Match-Moving Tutorials and More:
Learning Camera Tracking
FAQs
Web Tutorials
Practice Exercises
Other Web Tutorials
Build-It-Yourself Projects
Useful Commercial Products
Recommended Books
Training DVDs
Tutorials show SynthEyes 2007½ — they have not been updated for SynthEyes 2008 yet. Operation is generally similar, though not quite as pretty.
NOTE: If your security settings are too high, you may not be able to see the movies. If this happens, you can right-click/Save them and then play them. Better yet, get Firefox.
FAQs
- FAQs about camera tracking.
- More advanced good questions from Siggraph and the forum.
- Lens distortion: additional information about the algorithms.
Web Tutorials
Check out the Talkin' Tutorials section of the web site for discussion, clarifications, and to suggest new tutorials. Grouped roughly by topic, some tutorials are listed in more than one section. Many tutorials on a specific topic contain general techniques and tricks as well. Looking for a different topic? Let us know.
How to Shoot
- Path-ology: how to plan camera paths for camera tracking.
- How to Shoot a Gecko: discusses shots where the trackers are all on a single plane.
Tracking Techniques
- Basic tracking example.
- New! Introduction to Perspective. Non-computer look at what's needed to determine depth information in a shot.
- New! Some New 2008 User Interface Features.
- Automatic and supervised tracking with export to After Effects.
- Care and Feeding of Supervised Trackers for best results with the least work.
- Creating smooth tracks with Fine Tuning.
- New! Tracker Cleanup Dialog Walk-through in 2008.
- Automatic and supervised
- Tripod-mode solution, including manual alignment and object insertion.
Stabilization
- Traveling-shot image stabilization tutorial (camera windshield-mounted on a car)
- Image Stabilization tutorial (peg-mode—camera orbiting target)
- Tracking and stabilizing in SynthEyes, then exporting to Bentley MicroStation
Coordinate Systems
- Visualizing Coordinate System Alignment. A silly look at coordinate system alignment, without the benefits or drawbacks of using a computer.
- Coordinate systems and the constrained points view.
- New! Coordinate System Setup with a Distance Constraint.
- Fun with changing the Coordinate Axis Setting in SynthEyes.
- Single-frame alignment tutorial
- Keep Your Distance: how to scale a scene to match a camera to object distance you have been given.
- Manual alignment of the example 3-D solution.
- Tripod-mode solution, including manual alignment and object insertion.
Object Tracking
- Object-mode and simultaneous camera tripod-mode tracking example.
- Mesh Match-moving—track an existing mesh model to a shot.
- See the writeup of Digipost's object-tracked commercial, Cascade.
Exporting
- Export and setup in After Effects, after automatic and supervised tracking in SynthEyes.
- Tracking in SynthEyes to Lightwave export to opening in Lightwave.
- Tracking and stabilizing in SynthEyes, then exporting to Bentley MicroStation
Advanced Topics
- New! Using the hold mode in SynthEyes 2008 to handle shots that are a mix of normal and tripod-mode sections.
- Franken-Tracking: Combining separate tracks with Splice Paths. (Largely superceded by Hold Mode!)
- Creating a movie from a still using the image preprocessor.
- Add-Many and Coalesce Trackers tutorial.
- Using the SynthEyes 2007 green-screen panel.
- Smoothing zoom shots.
- Using the Image Preprocessor to reduce RAM cache memory requirements.
- Using SynthEyes's Batch processor to auto-track a collection of shots.
- Changing a tracked camera from a camera to an object track.
- Follow the Sun: find the direction to a distant (sun) light, so you can cast matching shadows in your 3-D app.
- Building a Shadow-Catcher using the new 2006 features.
- How To Find Your Plate Width. Shows how to convert from field of view to focal length and back using plate width, and how to use field of view and focal length to compute the back plate width of your camera.
- Using a Tablet with SynthEyes.
Troubleshooting
- How to locate bad trackers by working in the dark!
- Tracker cleanup of an example shot of a warehouse: jumping and far trackers.
- Diagnosing export issues: what to look for if things don't line up after export from SynthEyes to your other applications.
Administrative
- Visual registration and authorization procedures.
- Configuring auto-update, or manually accessing SynthEyes updates.
Practice Exercises
- Uphill. Automatic and supervised tracking.
- 1905 San Francisco. Supervised tracking, moving-object tracking, interesting way to set relative scales.
- Apollo 16 Lunar Rover. Inspired by Magnificent Desolation but featuring actual HD NASA imagery, an excellent "final exam."
Other Web Tutorials
- A six-part series on SynthEyes and C4D at Cineversity (VFX Track).
- Tutorial on modeling an object using SynthEyes, by Chris Wells.
- Karl Holt's SynthEyes Review/Tutorial on CreativeCow.net. (earlier SynthEyes version)
- If you are planning to shoot hand-held DV to track, we
recommend that you check out some simple inexpensive do-it-yourself
camera stabilizers, search the web and also these:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/
http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/steady/steady.html - How to shoot video from a helicopter, from hd24.com
- See Digital Juice, click on DJTV and All Videos for great tutorials on how to shoot better videos. The shows on green screens and dollies are our picks.
Build-It-Yourself Projects
- Build your own small camera dolly:
- See the resources page at Hollywood Camera Work.
Useful Commercial Products
- Advanta-Jib Lite - a brilliant 4' - 10' jib system that provides manual camera pan and tilt control! You can create complex camera moves that
look like they must have been done with a sophisticated electronic
camera head. But because this is a (clever) mechanical system instead,
the cost is quite reasonable.
- Stickypod - a nifty collection of affordable (starting under $100) camera mounts for shooting from cars and other vehicles.
- Spiderbrace - simple and inexpensive camera braces for more stable shooting with today's smaller camera sizes.
Our Recommended Books:
Comments on Dobbert's book from SynthEyes customers: "I am half way through this book and it is amazing!!!" and "The book's great! Well written and a nice mix of theory and practical examples."
The subtitle on "Setting Up Your Shots" is "Great Camera Moves Every Filmmaker Should Know" — which is a lot more to the point. This is a nice visual guide to the different moving-camera shots, a when and why guide to moving the camera (it leaves the how to other nitty-grittier books). If you'd like a more kinetic look to your work, this is a great collection of ideas.
And of course you've got to love Star Wars, this is an extensive behind-the-scenes look at how the visual effects were done. See the VFX World review. And he's a SynthEyes customer too!
Training DVDs
Tim Dobbert has put together three training DVDs, available through The Gnomon Workshop. Several software packages are used; the third DVD includes material on SynthEyes.
- Matchmoving: Essential Production Techniques
- Matchmoving: Object Tracking in Production
- Matchmoving: Advanced Production Techniques.
There's a nice course on camera blocking and staging that includes a lot of material on planning moving-camera shots, from Hollywood Camera Work. Also see their resources page for information on dollies and cranes.