I’m new to mocha and do not have a lot of experience with tracking in general. That said, I’ve looked and watched various tutorials and am stuck. I have a glidecam shot following a child running forward. I’d like to have 3d text in the distance on the ground. I’ve tried using 3D tracker in AE and am not getting good results. I open Mocha Plus have tracked the background and in MP the track looks solid. In AE I created a text layer and with the position expression, I parented the text to MP center parameter in the effects tab, just as the tutorials have shown but it doesn’t look like a good track then.
I went back into MP and tracked a second plane, and did a 3d camera solve. The solve is 99%. I tried copying to clipboard but in AE there isn’t a paste option available. I’m not sure how to get this to work. Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?
Thanks for responding so quickly. That makes sense but now I have more questions.
I don’t have any nulls in AE. After I copy the camera solve data and return to AE, I have the paste options grayed out and not available. If I hit CMD-V in word it will paste data - so I know it’s on the clipboard. I’m not sure how to get this data to AE. Can I use the effects pane somehow?
How to track the scene. The child is running in a large grass yard. To the front in the distance and to the right are fences. I used these to track the scene, but I need the 3D text in the distance on the grass and not the fence. How can i do this? I can’t track a small section of grass where the text will be can I? It seems like it would all blend together.
Do you have the “mocha 3D track importer for AE” installed? If not, it is available here: Boris FX | Downloads
I’d have to see the shot in question, but you should be able to track the grass with no problem. If the child is in the way, just mask them out in a foreground layer.
Thanks Martin. I did not have the plug-in. Now the nulls are pasted no problem and the grass did seem to be tracked. But I’m still having issues with this (simple I’m sure).
I tried creating a 3D text layer but can’t seem to see the text anywhere. I tried moving it in front of the camera but it didn’t seem to work.
Also, I don’t know how to apply the track to it. I watched the first part of a webinar Imagineer Systems put out on 3d Tracking and it looked easy (always does when people are good at doing something). In the webinar after the nulls and camera were pasted in, it seemed like the person simple created a solid and used a BCC plugin to make the 3d text. But what I did not see is how this was parented to the null or camera; it somehow just worked. I’m sure I’m missing something simple but feel that I’m so very close.
If you’re using a native AE 3D text layer, the best thing to do is to line it up with the pasted mocha centre null first, then position it. That way you have a frame of reference for positioning the text in front of the camera correctly, so:
Paste your mocha camera data into AE. Let's call it "Layer1"
Create your 3d text object
Copy the Postion XY and Z and Rotation of the Layer1 Center Null and paste it to your 3d text.
You may need to scale the text to match what you need.
Are you moving the text in relation to a moving object, or are you looking to make it stay static in the scene and look correct through the motion of the camera?