Motion Tracking Software

[Policar]

First some great (?) news: I'm migrating from Max to XSI! This means I may actually be able to afford this software AFTER I'm done with school. Yay. And I have a friend who is amazing with XSI so I may actually get decent at it.

The motion tracker in XSI seems pretty basic, though. I'm shooting a feature this summer that needs a lot of intense tracking and I need something boujou like that supports multiple tracking points and focal length settings so I can composite 3D into greenscreened shots with a moving camera and just regular shots with a moving camera. (Mostly handheld.)

My friend has the free version of Icarus. Is it any good? I can't afford boujou, obviously but am up for any suggestions.

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

What school are you currently attending? Emerson?

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

Ahh...I see. Sounds like it could take you places. Good luck with school.

[Policar]

Let's hope so. 43 grand a year is painful even with financial aid.

[Grant]

might want to try something like Boris RED, it has 1-4 motion trackers that can simultaneously be used and that data can then be transfered to other effects, layers, etc. And it also has very good compositing and effects cappabilities.

[Policar]

Unfortunately, 1-4 trackers are not enough. I'm taking the data out to XSI and Max (hopefully I'll have transitioned entirely to XSI by when I need to do this) so that I can composite moving 3D elements despite handheld camera movements. I'm already using After Effects for compositing.

I tried PFTrack's 3 day trial and I love it so I may go with it. It's slow (seems to use a few dozen trackers) but it runs well enough to be useable. Educational pricing seems to be about $200, which is way more than I want to spend but lots less than boujou and it's easy to use. I'll post a test pretty soon! The only issue is that it seems to rely on a detailed background, and I'm going to be using a very shallow depth of focus from a 35mm adapter for most of my movie to save money (less time spent lighting backgrounds when it's so fuzzy you don't know what's there.)

[Scottdvx100]

If you keep the moves to pure pan/tilt then you can convert 2D tracker data into 3D pan/tilt.
(export AE tracker, write formulas in excel, export in format for 3D app)

[doggie]

does anybody knows combustion... just in case

[Rich Lee]

thats lame that there is no student version of boujou...have you tried contacting them to see?