- You guys might be noticing, in my recent vlogs,
that I've been using a lot of 3D tracking
for all the different ways I'm trying to,
you know, put the episode title in there.
Episode 23, 24, season 2 and I'm always looking
for a different place to put it.
I'm doing that using 3D tracking.
Also, wanted to touch on 3D tracking
because it's something you should know
if you're using After Effects
and the very first video we did when we taught tracking,
text tracking, like on the top of that plane in Iceland.
Not physically, we didn't teach it there.
I used it as the, yeah.
You get it, you know what I mean
But, everybody in the comments was like,
'why aren't you doing 3D tracking?'
'Why aren't you doing 3D tracking, man?'
'Yo, why aren't you-'
'3D tracking would be so much faster.'
'3D tracking, man.'
So, to answer those people, today,
we're talking 3D tracking.
(upbeat music)
What's up, everybody.
Peter McKinnon here.
Welcome back to another video.
We are talking-
This lens hood barely even on the camera there.
We're talking about 3D tracking.
To make this make sense and help you guys
through the process the best that I can,
I'm going to break it down into three spots.
So, the first two examples are going to be
kind of, a little more primitive and easy to do
and easy to follow, breaking down
the step by step process so by the end,
the final example will be like an actual application
of how I've used some of this text
and 3D tracked it in an actual vlog.
One that you've seen recently
so that the whole thing, we're going
to bring it together at the end.
The first example, is just text kind of tracked
on a flat surface, against a wall.
The second example, we're going
to track something perpendicular to like a coffee table
and kind of float past it or over it.
And then like I said, the last one
will be actual, you know, actual application
within a vlog itself, how I would do it
for a video that I would put out
that you guys have already seen.
Alright, folks.
Fire up the old after effects there
once you get it into gear.
We're going to have this clip for example,
of my DOPESQUAD sign.
We're going to track this through the 3D tracker.
How you're going to do that,
this is how you're going to do it.
You are going to come over here to
'effects and presets,' type in '3D camera,'
okay, there it is.
It pops up, 3D camera tracker.
Drag that onto the timeline.
Come over here, hit analyze,
and it should start analyzing those 3D tracking points.
It's done.
It's that fast.
It makes them, you play it through,
you can see it's animating,
it's found all those tracking points.
It's actually way easier and way faster than
the single point tracking, which is what everyone
actually did say in the comments
and they were right.
'3D tracking would be so much faster.'
'3D tracking, man.'
I just wanted to give you guys, you know,
the bigger bag of tricks, sorry.
Actually, I'm not.
But, it's good that you know both.
3D tracking is though, very fast.
There are times though where you need
to do the single point tracking
because it just works better.
Like the stuff we were talking about
in the last video, where I was tracking the Kelvin logo
to my fingers because they're not really a 3D plane
using x, y, and z and lots of different math
that you don't really need to know about.
Sometimes, you use single point,
sometimes you use 3D tracking
and I think the more you use this program,
you'll be able to differentiate the times you need
to use one or the other.
Once After Effects has 3D tracked your scene,
you get all these fun little skittle points,
as I like to call them, pop up on the composition there.
What you're going to do is hover your mouse
in between those skittles and you're going to see
what looks like the Saw movie logo pop up
in-between all of those points.
Not to be confused with the actual movie, it's not.
But what this little disc is, this little disk of life,
is it's going to show you what plane is actually accurate.
What do I mean by that?
Now, look at this, if you are hovering between
all these different points, like look at this,
that's wrong, that's not right, that's not right,
it's close, that's not right,
that's not the plane we have that sign
is definitely not pointing left.
That's pretty close, that's not pointing up.
You can see all these different points that
it thinks, it's trying to basically
get more information from you.
It's saying, 'hey, which way do you want this?'
Like, what is correct.
If it's pointing towards the ceiling, that's not correct.
If it's pointing towards the wall, that's not correct.
Your job, is going to be to try and find the best plane
for this tracking scene.
So, right here, you can see we have that little target,
the little bullseye.
That's looking good, that looks like
its facing the same way the sign is.
It makes sense in this 3D space.
That's what we want.
When you're happy and you've found the right one,
click on it.
You're going to get these little yellow,
these little triad yellow bloop,
and you right click, the menu pops up.
'Create text and camera,' that's what you're going
to want to do.
When you do that, you'll see text pops up.
Like the actual word 'text'
and it makes the new layer over here.
To manipulate that, click on the layer itself,
down here in the timeline,
and then you come up to the left side
where it says 'rotation tool'
because you need to actually rotate that text
so that it's in-line with the actual sign
or, you know, whatever it is that you're tracking.
For this instance, we're using the sign.
But you can use those different access arrows,
the green, red, and blue arrows,
which is 'x,' 'y,' and 'z.'
Those are different planes and 3D spaces.
