Blender Motion Tracking Tutorial - Room Transformation

This was THE video that got my interest in Blender reinvigorated. Now I'm anxiously waiting for part three of the making a scene series because there are so many possibilities!

Kai Christensen

Hey Ian, question, I select a few points on the floor after I had already tracked them and solve and get a decent solve error (0.44), but still I get error: three tracks with bundles are needed to orient the floor. How do I get past this? I feel like I'm doing everything right but maybe the shot is too shacky? Thanks for everything btw, love your patreon

Ciao Ian, compliments! How i can render the 3d composition and the background video toghether? Do you render everything in blender? Do you export a png image sequence and than you compose in AE? Wich workflow is better and allow faster renders? Really love your works! Grazie!

Quick question: I'm using log footage from my canon eos R and a7r3, should i just drag and drop the footage to blender or edit in afx/premiere and export exr files to blender? How's your workflow? Do you do the grade first and than export it for blender or you grade it in blender than track? Thanks!

Orkun Işıtmak

Advice on how to handle footage with out a floor? Like looking up at builds in the city? Pick the lowest points on the buildings?

Matthew Pallotta

Looks like f and k1 are being solved for :( So not sure what the next steps would be other than try to reshoot

Hi Dane thanks for the reply! No I have not figured out the problem yet. Thanks for the tip I will go and check my files again to see if im missing the solve for f and k1. Im struggling more with the general blender interface right now. Just one wrong click and the menus or dialog disappear or change and it takes me ages to figure out how to get the correct views back ! :P Just wondering now if this is the best place for communication? Im new to this Patreon thing. Is the discord a better place to chat about this sort of stuff? Thanks Matthew

did you solve for camera f & k1 ? otherwise even though the tracking is good (0.05! wow) the real life distortion isn't being captured. but this was 7days ago so you probably figured out whatever the problem was by now

Hi Ian! Amazing video and you made me sign up and be a patreon for the first time! Quick question. I have started to do a practice track and i am getting a 0.05 solve error, which is believe is good! But when I attempt to place an object in the scene it still ends up slightly moving around and by the end of the video is slightly shifted out of position. Is this because the track is not good enough? Im thinking its something to do with perspective? For example ,it looks like its sitting on the table in one frame, but its not in the correct position in 3d space and so once the movement starts it no longer looks to be in that original position (hope my thinking makes sense) :D. Would you be able to give any tips on this. Thank you! Matthew

Most tutorials I watch online about motion tracking video in Blender, only show the information about tracking. But, I can't find a tutorial anywhere that shows you how to render the magic out.

Danny Wincott

I understand the projection method (sort of). But you have thrown me of course with this curve ball. I would like to understand the basic method first. The one thing I do not understand about the normal method, is how to render out my comp of tracked footage and scene. When I render out the animation, I only see the blender objects without my video? Sorry, just starting out. I must be doing something simple wrong.

Danny Wincott

Ah yeah!! Did you get it figured out? It's admittedly a really weird technique, but I've been loving doing as much comping in the viewport lately!

Ian Hubert

How is it done if you don't do the texture method?

Danny Wincott

Doh, I see you already answered this above :)

Danny Wincott

Great video as always. Noob question: how do I render the comp out as a video clip? I seem to be having issues with it only rendering out the CG objects and not the video

Danny Wincott

Ah! AE2Blend is great! I'm still not sure where I'm at between the two. I've been working with the AE tracker so long, and have seen it perform bizarrely successful tracks that it's hard to give it up, but for all those times the track DOESN'T work, and there's just nothing I can do, having a system where you can get in there and start babysitting stuff till it works is really handy. Also having it natively in the 3d program is great, especially if you're combining a camera track with simultaneous object tracks (which- I'm not sure you can do with AE?).

Ian Hubert

MOSTLY I just ignore lens distortion. Unless if it's a really distorted lens, or I'm noticing any slippage, I just try to match the focal length and run with it. That said, yeah! When you click "Setup Tracking Scene", blender sets a realtime undistorted version of the video as the background in the scene (since the viewport can't render distorted geometry (well, cycles can, but not eevee/solid/material view)). Then when you go to export, it's automatically created a node setup in the compositor that applies that distortion to the CG instead, so it matches the footage. It's pretty darn cool.

