allthough I'm not a Max User: Wrong :-)

You need 3D Tracking data, combustion only tracks in 2D.

Try something like icarus http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/icarus/
It will track your footage and recreate the camera movement in 3D.

BTW, if you use it commercially it costs you around 1000EUR.

Come to think of it, doesn't Max include 3D Camera tracking? From what I heard it's ot that good, but you might try that first.

Cheers,

Mike.

InfraRed

01-23-2003, 03:14 PM

Thankyou Mike

I am new to hi end compositing so I appreciate your advise.

Icarus seems good, there is also Boujou, Realviz Matchmover and 3D Equalizer that I have seen so far. They all look great but some are a little expensive and we cannot warrant their prices as we are looking to do only one camera tracking project presently.

Thanks for your time

regards

N

Milo FX

01-24-2003, 01:07 AM

So you can try Max tracker. It is good enough for location tracking.

P.S: I called "location tracking" for a CG camera tracking on location. For example tracking a CG pen on a table...

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