You can move those, so you can see using
that rotation tool, we can bring it forward
on that different axis, we can move it left
and right, and warp it and orient it to exactly
where it needs to go so that it looks normal.
See, you can flip it all over the place.
But, we are going to adjust it so it is straight
and nicely planed with this DOPESQUAD sign.
So, we will use this axis here
and just tweak it a little bit.
So now to actually move that text into place,
you can come back over to the toolbar over here,
click the arrow, which is the move tool.
To move it, we're going to click and drag that red arrow
so it stays on the same axis.
We're not messing anything up here,
we're just keeping it the same.
Drag that arrow over and then we're going to use
the other arrow, the other axis, to move it on up
so it stays on that same plane.
Look at that, it looks so great.
Looks amazing, it just needs to say something else
like 'Toronto.'
'Toronto,' that's how you say it if you're a local.
Change the font over here if you want
to whatever you want.
The size of the text, obviously, by scaling left
and right to make that text bigger or smaller.
And it's done.
When you hit play, look at this.
It's tracked.
Looks like it's up there.
It's just floating up there.
That's it.
That's how it's done.
That's how a lot of stuff's tracked.
Especially in the vlogs and the titles that I do.
That's example one of tracking in 3D space.
Here I would like to point out this fun mug
that my friend Gabriel got me.
That's a great time.
Or, you could get one of the new mugs.
Available at the link in the bio.
(inhaling)
Coffee and leather is such a great smell.
Seriously, feel this.
Feel how good that feels.
It feels incredible, right?
I know.
You can't have this.
(inhaling)
(exhaling)
(inhaling)
The only thing better would be
if there was coffee in here.
Rock it this way.
Rock it that way.
Okay, running through just another example
of this, but, you know, making that text perpendicular
so it looks like you're moving through it
in 3D space, you're going to do the same thing.
You're going to grab a clip,
throw it in the composition area,
you're going to track it through 3D space
the same way we did the last one.
It's going to make all of those colorful skittle points,
if you will.
But they're not actually called skittle points,
it's just what I call them because they're colorful
and they're fun.
But it's going to make all of those points.
You can see them right here.
And then we're going to go ahead and choose our plane again.
So we find that disc that makes the most sense right here,
this one.
Right click, 'create text and camera,' boom.
Text comes up.
Now we can change that with the z-axis
to, you know, be this way
and use the x-axis to bring that text perpendicular.
Raise it up a little bit higher.
Then, we can come over and actually make
that text bigger itself because it's
a little bit too small right here.
So we'll just drag that up and then,
I don't really want it to say 'text.'
So, let's move that forward and then maybe just,
I don't know write 'coffee table.'
That works.
Coffee table.
And now when we play that back,
it's basically done and you've got your camera moving
through the scene in 3D space with a nicely tracked title
that says 'coffee table' or whatever you want.
So, you can see how fast we did that opposed
to when we were learning it in the last sequence.
It actually doesn't take that much effort.
It's just looks great and you can orient
it any which way you want.
You can throw it this way, we can bring it forward,
and then we play that scene through
because it created a camera that's the same move,
it's going to look the same,
it's just in a different orientation
because we just moved the axis.
So, if we want to take this a little bit of a step further
and add some depth of field to make it look
a little more badass, a little more pro because,
you know, the background is a little blurry in the scene.
I mean, the text should be blurry too.
So, there's a pretty easy way to do that.
Make sure your selected on your camera there,
and then hit 'A' twice.
It's going to bring up all the settings.
There's a setting called 'depth of field' here
and you're going to want to turn that on.
It's defaulted to off, so turn that on.
So once you've toggled depth of field on,
you'll notice there's also 'focus distance'
and 'apertures.'
So, it's going to be important to make this still
look realistic even though it is text in a 3D scene.
Check out the edge of this book.
It's sharp.
That edge is very defined.
As you move the focus distance
and the aperture, you can see the depth of field changing.
Right, we want that depth of field to match
the focus plain of the table.
So, we don't want the bottom of that letter
to be super blurry if the book is nice and sharp.
If you just jack that number of aperture
like up really, really high, that let's you
just kind of see everything really blurry,
then you can just dial it back until it matches
the focus plane of the table.
Right, does that make sense?
So, the word that says 'coffee table,'
we want the bottom of it to be the same focus
as what's on the table because it would make no sense
if it was out of focus, but the table was in focus.
So, that's all we're doing here.
They're very small things but when they're played back
in real time, they make you look like a pro
because it's like 'wow, that's attention to detail.'
They'll probably go unnoticed because it's natural.
If it didn't look natural, then it would go noticed
and people would say, 'that's just so sharp
and doesn't look good and that's off.'
So, that's why we're taking the time
to actually change the focus distance and the aperture
and this is a good way to kind of gauge
what you're doing in that scene.
And that is example two of tracking
something else within a scene or clip for your videos.
Time for example number three using this, in a real vlog.
This is my jam, right here.
