How to Motion Track in After Effects (4 Easy Ways)

hey everybody jake here from fulltimefilmmaker.com today i'm going to show you four easy ways to motion track in adobe after effects and those four ways are single point tracking dual point tracking corner pin tracking and attaching objects to walls so let's dive right in starting with single point tracking and we'll be tracking text or objects onto a shot and we've also included all the test footage we're using available for download in the description below so if you want download that and follow along it's completely free click the link below so first open up your clip next add any text or objects or files that you want to attach to the final clip we'll just add some text that says the castle but you can use any pngs or video files or graphics that you want next right click and hit new null object and this layer will be the layer that captures your motion track select your video footage layer go to animation track motion and it should pull up the tracker tab over here if it's not there already once you click that the tracker tool will appear on your screen the outside box is the search region which tells after effects where the element will be found and the inside box is the feature region that defines the region that you want to track the small plus sign is the attach point for the tracker and you're going to want to pick a part of your image with good contrast so the tracker can work efficiently so we're going to choose this little detail right here there's good contrast of highlights and shadows and that's kind of the center point of our image here again because there's a lot of depth in this image there's a lot of layers if we would have picked a tracking point up front it would have tracked the motion of this fence but because we're wanting to attach the text to the building we're bringing it apart on the building the track too make sure your motion source is on your video footage current track tracker 1 track type transform lead position checked and now it's time to analyze the footage you can analyze forward or backward or one frame at a time because our tracking point is pretty clean we will just analyze forward and watch it as it goes as it's analyzing keep an eye on the tracker and watch for any drifting that may occur if there is any drifting make sure you adjust the tracking point manually so the tracking point stays in the same spot of the image the entire time this isn't a very long clip so it shouldn't take too long okay we'll scrub through it make sure the tracking point analyzes the footage and as you can see it's placed keyframes of the tracking point at the start and end points we'll just scrub through and it looks like the track worked beautifully again if you do have drifting occur just manually adjust each tracking point to stay on the same spot every time but if you choose a good spot with good contrast you shouldn't have that issue too often next step you want to go to your tracker hit edit target and make sure that the layer is set to the null layer that way we can parent the track onto any object we want hit ok and then hit apply apply dimensions you want to set to x and y unless you have a perfectly even movement on your x x-axis or y-axis but for most cases x and y is the one you want to go with hit ok and now that track is paired to the null layer then you're going to grab your text layer object layer and grab the circular wavy thing it's called a pick whip and you want to attach this to your no layer and now the no layer track is parented to your object so if we scrub through here you can watch our text it is perfectly synced up with the track and then all that's left to do is scale and adjust your text to match it the way you want we'll raise this a little bit higher rotate it a little bit more and maybe scale it up a little bit bigger too as well okay so there you have it there is the text motion tracked onto our subject there moving on to dual point tracking dual point tracking is the same process for single point tracking but now you're able to not only track position but also scale and rotation so we'll follow the exact same steps here we'll use a different composition we're going to use our full-time filmmaker logo here drag it on top going to hide it so we can see the image better again right click hit new null object click on the building stabilized go to our tracker and hit track motion but this time we're checking the boxes rotation and scale and that will give us a second track point to grab from because now we're not just tracking one point we're tracking the scale and rotation of two point again we want to set our tracking points on positions of good contrast and also points that help show the scale and rotation of our subject so in this case we have a building a pretty straight line we want to capture the front-facing wall of this building and so that our text attaches to the building in the same dimension so luckily we have a lot of good contrast points on this building we're actually going to choose the corner of this window here my worry with these spots is that there's so many of them it might get confused so we'll choose this corner here of this top window and then also the corner of this top window because they are on the same plane beautiful once again we're going to hit analyze forward we'll see what happens watching both points again if there is any drifting stop the track and adjust them and finish let's scrub through watch our track it looks pretty solid to me once again hit edit target apply it to no layer hit ok hit apply make sure it's on x and y axis and hit okay then to parent the track to the layer we want we're going to grab the layer we want which is our full-time filmmaker logo here grab the pick whip drag it on top of the no layer and release and as we play it back as you can see the full-time filmmaker logo is being scaled and changed to match the building however it isn't done yet last step is to adjust your object to match the track and the best way to do that is to turn on your 3d layer and if they don't show up here click on toggle switches and modes this cube is your 3d layer so with this selected you want to click on 3d layer and now you can adjust the position and scale and rotation and dimension of your layer to better match your footage now once we play it back it is beautifully tracked onto our building moving on to number three corner pin tracking now there are many ways to replace a screen a more effective way is using the mocha plugin in after effects but for our purposes today for a very simple easy screen replacement we're going to be using the corner pin tracking in after effects so same process with a few minor changes we do not need a no layer for this we'll be applying the track onto the clip itself with your clip selected go to your tracker and hit track motion and for your track type you're going to change this to perspective corner pin and this will give you four different tracking points for each corner of your object again this works best with phones or billboards of things of that nature and like we've been doing before adjust your tracking points and put them on each corner of your screen here again with good contrast we have good green and good black again you don't need a green screen for this don't get too hung up on your search region and feature region as long as they