I have done lots of tracking before, from tracking text over simple shots to adding smoke to cityscapes. Typically most 3D tracking software is standalone, so the workflow can be slow and tedious exporting and importing between applications. With that in mind The Foundry has created a 3D tracker plug-in specially developed for After Effects: CameraTracker. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?
So what is tracking? It is following lots of unique points on live footage and using a complex algorithm that creates a virtual camera. With the virtual camera created you can add text or anything you like to a moving camera shot. So does CameraTracker perform? The answer is yes, very well, considering it is running within After Effects.
CameraTracker is unique in the fact that it is the only mainstream 3D tracker plug-in for After Effects. Although it has some tough competition, like PFTrack and BouJou, which are standalone applications which can be used along side After Effects. They have more features, but they do cost a lot more, in the $1000’s. A more comparable feature level of CameraTracker's other options would be PFHoe by The Pixel Farm and an open source project called VooDoo.
CameraTracker running in After Effects.
Ease of use
Is it easy to use? The Foundry has made it incredibly simple to use. Once applied to footage, the most important buttons: ‘Track features’ and ‘Solve camera’ are easily visible in the effects properties. With just one click you can have it tracking points, although you might want to change some properties before doing that.
People who have a basic or advanced knowledge of After Effects will love this plug-in, as it fits in so seamlessly with the pre-designed features you get with After Effects natively. When the plug-in is applied, CameraTracker puts the settings in the Properties window which is where all your other effects are stored. When the effect is highlighted in the Composition window in the bottom left you have a CameraTracker menu, which does feel a little out of place. It feels more like Flash than After Effects, and on my Mac you get some flickering of the cursor, which is a bit distracting. Obviously that's a pretty minor complaint, though.
The settings for CameraTracker in the effects panel.
Depth of options
Camera Tracker comes with some useful features, including ‘Render during analysis’, which I prefer to turn off as it means a quicker result and then you can go through and check motion paths more readily.
Moving objects within footage can affect the outcome of a track, and, fortunately, CameraTracker makes it easy to apply a mask as a matte so that moving objects are ignored.
The menu in the Preview window.
Besides the automatic track, you can change lots of features to improve the track. You can change the number of track features, feature separation, track threshold and more.
Before using ‘solve camera,’ something that can really improve a track is to input your camera lens information. If you know the camera you shot with you can change the properties, like the focal length, if you don’t know, CameraTracker does its best to figure it out automatically.
Masking out objects so the Camera Tracker ignores them is fairly easy.
Performance
When tracking you will notice that it is quite fast. I did a 10 second track using the default settings and it took 2:00 minutes. I then used the same footage in PFTrack and it took 2:30. Times may differ depending on your computer and footage, but CameraTracker is pretty quick.
In the time I have been testing the plugin, After Effects has not crashed once. Which is impressive, since some plug-ins I have tested have caused After Effects to crash frequently. In my opinion the integration of CameraTracker is even better than the After Effects built-in 2D tracker, which is a bit hidden for new users.
Advanced settings that can be changed to the users preference.
CameraTracker is very powerful, but is it limiting? In some ways maybe, the options for exporting into other software isn’t there yet (but this is only version 1, so there are always freshman growing pains). As such, while it may do everything you need a motion tracking software to do, If you were wanting to put a 3D object using Blender or 3DMax, it would be impossible to do that with this version of CameraTracker. (You would have to resort to a standalone tracker and import tracking data into the 3D program.)
The status bar, which shows how far it is through the track or solve.
[Editor's Note: On the subject of future options to export to other programs, the Foundry's product manager, Jack Binks, had this to say: “We actually elected not to cover this functionality in the tool itself as there's a bunch of third party, generally free, scripts for exporting AE camera/null data to 3d packages. If we had implemented similar functionality internally to CameraTracker, and done so for a range of 3d packages, it would've ended up pushing up the cost of the plug-in. For example, there's a 3rd party script called AEtoC4D on AEnhancers which allows export to Cinema4d, a similar one on the same site called AE3D Export for Maya, Max & Lightwave, an adaptation of this script on ShareCG which purports to export to Blender (not tried it myself), plus Barry Berman's Mocon scripts for Maya/Nuke, and so on.” -JH ]
Value
While $250 isn't terribly cheap for an AE plugin, it’s definitely worth it compared to expensive standalone trackers. It is available for Mac or PC version of After Effects and supports CS3, CS4 and CS5. The Foundry’s easy to use website makes it really easy to buy it online or rent for a few days if you don’t intend to keep using it.
Final comments
To conclude, CameraTracker blends in to After Effects very well, and creates a quick and easy 3D tracking work flow that will suit many projects. While it might not be able to do everything you need for more advanced projects, for most micro-budget filmmakers, it seems like it would be a very solid fit in their arsenal—especially when you start to realize that it's possible to fix some previously unusable shots with motion tracking!
Ease
of Use
10.0
Depth
of Options
8.0
Performance
9.5
Value
vs. Cost
9.0
Overall Score
9.1
Ben Nash has gained a wealth of knowledge in special and visual effects that he shares with the low or no budget filmmaking community. Solving effects using in-camera techniques and the use of modern software such as Adobe After Effects. He is the creator and chief-editor of effectsportal.net and works with many other filmmakers on projects of all sizes.
I have done lots of tracking before, from tracking text over simple shots to adding smoke to cityscapes. Typically most 3D tracking software is standalone, so the workflow can be slow and tedious exporting and importing between applications. With that in mind The Foundry has created a 3D tracker plug-in specially developed for After Effects: CameraTracker. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? 
