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You can create cards using the "Add Cards" mouse mode of the perspective window, found in the Other Modes section of the right-click menu, or on the mesh toolbar. Note that cards are simply planes, positioned and configured easily: you can place a plane manually and texture it and the result is just as much a card.
With the Add Cards mode active, you can lasso-select within the perspective view. The trackers that fall within the lasso are examined and used to determine the plane of the card, in 3-D. If there are a few trackers that are much further away than the rest, that do not fit well on the plane of the others, they will be ignored.
The bounding box of the lassoed area determines the size of the plane. You can move the mouse around as you are lassoing to bump up the size of the plane. You might notice the plane jumping around a bit if the trackers you have lassoed don't form a particularly flat plane: keep moving until you get the plane you want!
Alternatively, you can pre-select the trackers to be used to locate the plane, using any method of tracker selection you want. While the Add Card mode is active, use control-drag*** to do a simple lasso of the trackers, without creating the plane yet. This makes it easier to navigate around in 3-D and verify that you have selected the trackers you want, and that they are reasonably planar, before creating the card.
If there are already trackers selected as you start to add a card, those trackers are used to locate it, and instead of a lasso, the location where you first push the mouse button and where you release it are used as the corners of the plane; it is a simple rectangular drag (in the plane defined by the trackers). Pre-selecting the trackers is more convenient when you want to carefully set locate the edges of the plane. You can also do a control-A to select all the trackers, and find the best overall (ground, typically) plane.
As you create a new card, its texturing parameters are copied from the previous card, if any, so you can configure the first one as you like, then create additional cards quickly. You may want to choose the resolution specifically for each card—smaller cards need less, bigger cards need more—to maintain an adequate but not excessive amount of oversampling of the actual pixels.
Once you have created a card, it will be selected in the viewports, so that you can work on the texturing. If you would like to compare the position of the plane to the trackers used to align it, click Undo once. This will show the created, but unselected card, plus the selected trackers used to align it. If you did not pre-select the trackers, instead lassoing them within the tool, only the trackers actually used to locate the card will be selected, not any outliers. You can unlock from the camera and orbit about to get a better idea of what you have, then click Redo to re-select the card.
©2024 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.