Hasta La Motion!

I am new to PFtrack, but I have a question about merging a camera movement and a object movement.

Example :
I would like to have some smoke on a guy’s face, the smoke is born on the face (geometry track) but has the drag of the environment (camera track).

The 2 trackings are essentials, is there an easy way to merge the camera solve and the geometry track together in PFtrack?

any ideas are more than welcome !

thanks a lot!

John

Dear Friends of 3DE!

Today we released a new beta version of 3DE4 (r1b12). It mainly contains the missing camera constraints "locked positional channels", as well as a large number of new python commands.

In addition, there are a few really cool new python scripts:

– "Track Homologous Stereo Points" allows you to track the second camera of a stereo project based on features tracked in the first one, more or less automatically. This can save an enormous amount of time.

– "Export Nuke CornerPin2D Node Stereo Stabilizing" exports a Nuke cornerpin node, for aligning both cameras of a stereo project to each other. Several parameters define precisely how camera A should be matched to camera B.

– "Triangulate Mocap Points From Sync’ed Cameras" allows to calculated individually animated (motion capturing) points from sync’ed cameras. This script even can be applied to (sync’ed) cameras of a stereo project.

Please see changelog below for more details!

http://www.sci-d-vis.com/index.html?site=devblog

I’m back with more PFTrack woes lol. So I have recently acquired a Canon 60D. I’ve been shooting most of my projects with this now, and have run into a lot of problems with tracking for reasons like rolling shutter and now some confusion over the right focal length. So I was wondering if someone could help clear out these questions for me.

So basically the 60D is not a full frame camera so all my lenses will have a crop factor of 1.6 on them. So a 50mm lens is equal to using an 80mm lens. My 60D has a film back of 22.3 × 14.9 mm according to the specs. When I try and enter this into PFTrack, it never lets me enter this ratio exactly. It always adjusts one value to be higher than it actually is by a few mm. I don’t know how much this affects my solve, but I assume not so much.

Another question is, if I shoot something with a 50mm lens on the camera, do I enter 50mm as the focal length or 80mm? Does PFTrack understand that the lens focal length is 55mm and my film back is not equal to a 35mm camera and so calculate crop factor and compensate or do I actually have to say 80mm in the approx focal length?

Another question is, how can I actually tell if rolling shutter is affecting my solve? I don’t see too much of it in my shot at present as opposed to some other videos that I’ve shot. What is the best way to post process footage with rolling shutter for the purpose of matchmoving?

Thanks guys!

Have I left out a step – should I add in a basic model in the tracking program and specify the dimensions of this model so as max can synchronise its units and settings with my imported ones ?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.