Compositing and Camera Tracking in Blender: Hidden Safe – Part 02

by Greg Zaal

Hello and welcome to this tutorial series on compositing and camera tracking in Blender 2.6!

In this tutorial on compositing and camera tracking in Blender, Greg Zaal of Blender Nerd will take you through the complete process of placing digital, 3D assets into existing footage. This tutorial series will be making use of Blender’s modeling tools, texturing and rendering in Cycles and even using the new Camera Tracker to match the camera movement for a believable VFX integration.

What you’ll learn

This part of the tutorial series on compositing and camera tracking in Blender, Greg will show you to track the camera through the footage in order to accurately place your 3D objects into the real footage. This will be done using the Camera Tracking system that has been available since Blender 2.61. Greg will also take you through some color adjustment techniques to make the 3D render match the color of the real footage.

View the final result:

 

Up Next

In part 02 of this series you will be taken through the camera tracking tools and process, followed by compositing the render and background footage together with the node system.

VFX Compositing>

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Discussion

24 Responses to “Compositing and Camera Tracking in Blender: Hidden Safe – Part 02”
  1. Moulakhnif Ayoub
    Posts: 8

    :)

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    1
     Feb 16, 2012 at 8:05 am
  2. David
    Posts: 11

    thanks for reposting it

    #
    2
     Feb 16, 2012 at 8:17 am
  3. Beau Dreier Gligoor
    Posts: 37

    Awesome

    #
    3
     Feb 16, 2012 at 9:48 am
  4. thomas speed
    Posts: 300

    nice !!!

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    4
     Feb 16, 2012 at 12:20 pm
  5. Matus Liptak
    Posts: 4

    Dude :D make something with your voice :D The style of your talking is too quiet and in the ends of sentences is very laggy :D Anyway the tutorial is very usefum but U know the voice…

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    5
     Feb 17, 2012 at 2:18 am
  6. Javier Cotillas
    Posts: 1

    Good tutorial. I’m willing to see part 3, as I’m very curious about how to remove the markers.

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    6
     Feb 17, 2012 at 11:06 am
  7. Inman Blender
    Posts: 2

    When i hit Camera Motion (at 8:35 from this tut), then i get this error:
    At least 8 commons tracks on both of keyframes are needed for reconstruction

    can you help me?

    #
    7
     Feb 18, 2012 at 10:16 am
    • Greg Zaal
      Posts: 39

      Just add more than 8 tracks that are active during the keyframe range :)

      #
      7.1
       Feb 19, 2012 at 5:34 am
      • Derek
        Posts: 1

        This does not help at all. I have more than 8 tracks and I still got that message.

        #
        7.1.1
         Jun 1, 2012 at 12:03 am
  8. Bob Steve
    Posts: 8

    Thanks for the tutorial! I’m really excited about the new tracker system in blender. One quick question though. I was following along this tutorial but wanted to composite the footage in a different software. But I couldn’t figure out how to render the Object Index. If I checked only the object index it would render the combined layer instead. I can go in and manually save each frame but I was wondering if there is a better way? Thanks ahead!

    #
    8
     Feb 18, 2012 at 12:30 pm
    • Greg Zaal
      Posts: 39

      In the compositor, connect the object index pass to the Composite node at the end

      #
      8.1
       Feb 19, 2012 at 2:34 pm
  9. Peter Stach
    Posts: 1

    Awesome, cannot wait for part3

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    9
     Feb 19, 2012 at 4:51 am
  10. ludimus
    Posts: 9

    Thank you Greg.

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    10
     Feb 19, 2012 at 11:23 am
  11. Blake Borg
    Posts: 5

    Isn’t the yellow colored ball self-defeating as far as getting the right color temperatures to match?

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    11
     Feb 21, 2012 at 9:38 pm
  12. blender_ei
    Posts: 15

    Oh man – I was almost about to never do tracking again (error of 78.276 and whole process just didn’t work out) but then you showed me that I need to add a camera solver constraint – and BAM! ;) Camera motion in place, baby! :D

    THANK YOU VERY MUCH, Greg!!! Keep your great work up! Thanks BlenderCookie! :)

    #
    12
     Feb 25, 2012 at 7:37 pm
  13. Gal Narunsky
    Posts: 7

    Greg, thank you for all research and endless trial and error that you endure, helping us all become better texturers and blender- uh, ers.

    * One small but very important question though:
    How do I get an ANTI-ALIASED object-index render pass ??????

    need… (cough cough) smoother… (wheeze) mask… (aarrrggghhh!) :}

    THANKS!!!

    #
    13
     Feb 29, 2012 at 9:16 am
  14. Henri Laroco
    Posts: 8

    Greg,
    Every time I try to solve the camera motion, Blender says, “At least 8 common tracks on both of keyframes are needed for reconstruction.” What does this mean?

    Thanks in advance!:D

    #
    14
     Mar 4, 2012 at 8:14 am
    • Greg Zaal
      Posts: 39

      It means you need to have at least 8 common tracks on both of keyframes ;D
      Basically you must have 8 or more tracked markers for the duration of the keyframe range you specified to solve from in order for it to be able to calculate the camera motion. Otherwise there simply wouldn’t be enough information for it to understand how the camera is moving.

      #
      14.1
       Mar 4, 2012 at 3:22 pm
      • Henri Laroco
        Posts: 8

        YOU HAVE SAVED ME FROM SO MUCH STRESS!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOU’LL HAVE A SUCCESSFUL, IF NOT MORE SUCCESSFUL, FUTURE!!!!! :D HAVE A GOOD DAY!

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        14.1.1
         Mar 10, 2012 at 6:16 am
  15. Joe Sav
    Posts: 17

    What does “Average Solve Error:nan” Mean? When I get this I need to restart blender and track all over again.

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    15
     Apr 10, 2012 at 2:23 pm
  16. Jason
    Posts: 1

    Great tutorial! VERY helpful! What kind of camera are you using? Other tutorials I’ve seen use a DSLR instead of an HD video camera (what my students are using). Sorry if I missed this info on another tut!

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    16
     Apr 22, 2012 at 4:18 pm
    • Greg Zaal
      Posts: 39

      User whatever camera you’ve got! I don’t have a DLSR, just a point-and-shoot HD one :)

      #
      16.1
       Sep 27, 2012 at 6:48 am
  17. David
    Posts: 4

    Great tutorial.
    For Camera solve I get error of about 0.6 (good). I added
    a Camera Solver constraint to my camera and marked floor with 3 markers.
    All the bundles are visible in 3D view but their position bears
    no relationship to the placement of my markers.
    Please help.

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    17
     Dec 3, 2012 at 11:48 pm
    • begginer guy
      Posts: 1

      you gotta select the camera and then go to the camera controls and change the focal lenth of the um… the camera

      #
      17.1
       Mar 14, 2013 at 4:59 am

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