< Previous | Contents | Manuals Home | Boris FX | Next >
Generic 2-D Tracker Exporters
There are a number of similar exporters that all output 2-D tracker paths to various compositing packages. Why 2-D, you protest? For starters, SynthEyes tracking capabilities can be faster and more accurate. But even more interestingly, you can use the 2-D export scripts to achieve some effects you could not with the compositing package alone.
For image stabilizing applications, the 2-D export scripts will average together all the selected trackers within SynthEyes, to produce a synthetic very stable tracker.
For corner-pinning applications, you can have SynthEyes output not the 2-D tracker location, but the re-projected location of the solved 3-D point. This location can not only be smoother, but continues to be valid even if the tracker goes off-screen. So suppose you need to insert a painting into an ornate picture-frame using corner pinning, but one corner goes off-screen during part of the shot. By outputting the re- projected 3-D point ( Use solved 3-D points checkbox), the corner pin can be applied over the entire shot without having to guess any of the path.
Taking this idea one step further, you can create an “extra” point in 3-D in SynthEyes. Its re-projected 2-D position will be averaged with any selected trackers; if there are none, its position will be output directly. So you can do a four-corner pin even if one of the corners is completely blocked or off-screen.
By repeating this process several times, you can create any number of synthetic trackers, doing a four-corner insert anywhere in the image, even where there are no trackable features. Of course, you could do this with using a 3-D compositing environment, but that might not be simplest.
At present, there are compatible 2-D exporters for After Effects, Digital Fusion, Discreet (Combustion/Inferno/Flame), Particle Illusion, and Shake. Note that you will need to import the tracker data file (produced by the correct SynthEyes exporter) into a particular existing tracker in your compositing package.
There is also a 2-D exporter that exports all tracker paths into a single file, with a variety of options to change frame numbers and u/v coordinates. A similar importer can read the same file format back in. Consequently, you can use the pair to achieve a variety of effects within SynthEyes, including transferring trackers from SynthEyes file to SynthEyes file, as described in the section on Merging Files and Tracks. This format can also be imported by Fusion.
©2024 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.