cover a basic amount of the corner you want to be tracking you should be good like so once your coins are pinned hit analyze make sure your playhead is at the front of your clip and hit analyze forward again watch for drifting this is a 10 second clip and the phone moves around a lot so watch for drifting if there is drifting adjust that point to stay on the corner looks like we're doing pretty good so far and again if you want to download this clip to practice on we've included it in the link below it's completely free so just head there and you can download this free clip okay now we're gonna scrub through and make sure the tracking points stay on the phone and it looks pretty solid not bad can you want to import your photo or video they're going to be using to replace the screen into your composition here for us we have just a screenshot of our youtube channel from a mobile phone go back to your green screen clip on the track hit edit target and make sure that the layer is set to the screenshot or your new object or composition that you want to apply the track to hit ok then hit apply if we play it back now our screen is beautifully tracked onto the phone however it doesn't look very realistic we still see the green screen so it's not perfect so easy fix all you do is go to composition and adjust the scale and rotation the way you want it to and where it's going to make it a little bit bigger to cover up the screen like so and then all that's left to really sell the composition is matching your composition with the overall image we're not going to go into that right now but essentially just adding some different layers some color correction some blur some screen brightness some screen smudges essentially just selling the composition will greatly help sell this image and they have a very easy way to corner pin in after effects moving on to our fourth and last way to motion track in after effects attaching objects to walls now this is probably my favorite and probably the most fun track to do so open your clip go into your tracker and with your clip selected instead of hitting track motion this time we're hitting track camera and what's essentially doing is after effects is going through your clip and analyzing each frame and placing tracking points on the walls and ceilings and floors to help analyze your camera's movement in subspace so it's trying to replicate my camera's movement from when i shot this clip digitally into after effects and it might take a while depending on your clip size so once it's done it'll place thousands of little colored markers on your clip that show you different points of your clip that it's tracked and if you put your mouse over those clips it'll triangulate a position of a red target to show you an example of where your composition will be placed as you can see this red target will show us how it would look if we placed a composition on that part of the image by triangulating three different points of the track and so then all you have to do is pick a target where you want to attach your composition to i love this big open wall there's thousands of little tracking points on here so it should be a really nice and even track we'll pick right here right click and create solid and camera which is just allowing us to create our own composition that will stick to that wall it'll default to a green or blue box but we can change all that which we're about to and then scrub through the composition to double check that it is matching as you can see it looks great even down there when you can barely see it obviously we'd have to mask nate out of the shot but we're just gonna be using these first 10 seconds or so and it looks awesome so now let's edit that composition okay so come into your project here so right click on the track solid pre-compose it because we want to be able to edit the content without changing the track we'll call this comp position one leave the top one checked hit okay and it will open this composition one and now we have this green box our composition and this can be whatever you want it to be and it doesn't have to be a square you can change that to a circle or nine by sixteen or sixteen by nine whatever you want i'm going to delete the track solid one which is just a placeholder we don't want a big green box i'm going to replace it with something i would want and i do not want to square so i'm going to adjust my composition settings to be instead of 2160 by 2160 i'm going to do 3840 by 2160 to be 16 by nine hit okay and then you can import whatever you want to be in this animation for me i'm gonna use a little shout out to myself jake weisler films my instagram account by going in my compositions folder and grabbing my logo here and it's kind of it's black so you can't really see it so we're going to scale it up to fill the frame like so again it's on a transparent background so you can't really tell right now but if we go back to our original composition as you can see my composition appears on the wall where the placeholder was but it's really small so we're going to change it up a little bit you're going to go to your transformation tab of the composition so we'll start with scale we're going to bring it up a lot like so we want to be nice and big rotation looks pretty good and then you want to change your blending mode to whatever best matches you're seeing you can really do whatever you want it's kind of just a creative preference you can use overlay or just change your opacity for this we're going to change our opacity just a little bit so it kind of blends in with the wall and we'll scrub through it as you can see it appears in the wall and disappears but that is it for today's video those are our four easy ways to motion track in adobe after effects you guys we hope you enjoyed it again links to download all this footage is in the description below so go ahead and head there and download it if you want to try this out for yourself and you guys we're only just scratching the surface here of what we teach inside a full-time filmmaker we have an entire after effects section so if you're interested in learning more about after effects or even just more about filmmaking we have over 600 tutorials inside of our online course full-time filmmaker over 20 000 students who are all learning how to become professional filmmakers whether you want to shoot weddings or real estate or just learn more about editing in premiere pro adobe after effects or even final cut pro x or da vinci we have tutorials for all of it so if you want to join our online course full-time filmmaker we'll put that link below as well or you can check out our free one-hour filmmaking training where we teach you our top 10 secrets to achieving cinematic shots comment below what you want to see next and if you have any further questions please let us know

Channel: Full Time Filmmaker

Views: 842,785

Keywords: after effects, adobe after effects, after effects tutorial, after effects tracking tutorial, after effects tracking, Adobe premiere pro, after effects tutorials, learn after effects, motion tracking after effects 2021, after effects tutorials 2021, learn after effects 2020, learn after effects fast, after effects transitions, after effects text animation, after effects for beginners, after effects basics, after effects new features

Id: SAlvDJcrBRU

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022