Our latest Masterclass ‘Rise of the Darkside’, is now out! Over the next few weeks, we’re
going to be showing you how to create amazing Star Wars effects at home.
Today we'll be looking into the different ways we used the 3D camera tracker in HitFilm
Pro. Matchmoving, or motion tracking, is one of the pillars of visual effects.
It can be a huge task to reproduce the geometry, camera and object movement of a live-action
shot in a 3D environment, but thanks to Foundry’s camera tracker, this is a breeze in HitFilm
Pro. Let’s Punch it! Punch-it chewie
-hyperspeed- Before we begin, once you’ve import your
footage via the import icon, we’ll first need to make a composite shot. Select the
footage and drag over the Composite Shot button. A new composite shot will open with all the
settings of the footage. The first step in camera tracking is removing
the data we don’t want considered. I.e. our band of rebels charging. We’re doing
this because they move at different speeds and this affects the results of our track.
To start, we’ll go the freehand mask tool. And begin going around the area of your subject.
This is going to be what’s referred to as a garbage mask. Something that’s not too
neat but covers the actor all the same. To continue our masking we’ll need to fully
see the area, so for now, set the mask type to ‘none’. If we now go into the control
panel of this layer. Then open the mask dropdown, enter mask & transform. Let’s set a keyframe
for this point by hitting the icon besides the value and move along in the timeline.
Then keyframe the mask over the course of the duration of the clip. Repeating for the
other obstacles. Once completed, be sure to set these as subtracts, the landscape is the
only thing we want to keep during the track. With our masking done, go into the effects
window, and under ‘The Foundry’ we’ll apply the Camera Tracker to our footage. Go
to the beginning of the timeline, if not there already and select ‘Track Features’. The
tracker is now doing it’s thing, running through the clip scanning for consistent markers.
Once complete, you’ll be able to visibly see the data & their paths. If you can’t
see these- be sure to have the Camera Tracker selected into the Controls panel.
Happy with the results we can now create this scene in digital space, but first we need
to select ‘solve the camera’. This locks these points into position, calculating the
motion of each point to project back to a point of origin, like a reverse photogrammetry.
Be sure to subscribe to find out more about photogrammetry in an upcoming tutorial. Finally,
we can select ‘Create Scene’. The tracker has now generated a 3d Camera for the shot.
With your scene generated, you may notice the ground plane could be off, as it is in
my scene. Moving the ground is actually easier than you think. Click and drag to 3 or 4 of
the markers from the viewer window and from the Camera Tracker tab in the bottom left,
you can open the tab, select ‘Ground Plane’ and Set to Selected. The marker selected has
now become the reference corners of your ground plane. From here we’re now able to easily
import 3d models into your shot. I’m interrupting here just to let you know
that if you go into the description you can find get your very own 3D model & animation
to import. Spread the fear of the empire with the “ATST”.
Do you mean A-T-S-T? The “chicken-looking-one”.
That’s an AT-ST. To import a 3d model go up to import from
the Media window, and by selecting the arrow we’re presented with more options. Go to
‘Import 3D Model’ & find the AT-ST. Before continuing, be sure to add all textures to
their designated imports. For a more in depth tutorial on setting up 3D models, see the
card on screen. Then hit, OK. Now let’s drag this model onto the timeline
& into our scene. Currently there’s not much going on, so back at the import arrow
lets import an animation file. You’re needing the “.abc” file.
If we now open the dropdown of our model, and under ‘Models’, ‘AT-ST’ we’ll
go into animation. We can actually drag our animation file onto the model. You may need
to rotate and adjust your model to view it by using the ‘World Transform' values. Boom.
Animation made easy right? To position this into your scene properly,
let's go back to our footage, and after clicking the Camera Tracker to bring up the visuals.
We can select a marker near where we’d like this model to stand, and if we press ‘D’
on the keyboard, this will generate a new point containing those coordinates. Select
the layer, and by pressing F2 we can give this a rename to ‘Position Marker’. Select
the Position Marker, and press Control + C, to copy. Select the Model and press Control,
shift & ‘V’ to bring up the Paste Attributes window. We can select Position & Rotation,
then hit OK. To check and possibly reposition go into the ‘view tab’ & select 4. This
will allow us to see all angles to our scene and get a better understanding of the position
from the camera. Our Model is now roaming around on the beach.
As this is an overview into techniques with 3d camera tracker, we won’t be looking at
compositing this into the scene. Though if this is something you’d like, let us know
in the comment section. In a shot like the Force Throw, or X-Wing
Cockpit shot, we needed to keep our camera static for clean plates. However, to keep
the action high, handheld would give these the additional hit. To counter this, we filmed
handheld footage separately. It doesn’t matter what that can be off, as long as there
are clear objects for tracking. I even did mine just sitting at my desk.
Like before, simply apply the Camera Tracker, track features & solve the camera. Once you
have you camera generated you can add your footage in, being sure to set the layer to
3D. Going back into your camera tracker, set a point at the desired location and copy the
values from to take out the guesswork of positioning. By using the transform tools, it now a matter
of realigning the shot to match up. For additional detail & depth, mask around
your subject then bring the layer forward in Z-space. This will create a small parallax
during the movement, giving the impression you’re camera is moving with the ship.
During this shot of the rebels running from a blaster attack, we used the feature tracker
to map out the scene and plan out where blasters would hit or go passed. As it’s such a large
space with many obstacles, things could easily have gone wrong with our blaster alignment.
Mapping out the scene was the most practical approach.
To do this, the shot was scanned with the feature tracker. Camera solved, and Scene
Created. Then by selecting a marker and hitting ‘D’ on the keyboard, we can set a point
in its place. This was repeated this for other items in the scene, you can set the view to
2 shots; one as the active camera, and the other as the top view. Now you have a collection
of markers in z-space to get a sense of the depth of the scene that you can easily copy
/ paste the attributes from and to for any assets - like debris or any other goodies
from action vfx Thanks for watching. If you have any questions,
or if there’s anything you felt we missed, leave them in the comment section.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out ‘Rise of the Darkside’. Remember to
subscribe & ring the bell for notifications to avoid missing the tutorials to follow.