Ian Hubert

AH! Sorry I missed this! Thanks to Strand below for answering! But yeah, in this case, instead of just mapping it as the camera background, I've really been enjoying applying the footage as a video texture onto actual geometry in-scene. Here's an unedited version: https://youtu.be/jhPQ7aykVUc I get into it around 13:20.

Ian Hubert

Ah, thanks Strand!

Ian Hubert

It is mapped as a texture to the inner backplanes of the 3D room. Look in the video description on youtube, there is actually a longer, more detailed version of this video where this is explained. Just realized, also here in the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhPQ7aykVUc

Strandbummler

Hey dumb beginner question here! In the beginning you set the video as the background which works fine, but how do you make the video appear as the background in the final rendering?

Ahh! I sent you the link up above, if you want it! With this clip in particular you gotta set the keyframes yourself, otherwise it picks weird ones. It's a particularly difficult clip to be your first! Im impressed!!

Ian Hubert

i got solve error of 0.6829 with little more tweaking with detect feature with a distance of 60 ......but still there is little slipping and sliding in the start but sit well at the end ....well my first time tracking in blender...thanks in advance Ian....

shonal bose

AH! I'm glad to hear!! I'd love to see whatever you come up with!

Ian Hubert

I still end up using the AE tracker (and AE2Blend) a lot of the time (although that might change after all the testing I did for this tut :P), but yeah, the ability to get your hands dirty with the tracker and clean things up if you DON'T get a great track is really nice. Also being able to mix the camera track with object tracking is SO cool! Seriously yeah.Still so wild it's free, haha. I'm trying to phase out my reliance on adobe if I can.

Ian Hubert

Ah! I've been trying to figure out what the best settings are, yeah. For prekeyed stuff, I've been doing the Pro Res 444 (8 bit!)- and it seems like the resolution plays a huge part. I ended up using like 480p for eevee responsiveness, and redirected it to a 4k file for the final export, which made working with the file a lot more enjoyable. Lately I've been making lots of different resolutions of footage depending on what I'm trying to do with it.

Ian Hubert

Yeah! I'll upload it right now.

Ian Hubert

Oh! Did you download it from YouTube? That might not be high enough res, for sure! 1.64 isn't bad, though! But yeah I can upload the original clip if you want. :D

Ian Hubert

i tried a lot with your footage which i edited just the tracking shot ..Max i went too 1.6452 Solve error ...i guess ..i have to try again next time...

shonal bose

You're the man Ian. Thank you! Been focusing on building my blender/vfx chops during corona and your videos are immensely helpful!!

Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey

Hey man ! Any recommendation on what format/compression to make video textures projected on planes? Mine are slowing down my viewport to 6fps. Bummer. I tried both QuickTime Pro Res 444 with Alpha as well as a TGA sequence.

I didn't even know Blender had motion tracking until I saw your videos. AND it looks better than the shitty motion tracker in After Effects! I find myself saying this a lot lately, but "I can't believe they give it away FREE"...

Pete Burges

Ian ..thanks a million you listened ..is it possible to have the footage so we can try with blender....if this workout i will discontinue with pftrack licence .....thanks again Ian for the real time version.....

shonal bose

This is great, Ian.

Love it, thank you! I'm learning so much!

ooo this was fun. I have to ask from a vfx perspective, do you deal with lens distortion at all or do you prefer to not worry about it? Does blender have a solution for lens distortion/undistorting the footage?

Charles Tigner

awesome, thanks!

Filip

This has some really great detail on how to handle motion tracking. Excellent tutorial.

Introvert Dave

and another one!! Awesome work. Really informative. Was about to pick up AE2blend, might not now.

JØRGEN WETAAS BULL

Awesome vid!

Such a fantastic job, seriously

Howie Day

This tutorial what I needed SO much, right now! Thanks!

Ah! You're welcome! I very much hope it's useful! :D

Ian Hubert

Awesome Dude, as always ... Thank you

amazing!

I feel like you posted this because you knew I was up . 😂