3D Camera Tracking AE

3D camera tracking is an effect where After Effects takes your footage and tracks certain point frame by frame in the footage so that when you are done tracking your footage you can create a null object and attach the null to a tracked pion and then apply an image or some text to the null, so that it looks like the image or text is actually in the 3D environment you took with your camera.

In my opinion this is important to know about when you're creating visual effects because the effect looks more believable if it looks like the effect is in the 3D environment. So what I did was I went onto YouTube and watched a couple of videos about how I can create this effect in After Effects. In the tutorial I watched the commentator took me through step by step of how I can track my footage and then place 3D and 2D objects into the scene. It seemed quite simple to do but it is suggested that in the footage the you shoot that the less reflection, lens flares and camera movement the better the tracking effect will be. Plus there is a pixel error count in the tracking effect and if the pixel count gets above 1.5 then the tracking won't be that good.     

After watching this video I wanted to give it a go for myself, so I got my camera and filmed a pan around a table so that I could place an object on top of the table in After Effects. It took me quite a long time to do because my After Effects was being a bit weird and doing this thing where when I added a camera to the scene, the object that I wanted to place just disappeared. However, I solved the problem by copying the position of the tracked null and pasted it on to the position of the object and it seemed to work fine then. the object that I wanted to place in the footage was some dark energy that I created in After Effects as well,  I created it by using some effects like vegas, offset, polar coordinates, fractal noise, masking, turbulent displace and mirrors. I also used an effects called audio orient to camera so that when the camera pans round the table the dark energy will always face the camera.    

  

I feel like what I've done is good but I could of done better with the fractal noise effect because it's a bit to bark and there isn't must grey coning through the effect. Also I'd like to add more radial waves to the effect so that it looks like there is more coming out of the dark energy. I do like how it stays in the same place on the table when the camera moves round and I do like the lines that come out of the dark energy because it makes the energy look more alien like which is even creepier. The one thing I would change would be the environment because the style of the effect doesn't match the pleasant background, so I'd like to shoot the footage in a different place so that the effect would match the footage better.