what a great, organized and thought out tutorial. Amazing job, this helped me handle Boujou on a fairly high level for my first VFX job! Thank you for your effort and time
Fantastic tutorial sir. I have a question, regarding Origin point. Are you supposed to set the origin point to where it is in the live action plate you are planning to composite the 3d model? I'm having awful difficulty getting a decent stable track and I think I tried a test composite basically alligning my 3d object to the origin point set in the boujou exported camera. Thanks man
The origin point simply sets that point in your 3d program as x, y, z, 0, 0, 0. For example in cinema4d, when you click "add new cube" it will automatically be created at 0, 0, 0. Typically yes, I set my origin to where the 3d object is going to go, that way it's easier to manipulate and I know exactly where it's going be amongst the video plate. I also usually set my origin point to somewhere that's on the floor (if possible). That way I know that any value on the Y axis less than 0, is going to be "under the floor" and thus not possible for 3d items to be placed down there (depending on the shot) Does that make sense? Sometimes the lens distortion and rolling shutter can cause a track to be bad, try using locators and doing "refine solve" to tune it up. Hope that helps!
@@UpperState thanks so much for your detailed reply! It indeed does make sense. So I actually managed to get a decent enough track there this morning with a Sony A7S3. I had failed miserably using my own Sony A73 and after researching it indeed seems that using a full frame on a wide lens was simply warping the footage making it untrackeable. Your track and subsequent composite in this video is simply amazing. Sorry just one more question if I may sir: Once you have set up the scene geometry, and you are unhappy/unable to get it to sit snug against the floor, is it ok to then manually rotate/lower the geometry until it looks right? Like can I then export that camera or is there then another Button/update/solve I just press after manually tweaking? Thanks man
@@Emblanefilms Glad to hear it worked out in the end! Yes, rolling shutter can be really difficult to work with. Also, having extreme in body image stablization will make it hard too. Sure, if you can't perfectly match up your geometry with the "scene geometry" tool, you could manually adjust it in 3d space. Depends on your shot, if you just need a floor in 3d, as long as it's close enough to your liking, it probably wont matter. However, if you are doing some VFX that are very dependent on the surroundings like doing some sort of environment destruction or something, then it might cause issues. As long as it looks good to your eye, that's what matters most.
Great tutorial! 1 question. My tracking so far has been going good with no issues. Created a few reels already. This latest track I made has 1 frame that jumps, then retruns to normal. Ofc you will see that with the CGI assets. I tried adding target tracks as well as locators to try and help fix the jump but not doing it no matter what, I suspect the damage comes from the origional track features which created many points to stick to. Is there anyway to fix this besides rendering out an animation and then cutting out that 1 frame due to lazyness lol
Well it's hard to say, sometimes tracking data can be messed up from things like optical image stabilization and warpy rolling shutter if it's particularly bad. Sometimes when I run into things like that.... If it's just one frame I've had some success literally keyframing the position of the layer in aftereffects by a pixel or two if it's not extreme. If the camera is way off for some reason just for one frame, you can use the "sequential solver" to try and get a better track for the handful of frames surrounding it. I don't discuss the "sequential solver" in this video because it's more rare use case scenario but give it a shot. It's a tab on the bottom right.
@@UpperState I have a couple technical questions for you. 1. So I am focusing on doing reels for IG so when shooting I am doing Vertical. Thus far everything been tracking well and I have done about 5 shots already. My question is, for tracking, does it help to shoot horizontal and then crop in post? 2. Does shooting at higher FPS help for sharper footage/tracking? Atm I was doing 4k at 24fps but my camera does allow it to shoot at 120fps. Looking to do anything to help track easier, esp if I want to do fast moving pans. Thanks as always!
@@poltdesigns horizontal or vertical shouldnt really matter, it calculates it all the same. Motion blur would be the thing that can make it harder to track, so if you can shoot with a higher shutter speed, you might get better results. Increasing the fps essentially is doing this, most phone will automatically increase the shutter speed when you change it to a higher frame rate. But you don't necessarily need the extra frames.
That's correct, when calculating a camera move you usually want to mask out anything that's moving, as it's an unreliable source for Pixel data. However, sometimes you can just leave it if there's too many things that are moving and would take too long to mask out. Boujou also has a way of determining the quality of the track based on an error threshold. So that in combination with several manual tracks would solve it
I repeated several times what you did. In the Blender scene, the parallax of the sequences and the object are different - the slow shift of the object in relation to the video. In Boujou the test object showed perfect tracking. The error occurs in Blender. I think it's a matter of scale. But I don't understand how to find this error.
