< Previous | Contents | Manuals Home | Boris FX | Next >
Overview of Standard Tool Scripts
SynthEyes includes many standard tool scripts, in addition to the import and export scripts. Additional scripts are announced regularly on the web site and via the Msg message button in SynthEyes.
Here is a quick overview of some of the common. For usage details, consult the tutorials on the web site and the control panels that pop up when they are started. You can also read the explanatory comments in their source code.
Animate Trackers by Mesh Projection. Projects the 2D position of all exportable trackers onto the selected mesh, creating 3D motion-capture-style paths for each tracker. In a typical use, the mesh is a head mesh parented to a moving object.
The moving object has a set of trackers that are on rigid features (corners of eyes, nose, etc) used to solve for the head model track, while the trackers used here are on a disabled object and track moving features such as corners of mouth etc to create facial animation from a single camera shoot.
Apply/Remove Lens Distortion. If you track a shot, then discover there was lens distortion, and want to switch to an undistorted version, but do not want to re- track the shot—use this script to update the tracking data.
Calculate Texture Dots/Unit. Displays information about the number of pixels per SynthEyes (world) unit in each direction, to allow extracted texture map resolutions to be chosen intelligently. There must be an Edit Mesh with exactly one face selected; the resolution information is for that one triangle and may be different for different faces, depending on the mesh.
Camera to Tracker Distance. Shows the distance from the camera to the selected tracker(s). The smaller number in parentheses is the distance along the camera axis only.
Convert Flex to Trackers . A flex is a 3-D curve in space; this script creates a row of trackers along it, so you can make it into a mesh or export the coordinates.
Duplicate Mesh. Use to create copies of a mesh object, possibly shifting each one successively to make a row of fence posts, for example.
Duplicate Mesh onto Trackers. Duplicate a mesh onto selected (or all) trackers, for example, many pine trees onto trackers on a mountainside. Use this script to delete them later if you need to, it is otherwise difficult!
Filter Lens FOV. Use to smooth out a lens field of view track in a zoom shot, to eliminate zoom/dolly jitter.
Grid of Trackers. Creates a grid of supervised trackers, optionally within a spline. Use for open-ocean tracking and creating dense supervised meshes.
Invert Perspective. Turn a low(no) perspective object track inside out.
Make Mesh the Ground. The entire SynthEyes scene is repositioned so that the mesh's local coordinate system is now the world coordinate system, ie you can move a plane around in 3D to your desired ground plane location, then run this script and the plane—and entire scene—are moved to the origin.
Make Object from Tracker. Creates a moving object from a tracker, using its 2D path to create a far-tracker-like path in 3D for the moving object, useful for creating texture-extraction geometry on moving objects where the exact 3-D path can not
be determined. The object can face the camera exactly, or be spin solely about its vertical axis.
Mark Seeds as Solved. You can create seed trackers at different locations, possibly on a mesh, then make them appear to be solved at those coordinates.
Mesh Information. Shows the number of vertices and facets of the current selected mesh. Note that if normals or texture coordinates are present, there is always one value for each position vertex in SynthEyes, so that information would be redundant.
Motion Capture Camera Calibrate . See motion capture writeup .
Perspective Projection Screen Adjust . Use this script to adjust some per-shot/camera behind-the-scenes controls for the perspective viewport's built-in projection screen, such as the distance from the camera to the screen and the grid resolution. See the section Image Overlay and Projection Screens .
Preferences Listing. (exporter!) Creates a list of preferences available for SynthEyes scripting, along with tooltip reference text.
Projection Screen Creator. Creates a "projection screen" mesh in the 3-D environment, textured by the current shot. Allows you to see the shot imagery in place, even when you are not locked to it. You can matte out the chroma key that you have set up on the Green Screen Panel, or use an existing alpha channel.
Rename Selected Trackers. Manipulates the names of the selected trackers. They can be renamed with a shared basic name and new numbers assigned, for example Fave1, Fave2, Fave3. Or, new prefixes or suffixes can be inserted, ie Tracker1 becomes LeftTracker1 or TrackerL1 (or less desirably, Tracker1L, if "Keep tracker# at end" is turned off). Portions of the names can be removed as well.
The script will automatically increment the numbering so that the resulting tracker names are unique.
Reverse Shot/Sequence. Use to avoid re-tracking when you’re suddenly told to reverse a shot. Reverses tracker data but not other animated data.
Select By Type. Use to select all Far trackers, all unsolved trackers, etc.
Set Color by RMS Error. Re-colors trackers based on their RMS error after solving for easier checking. Sets up 3 different colors, good/OK/bad aka green/yellow/red. Changes a secondary color for each tracker. You can adjust the colors and rms error levels. Switch back and forth between the two sets of colors using the View/Use alternate colors menu item.
Set Plane Aspect Ratio. Adjusts the width or height of the selected 3-D plane to a specified value, usually so it can be used to hold a texture while maintaining the proper image and pixel aspect ratio.
Set Tracker Color from Image. Sets the primary or alternate color of the tracker based on the average image color inside the tracker on the current frame, or on the tracker's first valid frame. Can be made to invert the color to enhance the tracker visibility in the camera view, or not do so, to suggest the scene in the 3-D point cloud in the perspective view.
Shift Constraints. Especially using GPS survey data, use this script to adjust the data to eliminate the common offset: if X values are X=999.95, 999.975, 1000.012, you can subtract 1000 from everything to improve accuracy.
Splice Paths. Sometimes a shot has several different pieces that you can track individually; this script can glue them together for a final track. Open the shot repeatedly within the same scene file (or merge files), and adjust the start and end ranges on the time bar so that they overlap at a single frame, ie shot1 goes 0..100, shot2 goes 100 to 200 (NOT 101 to 200). Have each section by solved, then run Splice Paths.
Step by tracker auto-key. Steps the user-interface frame# forward or backward by the auto-key setting of the single selected tracker. Use this to "rough-out" supervised trackers, stepping into the as-yet-untracked portion and typically using z-drop and z- drop-lock.
©2024 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.