Today was our first day back after half term break. We were learning about VFX in Mike’s lesson, so we continued it with Matty. We learned about tracking.
“Tracking or match moving, is a technique used in motion picture. It involves computer graphics into moving footage with correct position, scale , orientation and motion relative to the objects in the shot.”
To track in after effects, the object you wish to track must be of high contrast. This is done so the software can track effectively with minimal input from the user. If you pick a low contrast object to track, then it will come out poor and all jumbled up. I was quite surprised how well my tracking turned out. I used a video of people walking the streets of New York as an example. This would turn out to be a good video to use as many people would wear contrasting colours, because of the environment and what is going on around them.
Here is the clip:
To begin the tracking we must find an object or part of an object with high contrast. In this instance we use the man’s chest hair. This may same weird, but black and yellow are a perfect combination.
This is the part where we had to place the track (what the software would try and follow). In this case it would be the hair.
We would be selecting the ‘track motion’ option, then dragging and dropping the selected area.
Sorry for the bad frames, this process is very RAM intensive.
It looks like the software has handled it quite well (which is quite rare). Now to have some fun with it and add in an image. This is the image I would be using:
I thought this was quite fitting as the place of the tracking is the man’s chest/neck area. Here is the finished product:
Jacob Scaife Development Blog 