If you motion track looks correct in boujou but not in blender....try looking at the frame-rate of both projects, and make sure they are the same. Also, try looking at the keyframes in your blender timeline and make sure it starts on the first frame of your timeline. Sometimes it will import onto frame 1 instead of frame 0. Scale shouldn't affect motion tracking.
@@UpperState Thanks for the reply! I checked the frame rate and 1 frame offset. I spent all day today running tests on yours and another video and reproduced them thoroughly. I just discovered that the FBX from Boujou works perfectly in Maya. Error in Blender.
@@UpperState Thank you so much for your reply! I understood a lot from your Boujou lesson. It was very helpful for me to watch this video. I will ask other people about Blender now! Best wishes.
Hi because it's the same procedure for all three axis and since I already showed how to do it for x and y axis I skipped showing the z axis to cut down on tutorial time. I don't like when tutorials are too long!
No problem, you would need to use a program like "Mocha" The newer versions of aftereffects have it built in. Go to Animation > Track in Mocha AE and it should pop up. Otherwise, if you don't have it you might have to rotoscope in aftereffects with masks!
Doesn't work in R21, worked perfectly until I try to import into Cinema4d. I tried many times and followed instructions perfectly. It's a shame that it was a great track in this software.....
Also too, from what I understand Vicon isn't doing support for boujou any longer, as they are refocusing their brand for real time motion capture. I'm considering moving over to pftrack for all my work in the future.
Thanks for the tutorial. I realize this vid is 6yr old, but do you have any tips for when the tracking points jump or shift to another place when tracking difficult shots, such as having a camera following a person from behind exiting a room, and heading to another room? The tracking program gets one part right, but as soon as the actor exits the room the tracks are all over the map, so I can't get a consistent lock. Any tips would be appreciated
That's a good question, you can try a few different things. in the lower right hand corner there's a function called the sequential solver, if you use click into that and then use the solve forward 1 frame at a time button, you can use an existing "good" track to carry the solve further down the timeline. from what I understand It uses some sort of math to predict the camera movement based on the existing flow of movement. Sometimes that can save you some headache, it may not be the most accurate but sometimes any track is better than no track. The other option could be to solve the first half, then solve the second half with a separate camera layer and then export them separately and merge both movements in a single 3d comp by blending between the two camera movements. You can also try running the camera footage through a denoiser, that can help improve the quality of target tracks. Or try undistorting the footage in something like AE before tracking. Depending on your shot you might be able to execute two separate vfx shots for your purposes and sorta rotoscope the door frame to hide the fact that there are two. From what I read online many years ago, vicon has discontinued maintenance on boujou and doesn't even sell or support it. Maybe try seeing if you can get a copy of PFTrack that's what we use now-adays. Or try tracking with the C4d internal track, or AE's sometimes one just randomly works better than the other. Good luck!
Thanks a lot! I was able to solve most of the issues but still have a slight bump in one part of the tracking. I'm gonna try your first suggestion and see if I can get rid it. Boujou is still great, sometimes beats Mocha for my shots Cheers @@UpperState
I tried the seq solver, but nothing is happening when I click one solve button at a time. I tried selecting tracking points, but still nothing happens. @@UpperState
@@ProvVFX Yeah it's tough to say without having worked on it directly. Sometimes if most of the track is good but there is a slight bump in the middle you can export the camera and them smooth it out in your 3d program like c4d by looking at the spline curve of the motion and then shifting the value of the keyframe manually, sometimes you can get it to look just good enough where it could go unnoticed.
Thanks man. That's a good idea. I work with LW and Max, so I probably can look at the curves editor and see if I can solve it there. Much appreciated again @@UpperState
Unreal engine will accept a large variety of file types from various programs, personally i've used FBX and it works well. You could export from boujou to C4d and then export FBX from there....Although it looks like the documentation for UE5 says c4d will work with datasmith directly, so give that a try. I haven't done it personally, but I've been impressed with unreal's capability. I should learn more! docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/WorkingWithContent/Importing/Datasmith/SupportedSoftwareAndFileTypes/
@@UpperState Thank you for your reply, however i was hoping to be able to export straight from boujou into unreal engine as I have no experience with c4d (after effects/element 3dguy)
@@paulyboy29 Boujou can export a c4d file directly. look at 11:53 in the tutorial. Unreal says it is able to use that file. You'll have to experiment with that as I've never done that before.
thank you so much for this, I wish youtube had more quality tutorials like this
Finally... some material on locators..thank you!
the best tutorial i have ever seen.
