Best Motion Tracking Software

Is Icarus still the best one out there that exists?

Thanks for your help!

 

RealViz MatchMover Pro

 

Yeah saw that one, it's too pricy for me though, any other cheaper solutions?

 

After Effects 6.5, soon to be released, will have tracking features that will surpass Commotion...which had GREAT tracking software. Straight from Matt Silvermans posts over at Creative Cow.

So, you can try AE out...

 

There's nothing that I know of that's completely cheap/free that can match Icarus. Then again, Icarus isn't free or even cheap these days.

Voodoo is still out there for free and gets the job done, but is not as feature rich or fast as Icarus.

There's a pretty nice roundup of professional tracking software in this animationartist.com article.

I think the tracking in Combustion and AE is 2D only, which is great for masks and motion graphics, but not entirely transferable to 3d environments. 3dMax also has some tracking functionality built in.

I should be getting some MatchMover time in this summer.
Icarus has been fun, but I'm REALLY looking forward getting some time on MatchMover.

Have fun.

 

You´re right Nick about the AE and Combustion tracker.
The AE tracker is excellent for 2d (never used Combustion so I can´t tell)f. ex. for tracking a head or a car in a shot but for 3d you need something more advanced. Use either Icarus or Voodoo or something else. You need to be able to export the tracking data to a 3d application or otherwise it´s pretty useless.

 

Hey there.

I've been playing with the demo of Matchmover and reading through the PDF manuals. Tracking the footage is no problem. And opening it up in 3ds max is simple enough. I see the camera and the 3d tracking points. But I have no idea about how to sync that camera up with the original camera footage so I can lay and line up my own 3d geometry within the scene.

Anyone know any decent step by step guides for doing this?

All the tutorials Ive found for matchmover seem to end with exporting from the program and Ive found nothing on actually using that data in a 3d app. Any help would be great.

Cheers.

Despin out.

 

The data should be already usable once you bring it into Max, it should have a tracked camera,(not sure about the points but those don't really matter), and you can do the geometry in Max if you wish.

 

The problem is that it still doesn't work..

I have the same problem, after executing the script, placing some geometry, it doesn't line up.

What could be wrong?

*bump*

 

Not sure if it's allowed, (mods or someone please let me know if it's not), but I've got the free version of Icarus (got off these boards as a matter of fact) and can post it for a bit if people would like.

--Jamball

 

If you are using a cheap camera, camera tracking software won't work, cheap cameras distort the image so the camera ends up tracking only a couple of the points on there, which aren't enough, so the problem could be your camera.

 

If he couldn't afford the best, why did he ask for the best.

 

He was probably asking for the best free tracking software.
That would have to be an older version of Icarus.

 

Ahhhhhhhh ... well then, that makes sense.
Guess I misunderstood . . . my mistake.