Animation Master can import 3d camera tracking data

[Jason Simonds]

Hello,

 

Someone last night at about 1am asked me "Mate can Ainmation Master import 3d camera tracking data?" I thought we can but I can not find it anywhere, and I have looked a bit. Does anyone have at link or know someone who as done it?

 

Thanks Again!

[Rodney]

The primary location to find it would be to use the Plugin dialog to bring up the .MOT import/export.

There are several places this import is available. One is via Action.

 

More specifically to the Camera, A:M can import Inferno .RAW files.

That can be accessed via Right Click plugin on a camera.

 

There is also KFM (Keyframe) data that can be exported/imported which I need to check out.

(That can be seen in the first image above the .MOT option)

 

 

Disclaimer: I've not used these plugins beyond simple tests to see if the data imports and exports.

[robcat2075]

I seem to recall the Syntheyes (?) program produced A:M Camera animation from tracking live footage.

 

In general, if we had a documented example of the camera motion format, it should be possible to make a spreadsheet to convert it to A:M motion.

[detbear]

 

Disclaimer: I've not used these plugins beyond simple tests to see if the data imports and exports.

I have attampted to do this out of A:M in the past and it isn't easy. It requires many trials and R&D.

 

Camera data exports work best when they are focused on a specific destination or a few. Much like a model exporter. If you hope to get the camera data to After Effects,

you need to develop a plugin for AE. Or at least test it to make sure it works. The world space and model scale is interpreted differently in different Apps. So you have to figure out

what that size is compared to the Hash export size.

 

We had a VUE camera export that only worked in like V.15. It did a pretty good job, but the scale of the 3D set was different in A:M. I had to experiment a bunch to figure out how to

get the two to match.

 

The .MOT export didn't work in the places I tried to use it. Although that could have been improved since 2009 or so. It was probably developed for a specific software and worked in that case. I don't know which one if it was.

 

I think a cam exporter should be developed that works with 3 or 4 target destinations. AFTER EFFECTS would be a great addition. Unity would be another. EVEN a blender option would be great. Whatever brings a good background and effects package into play.

 

Animation is best out of A:M, Maya, Max, Cinema 4D, and Blender.........BUT none of these can produce the fast effects and back drop results like Lumion, Unity, After Effects, etc.

 

Every studio blends these together. We need this option to be investigated without relying on tedious "workarounds" that mostly take way too much production time.

 

JASON: This area needs to be focused on because the more you can layer/ blend Hash with other packages, the more potential users you will have.

[John Bigboote]

I have used an old copy of Synth-Eyes in the past... I have it on a CD and run it whenever I need to camera-track. SE has an A:M exporter which is pretty cool in that it makes an A:M project(or was it a chor...?) that you open and see a camera is animated and scene detail(tracking points) are represented as nulls (hundreds of them.) The 'not-so-great' part is that the orientation and scale of this camera/null setup is at some convoluted angle and size... but by taking A:M out of animate mode you can upscale and rotate to something that makes sense... and then as you populate the scene with your A:M models and apply the tracked footage as rotoscope you can see that it is working and adjust as needed, and having the cameras motion as keyframes is nice for tweeking/editing/deleting errant frames or 'off-tracks'.

 

This IS a feature that modern, more supported softwares like C4D or modo are including nowadays, and even Adobe CC After Effects offers 2 effective solutions, AE's camera tracker and mocha is included too- tho neither will export to A:M. People I work with swear mocha is fantastic as a planar tracker, but I haven't had need for it yet beyond AE's tracker. A lot of the recent scenes I've had to do were dolly shots where a camera is on a track and manually moved east to west as a cameraman aims the camera interactively. This creates a mild 'swimming' action. I will animate the character with an approximate camera angle in A:M and then use AE's camera-tracker data to place it in the scene... and then roto and composite/color-correct as needed... and this has worked pretty well for me. I can post some samples of this workflow...

[John Bigboote]

Here are some samples of some of my camera trackings, for Belle Tire. These may at easy glance look like a simple track- but look closely you see the 'swim' I mention which is generated from multiple human hands controlling camera POV, zoom, and dolly position on the shoot. These shoots were fun, a crew of about 40-50 including talent and a big-time Detroit director named Dan Hackett calling the shots. After he would get the whole scene lit and choreographed and was ready to roll- he would call in his animation TD (me!) to agree all was fine and make changes as needed.

BT_mocap samples.mp4

[robcat2075]

Every time this comes up I say "get me a copy of the file format you're trying to import and we can make a converter" but no one ever does that.

 

There are only seven possible pieces of data in camera tracking... Camera position in XYZ space, Camera rotation on XYZ axis and maybe Camera lens focal length.

 

Worst case, you have to convert units and trade one axis for another... spreadsheets are made for that.

 

 

Jason, that person asking about importing camera tracking needs to be specific about what format his camera tracking is in. If he doesn't know then he's probably hasn't done any.

[detbear]

Every time this comes up I say "get me a copy of the file format you're trying to import and we can make a converter" but no one ever does that.

 

 

More than likely they get frustrated and use a different method or software.

[robcat2075]

Send me a sample of the data that isn't working.