How do I use boujou tracking data in AE?

robertwerden

robertwerden

Well-known member
The comp boujou creates gives me a camera and a bunch of nulls as the points. I don't understand how to use the tracking data saved in the camera for adding in my effect.

I'm doing a 360 degree orbit shot.
 
A little more detail will be needed to help you with your particular shot, but, in general, you bring in the 3D camera to composite 2D/3D graphics with footage. So, if you wanted some 2D text to look like it was sitting in your shot, you'd track it via boujou, then take that camera and bring the data into AE, make that text 3D in AE and voila! It matches perfectly. Well, as perfect as your track is.

On a similar note, The Foundry has released a new plugin for AE called Camera Tracker that will do 3D camera tracking directly within AE. From what I've read, it's pretty solid and probably a big timesaver vs. going outside of AE for simple shots, etc.

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/cameratracker/
 
Just to add to oneinfinite's last comment. The Foundry's cameratracker is very solid. I was a beta tester for it. As a matter a fact I'm using it right now on some shots for a project. It's very handy if you are staying inside AE for all of your work.

-Josh
 
well obviously boujou is to expensive for me any way. I will look at foundry. I know mocha is in ae so I may look at that first.
 
I'm not 100 percent sure I understand your original question but you can use your nulls as reference points to place your effects etc. Mocha is great too but certainly depends on the shot.

Also, SynthEyes is great!

-Josh
 
The big difference between mocha and cameratracker is that mocha is a 2D planar tracker whereas cameratracker is a full 3D solution. Mocha is great at what it does, but it doesn't extract camera data like a true 3D tracker does.
 
Ya Ive been playing with mocha all day and it has problems with a shot like what im trying to do.

I have a subject sitting in a chair and im starting out zoomed in on the persons chest, then zooming out and dolling from a front view to a rear view. So 180 degrees. The tracker in Mocha seems to get confused at 180 degrees.

I played with the tracker in boujou, and it can figure out the 3d part no problem. The problem im running into is I don't understand how to take the exported file boujou creates and use them in AE.

I might be doing something wrong in AE or in boujou.

Ive watched the videocopilot tutorial on the meteor impact where Kramer used boujou but unlike any other tutorial he has ever done, he basically glossed over the entire section of how to get the tracking data to work properly in AE. Possibly because every shot is going to require a different tracking method and he is not going to go through every shot scenario.

If anyone is good with boujou please try a test shout where you orbit 180 degrees around a person sitting at a kitchen table front to back and let me know how you end up making the tracking shot import to AE.
 
I just tried doing a 360 orbit and tracking it in Mocha. For 2d effects its fine,


But for 3d effects such as using particular, its not working. When I put a solid in and align it with the ground plane, it seems to track it fine. But when I add particular to the solid, the effect is flat on the solid plane and rotation is not possible.

With CS5 there is supposed to be true 3d. I am playing with the foundry camertracker now, and being a plug in, it seems more capable than an external tracker.
So far I have not been able to make it do any 3d though.
 
Particular doesn't work right on a solid that is not comp sized and it definitely doesn't work on a solid that is 3D enabled. This is why you'd need to extract 3D camera data from your track to get Particular to work right. Once you have a 3D camera it will work properly.
 
Once you have a 3D camera in your scene Particular will know that and will become “3D aware” so to speak. Create a particular layer, on a 2D solid and then create a camera and move it around and the particles will be in 3D space.
 
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