Using a 3-D Model

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‌Using a 3-D Model ‌

You might also encounter situations where you have a 3-D model of the object to be tracked. If SynthEyes knows the 3-D coordinates of each tracker, or at least 6-10 of them, it will be much easier to get a successful 3-D track.

 Shot/Add Moving Object

 File/Import the 3-D object mesh

 Create supervised trackers

 On the Hierarchy View, lock the object mesh.

These middle two steps must be done while the new moving object is the Active Tracker Host. If not, you can use the Hierarchy View to reparent them to the moving object by dragging them to it.

There are now two different approaches to setting up seed coordinates for each tracker.

Important : In all cases the tracker coordinates are relative to the moving object which is their parent. That means that you must not change the positioning or orientation of the mesh with respect to the moving object, at risk of breaking the match, which is why we tell you to lock it above!

Here's the first approach:

 Leave the moving object and mesh at the origin, where they were created and imported, respectively.

 Switch to a Camera & Perspective view configuration.

 Put the perspective view into Place mode

 In the camera view, select a tracker, noting where it is on the object being tracked.

 In the perspective view, click and drag on the mesh to position that tracker's seed point at the corresponding point on the mesh.

 Repeat for each tracker. Here's the second approach:

 Use the Pinning mode to pin the moving object (not the mesh!) to match up with some frame of the shot.

 Select the moving object's trackers.

 Click Track/Drop onto mesh to create seed points in one go.

 As needed, use the perspective view's Place mode to refine tracker positions.

 You may have to repeat this process on more than one frame if the mesh rotates significantly.

Use the From Seed Points solving mode on the solver panel. You can control whether or not a tracker is used as a seed by adjusting the Seed button setting on the Coordinates panel.

If you have determined the 3-D coordinates of your tracker externally (such as from a survey or animation package), construct a small text file containing the x, y, and z coordinates, followed by the tracker name. Use File/Import/Tracker Locations to set these coordinates as the seed locations, then use the From Seed Points solver option. If the tracker named doesn’t exist, it will be created (using the defaults from the Tracker Panel, if open), so you can import your particular points first, and track them second, if desired, though tracking first is usually easier.

The seed points will help SynthEyes select the desired (though suboptimal) starting configuration. In extreme situations, you may want to lock the trackers to these coordinates, which can be achieved easily by setting all the imported trackers to Lock Points on the Coordinate System panel. To make this easy, all the affected trackers are selected after an Import/Tracker Locations operation.

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