3D Camera Tracker in After Effects - Tutorial

all right hello there and welcome to another after effects tutorial and in this one we are going to be talking about the track camera option or the 3d camera tracker and to first start off i want to show the difference between the 3d camera tracker or the track camera option right here and the track motion option so the 3d camera tracker is used when the camera in your clip is actually moving so like in this clip right here we have this boat but we also can tell that the camera is moving alongside with it now we also have the track motion option right here that we showed in another video i'll leave the link for that in the description and if i play this back now you will notice that the camera is relatively stable so in this case you would want to use the track motion option so when your camera is moving you want to use the track camera option and then when your camera is stable you would use the track motion option now you could try to use the track motion option with this boat clip but it might not be as efficient so i'm just giving you my recommendation all right so i'm gonna go ahead and delete this clip underneath so that we just have our bolt clip and how the camera tracker works here when you're dealing with a 3d camera is that after effects is going to ultimately create a layer for you that is going to simulate the camera's movement so to show you guys this i will select on my clip right here and then i will select track camera notice that the effect appears and it analyzes the clip and once this is done it starts to solve the clip as well and then notice if we go over here we are able to create the camera so if i select this notice that a new 3d tracker camera layer has been created and if i click on the effect up here and i scrub through a little bit you will see that i have these track points that have appeared on my clip and these are what we are going to attach our object to all right so if we look here we will see that we have a few different options with our tracker so if we select it right here you notice that we see our points and to see your points you have to have it selected so click on your clip and you have to select the effect now if we go down here we have the different shot types so we have fixed angle of view or you could select variable zoom i'm going to leave it though at fixed angle of view and then we have options like the track point size so if you want your points to be smaller or bigger you would adjust this and then if you want to change your target size you can do that as well so to show you the target we have to go in here and and you will see this red bullseye that has appeared if you want to make this bigger you just bump this up and it's a lot bigger and i'll leave these at this size here that looks pretty good and then if we look at the advance we have a few options down here as well that you can mess with now if we go down to our 3d tracker camera layer and we open this up you will see that we have these keyframes on our position and orientation and this is the tracking that has actually been done by after effects and to really see this we can open up our top view so go over here and select top if we zoom out and if we scrub through we will see how our camera is actually tracking our layer so that's what's happening here with these keyframes i'll switch this back to active camera and we will zoom in a little bit click on this our layer and then our 3d camera tracker and i want to show you guys something notice with our track points if we scrub through they are actually appearing and disappearing this is because after effects is in some frames not able to find the track point so it will just delete it but in other frames after effects is able to find a track point so it creates it so that's what's happening here now how do we actually go about doing the tracking well it's pretty simple all you have to do is simply go to the spot where you want to start your tracking so i'll go to the beginning right here and then there's two ways that you can go about it you can either click in the center of three different track points and you will see that a plane appears and if you select it notice that all three of these actually light up and your bullseye target is here the other way is to select specifically what three track points you want and then to hold down shift while you do it and notice that the three light up and your target appears you can do it over here as well if you want it to that's a bad example we'll go with these three right here and notice too that once you actually select all three if you click in the center of your target you are actually able to move it like this and you're moving it on the x and the y so up and down and side to side and our target is being moved on the plane and this plane is that little gray thing right there and just to show you the plane a little bit better we could say go over here and select these three and then if i move it you see the plane right there i'll go back to the beginning and i'll select these three again and i'll move it to right here now all i have to do is just right click on it and i have options so i can create text a solid or a null i'll select the text notice that text has appeared and i have a text layer down here and i can move the text layer if i want so i can adjust the y and bring it down i can make it smaller too so double click on it just make it a little bit smaller like that and we'll call this brazil because this is where that clip was actually shot and since our text layer is actually in 3d we can adjust the orientation or the rotation so open up your transform and then you can adjust your rotation if you want or orientation so i'll pull this back right here and i will do something like that i'll bring the position up a little bit right there and if i play this back notice that my text is actually being tracked to where my target was all right guys so i've duplicated my composition and i want to show you how you can use the nulls to attach images or videos to your camera tracker so i'm going to click on my layer right here and then i'm going to open up my camera tracker by selecting this so i see my points and then i will create a bullseye or a target and then i will right click and then i will select this create null and camera like that notice that a null has been created and that it is 3d and then in the project over here i have this image that i brought in and i'm going to just drag this down here and i'm going to make it 3d and we can make it a little bit smaller as well so right about there and if you watched our previous videos on nulls you'll know how to attach it so what we're going to do is we are going to actually grab this pick whip here and then notice this text over here it says hold shift to move layer to location apparent now i'm not going to hold shift and i'm going to show you guys something notice that i parents it but it didn't move to where the null actually was so i'm going to redo that so ctrl z or command z if you're on a mac and then this time i'm going to hold down shift and now notice that it jumped to where the null is so hold down shift when you do this or else you'll have to readjust it afterwards and you don't want to have to waste time doing that so then i'm going to move the scale down a little bit like this and i'll adjust the orientation as well and then if we play back we have an image that is being tracked as well with our text here so that's how you can use nulls to attach images or you could have used the video in this case as well but i just wanted to give you a quick example of how you could do that as well so that's a little bit about how the 3d camera tracker works and i hope that you will give it a try and we will see you in the next tutorial until next time

Channel: Kenneth Moore

Views: 67

Keywords: 3D Camera Tracker, After Effects, Motion Graphics, VFX, Motion Tracking, After Effects Tutorial: Learn 3D Camera Tracking, Learn 3D Camera Tracking In After Effects, Using 3D camera tracking in your film, AE Tutorials, AE Tuts

Id: J6vVH_Sssfw

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021