3DEqualizer is a powerful lens motion tracking software, specially designed for 3D movement tracking. Through the highly accurate motion tracking calculation function, it can accurately output a large number of filters from any real shot film, which can be proceeded to next processing stage. In modern CG production, the combination of three dimensional animation and real shooting environment is in the wide range of films, video games, commercials.
Motion matching is becoming more and more important in the commercial advertising and film industries. It is used in scientific visualisation, stylisation, video re-production and virtual recording studios. Now 3DE is basically used in the following areas:
- Put a virtual object (cg) in a real environment. In the pre-visualisation of architecture, cg is generally used to integrate part or entire object into the actual shooting or video area. Using related methods, cg repair technology and virtual reality technology can be used to modify the features of actors (e.g. faces, weapons) in active scene.
- place a real object in the virtual (cg) environment. A more common example is to place a moving actor in a computer-generated scene. In the TV shooting scene, performances often involve some facilities, which usually require expensive or a large number of hardware equipment to complete. However, now these facilities can be generated in the post.
- Put a real object in the real environment. When synthesising a real object into a real environment picture, if it has a different proportion and perspective relationship with other elements in the environment, the real object will look obviously disharmonious and unsatisfactory. However, when using 3DE, there is no need to care about these issues. The real scene is recorded in a reconstructed way, and then all the motion information is also reconstructed and recorded. This information is input to a motion control device for shooting other real objects under the same motion path, so that non-simultaneous shooting objects can be fused in a main real environment.
This is the main interface. By holding ctrl and clicking left mouse button, a tracking point can be added. The left side is the point browser, it shows how many tracking points you have added.
The rectangle, the inner box is so-called pattern area, which defines what feature will be searched in the upcoming frames, make sure there is enough content within this area. The outer box is the search area, which searches for the defined pattern within that area. The huge search area slows down tracking speed compared to a smaller one.
In case, tracking might be too fast to see whether the tracking point is right, we can slow the point down by clicking the slow button. The arrow buttons allow us to track frame by frame. In timeline, the darker part shows the tracking status is tracked while the lighter indicates non-tracked. Moreover, by clicking arrow button, frames can be tracked. However, by moving the indicator in the slider, frames won’t be tracked.
Sometimes we do have to stop tracking and to adjust the size of search area and pattern area. After adjusting, a new keyframe is generated, watch the frame slider, the keyframe is depicted dark colour. Furthermore, all frames after the new keyframe will use the pattern defined in this keyframe instead of the previous keyframe. The shortcuts to switch between two keyframes is page up and page down on keyboard.
End point let the current point become end frame and all following frames until the end of sequence or the next keyframe are deactivated, not splined, not obsolete, completely ignored by tracking and calculation engine, but the information is not deleted. By hitting the end point button again, the tracked frames come back (end point cares about the tracking direction).
With edit – delete curve – entirely, until end, from beginning, it’s possible delete a tracking curve entirely, all frames after current one or all frames before current frame respectively.