How To Rotate Camera In After Effects

As a VFX artist, ane of the most central skills to learn is move tracking. With motility tracking, yous can track the movement of an object and apply the information from that to another layer — one of the nearly common uses is replacing objects or attaching objects onto your scene, such every bit what you run across on the screen of a mobile phone.

After Effects offers different kinds of motion tracking, such as the Point Tracker, which offers one-betoken, ii-point, and four-point tracking. At that place's also a built-in 3D Camera Tracker that allows yous to reverse engineer a scene; a spline tracker that enables you to track masks on an object; and Mocha AE, a planar tracker from BorisFX. The Point Tracker is the most basic and the oldest tracker within Afterwards Furnishings, but it has some big advantages — one of which is allowing you to choose which features to rail in a scene. It's too the most flexible and versatile tracker in AE. Here'due south how to work with it.

Single-Betoken Tracking

Single-betoken tracking is great for following the motion of an object — specifically objects that go left, correct, up, or down. For this example, I'll be tracking a dolly shot of a whiskey and some pills by Pond5 artist Burlingham.

I take three layers set upward: the first is the footage that I'll be tracking, the second is a Call-Outs AE template by adamshead, and the last is a null object, which will serve as the target for my track.

Select the layer, correct-click, and choose "Rail Motion." This opens the Tracker Panel likewise as the Layer Console. Select "Track Motion" in the Tracker Panel.

The Motion Source is your selected layer. Y'all tin rail different areas in a single clip and the Current Track tells you which tracker is currently active. Equally yous can encounter, you can track Position, Rotation, and Scale. Since this is a one-point tracker, we are simply checking Position.

In that location are as well several Track Types within the point tracker. Cull "Transform."

Areas to exist tracked are specified by setting the runway points in the Layer Console. Each track indicate contains a Feature Region, a Search Region, and an Attach Point. Collectively, these three are chosen a "tracker." In this shot, I placed the tracker in the corner of one of the white pills. This is what I'll be tracking.

Feature Region: The Characteristic Region defines the element in the layer to exist tracked. This should surroundings a distinct visual chemical element, and it should be clearly identifiable in the elapsing of the track, even if there are changes in light, background, and angle.

Search Region: The Search Region is the surface area that After Effects volition search to locate the tracked feature. The element you are tracking should ever be within this region, simply it tin be resized to arrange big movements of your element. Making the Search Region smaller results in faster tracking, but too runs the run a risk of the tracked feature leaving the search region entirely betwixt frames.

Adhere Point: The Attach Signal is the actual point you are tracking. Information technology's where the target layer or result control signal will be placed. By default, this is positioned at the center of the Feature Region, but can exist moved if needed.

Right now, I'm at the very first frame of the clip. Press the "Analyze Forward" button to beginning the tracking process. Take note that you don't have to start at the beginning of the prune. You lot can start tracking fifty-fifty from the middle or end of the clip.

When the tracking is done, you'll encounter that the tracker has generated keyframes for every frame of the shot.

At present click on "Edit Target," choose "Null ane" and press "OK." This tells AE to put all the tracking data created into the Null 1 layer.

Next, click "Apply" in the Tracker Panel. The Motion Tracker Employ Options will announced. When you're doing single-point tracking, AE will always ask you where to apply the tracking data. Is it just on the X-centrality? Y-axis? Or both? Cull "Ten and Y" and press "OK."

The tracking information is now applied to the position property of our Null 1. The next step is to position your graphic in the composition and parent it to Null one.

Y'all can parent your layer by dragging the pick whip of the Call-Out layer to Zero i. In this example, I offset went into the middle of the clip before I did my parenting, considering this role of the footage gives me the best layout for my purposes.

You might be wondering why I practical the tracking data the Aught and not the actual Call-Out graphic. It'southward considering applying our tracking data to our Null and parenting our Call-Out layer to information technology gives united states of america more freedom, which ways we can reposition our motion graphic whatsoever fourth dimension or move it to a later part of the clip without destroying our rails.

Here'due south the result:

Two-Point Tracking

The process for two-point tracking is exactly the same as with the unmarried-point tracker. The only deviation is that at that place are at present two trackers. By using a two-betoken tracker, we're able to track non only position, but also scale and rotation.

I want to add together some animated text to the door of this auto shot by Pond5 artist JacksonKitchell. If you lot want to learn more about how to animate text in AE, check out my previous tutorial on How to Animate Text in Later Furnishings.

The steps are the same as with the unmarried-point tracker, except that now I'll be turning on the other options and so that I become two trackers. And since this is a dolly shot, I'll select the Scale and the Rotation.

Hither's the upshot of my rails. You'll notice that I take two trackers, which I placed at the end of the car's moulding. I then aligned my text and parented it to my Nil object. I turned on my 3D switch to my text so that I can rotate it and match the perspective of the door. And then I added a mask and so that the text only appears within that mask.

Here'south how my timeline looks. I've added some other copy of the video and placed it on meridian of the text. I then added a keying event chosen "Excerpt," and then that I can remove lighter and darker parts of the video, which helps a lot in compositing.

Here'southward my setting for the Extract event.

And here'southward our video with the text on it:

4-Point Tracking

As the proper name implies, this uses iv trackers. These trackers analyze the relationship betwixt four reference patterns, like the corners of a television set, smartphone, or tablets. Unlike the unmarried-indicate and two-point trackers, the four-point tracker direct applies the tracking data to an image. The tracking data is applied to each corner of an image or clip to "pivot" the clip, and so that it appears locked in the picture frame or television monitor.

The screen on this smartphone footage by prostockvideos is bare, so I desire to supercede and encompass it with another paradigm. The best tool to use in this example is the 4-bespeak tracker.

I'thousand going to insert this iPhone screenshot into the scene:

The same steps that y'all learned with the unmarried-signal tracker are besides applied here. This time, still, you'll be choosing "Perspective Corner Pivot" and you won't need to create a Nix, because the tracking data is applied to the image you desire to put on the telephone.

Y'all can come across on the result here that I placed the trackers on the corners of the screen.

Brand sure that your target is the screenshot, and then press "Apply." You'll see that the perspective corner pin added a "Corner Pin Effect" on the image, as well every bit keyframes for the position.

And hither is our final consequence:

When using the Point Tracker, always brand sure that you lot choose features that have good contrast, a distinct and consistent shape and colour, and as much visibility as possible in the entire shot. This is but a taste of how piece of cake information technology is to practice move tracking in Subsequently Effects. We volition talk most the other types of tracking bachelor in AE in our side by side installment!