Motion Tracking AE

Ballyman

Hi

I'm looking for some help on a little project I want to do. Basically I want to put my sonand wifes face/head onto two cartoon characters. The cartoon is about 5 mins long so there are loads of different scenes and zooms that I need to track.

I haven't a clue where to begin though. I found some tutorials on YouTube but only deal with one character and one scene so I don't know how to do the full cartoon or multiple layers and scaling.

I'm sure this isn't too difficult to do and I'm not requiring anything fancy only have their heads in the general area of the characters head. I have the 5 min avi file and psd layers. Anyone know where I can find a basic tutorial on how to do this?

Cheers

m83

Have you tried Videocopilot? This should be your first stop for all your AE needs.

ScumLord

Right click on the layer and track the motion, then apply that tracking data to a null object (it's a type of layer). That null object is one head. Track the motion of the video again and apply the second tracking data to a new 2nd null object. Then place the heads and link them to the null objects.

The videocopilot tracking tutorial is fairly advanced for what your trying to do. You should definitely go through the videocopilot tutorials but do the basic ones first that tracking one is a bit advanced.

Ballyman

ScumLord wrote: »

Right click on the layer and track the motion, then apply that tracking data to a null object (it's a type of layer). That null object is one head. Track the motion of the video again and apply the second tracking data to a new 2nd null object. Then place the heads and link them to the null objects.

The videocopilot tracking tutorial is fairly advanced for what your trying to do. You should definitely go through the videocopilot tutorials but do the basic ones first that tracking one is a bit advanced.

This sounds like what I want to do but I haven't a clue what you are talking about! All the tutorials I have found are way too advanced for wh at I want to do

I'll have look at videocopilot and see what's there. Cheers lads.

Splinters

Do you have a foundation knowledge of After Effects?

What you want to do isnt overly difficult for somebody proficient in After Effects but that doesnt mean its a walk in the park for a new user. Building a small wall is something a bricky could do with their eyes closed but theres all manner of ways an untrained person can mess it up....what Im trying to say is either start from the basics and learn how to use the program or else consider getting somebody whos already well versed in the program. If compositing and motion tracking were simple unskilled tasks there'd be a lot of people out of a job.

Ballyman

Splinters wrote: »

Do you have a foundation knowledge of After Effects?

No. Never opened it until yesterday. I'm a photographer so I use PS all the time and AE came with it. I've used permiere pro to cut video but thats about it.

Splinters wrote: »

What you want to do isnt overly difficult for somebody proficient in After Effects but that doesnt mean its a walk in the park for a new user. Building a small wall is something a bricky could do with their eyes closed but theres all manner of ways an untrained person can mess it up....what Im trying to say is either start from the basics and learn how to use the program or else consider getting somebody whos already well versed in the program. If compositing and motion tracking were simple unskilled tasks there'd be a lot of people out of a job.

I know what you are saying and I agree. However I'm looking for something simple rather than a head seamlessly replaced and tracked and AE can do this for me once I track a head but I don't know how to do it through several scenes and attach heads

It doesn't matter if the heads are misaligned from time to time as it's only for a child so very very basic tracking will do fine.

ScumLord

There are basic "getting started" tutorials on videocopilot http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/


I think it's much easier to work with a book though. The classroom in a book series from adobe is pretty good.

Rew

This might help:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-create-stromotion-effect-adobe-after-effects-270266/

Its the reverse of what you want but it covers the general topic. In the tutorial he's linking masked freeze frames to the background using motion trackers and Null's. You need to do the motion tracks on the faces then link the overlaid faces to that.

Ballyman

Thanks for all the help. I'll give it a bash later and see how I get on.

Splinters

I still think you're underestimating this. If theres different cuts and scenes you'll have to track for each cut. Theres no automated way of doing this across multiple shots. The tracking is pixel based and is only meant to work on individual shots, in fact thats all After Effects in general is meant to do. On each subsequent frame it expects the tracked item to be close enough in position and scale to the previous frame...if its not (i.e outside the tracking boundaries) you need to resetup the tracking and track the next shot. Over a 5 min cartoon this is quite a bit of work.

Your best bet is following through the basics on videocopilot. Andrew Kramer is a funny guy and usually very easy to listen to so its probably your best bet for picking up the basics. He covers tracking quite early on (5 lessons in) so if you follow in sequence up to that stage you'll hopefully get the hang of it.

http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/

Ballyman

Splinters wrote: »

I still think you're underestimating this. If theres different cuts and scenes you'll have to track for each cut. Theres no automated way of doing this across multiple shots. The tracking is pixel based and is only meant to work on individual shots, in fact thats all After Effects in general is meant to do. On each subsequent frame it expects the tracked item to be close enough in position and scale to the previous frame...if its not (i.e outside the tracking boundaries) you need to resetup the tracking and track the next shot. Over a 5 min cartoon this is quite a bit of work.

Yea, I knew this that I would have to do a new track for every scene and it is quite a bit of work. That was my initial problem in that I didn't know if I had to cut up the cartoon into loads of scenes and do each one individually and then join them all back up again or if if could all be done in AE.

I don't suppose anyone wants to have a crack at it, maybe the first two scenes and I'll do the rest myself when I see the layers and how you have done it??