• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

motion/camera tracking?

D

Dalek

Hi, im looking to get motion tracking for video so i can place objects on my scenes, can anyone recomment free or inexpensive motion trackers? i heard of voodo as a free tracker but it does not support .mov, .mp4, or any format im used to, i dont believe it even works with video i think its 3D models, but anyways im looking for something like adobe's mocha?, prefferably something that works with sony vegas?


thanks ahead from your newbie film maker
-Dalek
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
As far as a free tracker goes, the new version of blender is suppose to have a camera tracking feature, but it wouldn't work inside Vegas. Although, I don't know a thing about Vegas, but I think you'd need a compositing program, to use camera tracking information. I don't know if Vegas could do that, but like I said, I don't know a thing about Vegas. But Blender is free, and there are some great online tutorials to learn the basics of blender.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
yeah i tried blender before to try to get 3d objects in my videos, i could not fiure it out, im now using 3ds max since i got it for free (LEGAL NO PIRACY IM USING STUDENT LICENCE AND I AM A STUDENT) but im still cant figure out 3D objects but my need for camera/ motion tracking is for sticking objects into my video for example blood stains on the wall or bullet holes too, OR the 3D objects into a scene if i could figure it out.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Bullet holes and blood splatters are essentially 2d, unless you have a lot of odd movement in your shot, planar tracking is normally all that's needed for blood and bullet holes.

Even point tracking is good enough for most of these types of shots. In my short film "Power Up" I used old school AE point tracking (along wit Corner Pin) to place virtual screens in some very dynamic shots.. Looks pretty convincing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I have SynthEyes and it's incredible at camera matching / object tracking. Though not free, it is affordable compared to others considering the feature set and capability.

Though why not give Voodoo another look? You'll just have to convert your video file to a TGA sequence before tracking. I used it before moving to SynthEyes, and it's quite capable, considering it's free. The main downsides are speed and fairly limited export options (At the time I had to write a converter to get the tracked results into the lesser-known 3D app I use.)

But if you're using Maya, Lightwave, or Softimage, you should be fine. It also exports to Blender but I imagine if you were using Blender, you'd go with the native tracker.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Why not after effects? It comes with a camera tracker as well as an unlimited amount of other effects possibilities. It can even import camera tracking data from 3D animating programs like blender and 3d max.

Also if you are a student you can get it for heaps heaps cheaper. + plus in that package you get photoshop, flash, premiere etc. supposedly premiere is more industry standard than Vegas.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top