Camera tracing in blender can be very tricky and time-consuming, so in this article I will show you how to automatically track your camera for VFX very quickly.
Getting started
To get started, you can choose the blender’s already made setup by clicking on VFX tab. After you have opened the project, you can open the video in which you want to add the visual effect. After importing the scene, you’d need to adjust the end frame to your need.
After all of this done, we can get to tracking.
Tracking
In ‘T’ or left side panel, you can see the “Track” tab. In there you can see the “detect feature” option, go ahead and press it. After pressing it you should see some tracker (yellow squares with line) and There should be a drop-down menu to press and adjust all its option so that it has useful trackers.
After you have done this, now you’d need to track the whole scene and fix some issues. Now go ahead and press the right arrow which is present at the bottom of the “Movie Clip Editor”. It will track your whole scene, and now you will need to go through the whole scene and see if in every frame you have at least 8 trackers.
If in some places you don’t then you will once again need to detect the feature. After you have made sure that every frame has at least 8 trackers, then you’d need to do some clean-up. Open the ‘graph editor’ then see if you have any huge spikes and if you do then go ahead and delete those. Make sure you don’t delete the spiked which are in bundle, only delete those which are single.
Solving The Camera
After all the previous step is done, you’d need to solve the camera and see if your scene is ok to be used. So, go to ‘T’ or left side panel and under the ‘Tract’ tab you can the ‘Solve’ Tab, there you can solve your camera. So, go ahead and press the ‘Solve Camera’ button and after sometimes you can see the result in the right top corner of the ‘Movie Clip Editor’. If it’s severally under 1px then It’s OK to go but if over or near 1px then, you’d need the clean-up process shared before. Make sure not to go too bizarre on the cleaning, or it will increase the result even more, only delete those which are very huge and is single.
After you have done the clean-up process you can once again solve the camera and see the result and if it’s severally under 1px then you can use the scene.
Using It As Background
To use it as the background, you can see the option in the bottom of the ‘Solve’ tab. Press the “setup tracking scene”. After this, you should be able to see the scene as background in camera.
And after this, you’re ready to make your VFX and shock people.