I love this.
For the final example, we are going to track
a title, an episode title, of one of my vlogs
through a scene, some of my footage that I've actually shot,
so this is what I used in a vlog going to New York
to hang out with Casey for the day.
Last week, or the week before, I don't even know.
Time flies.
So, it's the same thing.
You're going to go into the effects,
you're going to type in '3D camera,'
you're going to drag that camera tracker
to the footage itself.
It's going to bring up that little panel on the left side,
right here, where you're going to track by hitting play
and it's going to play through the scene,
bringing up all those little tracker points,
those little skittle points.
But notice, they're really, really small
because there's lots of depth to this scene.
It goes really, really far.
That car is way in the background.
So it's a lot of space between the window
and the end of that scene.
So, we actually come over here, you can change
the size of these tracking points
so that you can see them.
So look, now they're huge in the front,
but we can actually see them like on the road.
Now, when we go ahead to pick the plane that we want.
It looks like there's no super weird little square,
targets, circle, Saw movie weird thing.
Where is that?
It's there, it's just really, really small.
So, when you can still click, find that plane,
'create text and camera,' and then look
at how small this text is.
Look at this.
This is actually ridiculous.
But it's still there.
Let's scale that text a little bigger,
manipulate it into the spot where we want it to be,
just like I showed you in the last two examples.
Let's type in 'episode 22, season 2'
and we will place that using these arrows
exactly where we want it.
And now, because the scene is tracked
and that is ready to go, when you play that through,
it should look like this.
Which looks pretty good.
Now, you'll notice that seam, that whole arm,
that's going by the window as the camera,
I was holding my camera and I was on
a moving walkway actually, so, I wasn't even moving.
I was just standing still and the walkway was moving me.
But, that little window frame passes by.
So, wouldn't it be cool to have
that window frame pass over the text?
So, what you need to do for that,
is create a mask and it's one of those things, again,
that sounds a lot more like, 'oh no,
I don't even know how to do a mask in Premier,
let alone After Effects,' like, that's where I exit.
Command + Q, see you later.
Don't do that, that will quit everything.
Don't push those buttons.
It's very easy to make a mask.
You're just going to have to duplicate the layer
of your footage.
So do that, just click on the actual file,
go up to the top 'edit,' 'duplicate,'
that's going to make a duplicate clip
and drag that to the very top of your layers,
down here on the left side.
And, what we're going to do, is we're going to clip that.
We're going to trim it so it's just the section
where that bar passes in front of the episode title.
So, we can find that frame here,
and then we can trim that down,
and them bring it to the right side
and we can bring that clip all the way in
and trim it right here.
So, it's just the section that we need.
Now, you're going to choose the pen tool
that's up at the top right here,
and we're going to draw our mask.
We're going to create the mask by clicking a point,
clicking another point here, another one here,
and finishing that off to make a nice rectangle.
And then, now, you'll see on the layers side,
down at the bottom, we have 'mask path.'
So, we need to key frame this, essentially.
We hit that little stopwatch, which means key frame,
as you can see that on the timeline,
then we'll just move this play head forward
in the timeline, a little bit forward.
Our mask stays, you can see that purple outline,
it stays in the left side.
So when you find like a midway point,
then just move that mask over.
Just grab these points, move it over,
fill out that bar so it looks good,
hit 'M' to bring up those settings,
and maybe feather it out a little bit here
with 'mask feather,' so it's not such a harsh edge.
That's imperative.
Don't forget to feather it.
It looks a lot better when you feather it.
And then move that play head a little bit further
and then you can catch that mask up to it,
bringing it back, you can see if we go back
and forth, you can kind of see where it needs
to be adjusted.
You just slide it over, a little bit,
that's all taken care of in the timeline.
It's all recorded for you so you're good.
Bring that play head back, find those spots,
those midpoint spots where it could be, you know,
just tweaked a little bit.
And again, this is something that takes
literally less than five minutes to do
and it looks so cool and subtle
and it's just that attention to detail.
So, here we are just cleaning up this last spot.
I think it's pretty good now.
If we play it through, yeah.
That actually looks like it may have just passed in front
of 'episode 22.'
So, that is how you put text into a 3D space
in three different examples by tracking it
and masking it.
And by the end of this video,
you guys got to be pros by now.
So, I hope you enjoyed that.
I know After Effects isn't for everybody,
but it's actually a lot easier that you would think it is.
It's also really fun because it just kind of
expands your creativity as far as shooting video goes.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
I hope you got something out of it.
If you have questions, leave them below.
I'll try to answer them if I can.
Would love to hear from you if you're having a problem,
just, yeah, leave those questions below
and thank you so much for watching.
Hit that 'like' button if you like this video.
Smash it, if that's something that you're into, 2018 style.
Subscribe if you weren't already
and I will see you guys next week
with more vlogs and maybe the bucket shot.
Peace.
(upbeat music)