Thanks! If you have ideas for more lemme know!
10/10 tutorial
Great tutorial .....thanks for your time!! : )
this does not work in C4D R20 :(
nice tutorial man
Great tutorial can you help me i can't rotate my scene just in Z axis even i add ladybug object i can rotate just in Z axis any solution pls
very good explained thank you!
that was a good tutorial ...... do some tutorial on how to match the objects in 3d environment .... it may very helpful
Thanks! Do you mean a tutorial about how to make 3d elements match footage?
what a great, organized and thought out tutorial.
Amazing job, this helped me handle Boujou on a fairly high level for my first VFX job!
Thank you for your effort and time
So glad to hear it helped! That's awesome!
hi man thank U
what u mean by u like to work with 24 frames? we should choose the framerate of the original file
Yeah sometimes when I say 24 I mean 23.976 it's just easier to say. So I like to work in 23.976 when making short films
Fantastic tutorial sir.
I have a question, regarding Origin point.
Are you supposed to set the origin point to where it is in the live action plate you are planning to composite the 3d model?
I'm having awful difficulty getting a decent stable track and I think I tried a test composite basically alligning my 3d object to the origin point set in the boujou exported camera.
Thanks man
The origin point simply sets that point in your 3d program as x, y, z, 0, 0, 0. For example in cinema4d, when you click "add new cube" it will automatically be created at 0, 0, 0. Typically yes, I set my origin to where the 3d object is going to go, that way it's easier to manipulate and I know exactly where it's going be amongst the video plate. I also usually set my origin point to somewhere that's on the floor (if possible). That way I know that any value on the Y axis less than 0, is going to be "under the floor" and thus not possible for 3d items to be placed down there (depending on the shot) Does that make sense?
Sometimes the lens distortion and rolling shutter can cause a track to be bad, try using locators and doing "refine solve" to tune it up. Hope that helps!
@@UpperState thanks so much for your detailed reply!
It indeed does make sense.
So I actually managed to get a decent enough track there this morning with a Sony A7S3.
I had failed miserably using my own Sony A73 and after researching it indeed seems that using a full frame on a wide lens was simply warping the footage making it untrackeable.
Your track and subsequent composite in this video is simply amazing.
Sorry just one more question if I may sir:
Once you have set up the scene geometry, and you are unhappy/unable to get it to sit snug against the floor, is it ok to then manually rotate/lower the geometry until it looks right? Like can I then export that camera or is there then another Button/update/solve I just press after manually tweaking? Thanks man
@@Emblanefilms Glad to hear it worked out in the end! Yes, rolling shutter can be really difficult to work with. Also, having extreme in body image stablization will make it hard too.
Sure, if you can't perfectly match up your geometry with the "scene geometry" tool, you could manually adjust it in 3d space. Depends on your shot, if you just need a floor in 3d, as long as it's close enough to your liking, it probably wont matter. However, if you are doing some VFX that are very dependent on the surroundings like doing some sort of environment destruction or something, then it might cause issues. As long as it looks good to your eye, that's what matters most.
Thanks man!
Thanks for this! How do you like Boujou compared to AE's buit-in tracker?
that is like comparing a Porsche with a fiat punto
Great tutorial! 1 question. My tracking so far has been going good with no issues. Created a few reels already. This latest track I made has 1 frame that jumps, then retruns to normal. Ofc you will see that with the CGI assets. I tried adding target tracks as well as locators to try and help fix the jump but not doing it no matter what, I suspect the damage comes from the origional track features which created many points to stick to. Is there anyway to fix this besides rendering out an animation and then cutting out that 1 frame due to lazyness lol
Well it's hard to say, sometimes tracking data can be messed up from things like optical image stabilization and warpy rolling shutter if it's particularly bad. Sometimes when I run into things like that.... If it's just one frame I've had some success literally keyframing the position of the layer in aftereffects by a pixel or two if it's not extreme. If the camera is way off for some reason just for one frame, you can use the "sequential solver" to try and get a better track for the handful of frames surrounding it. I don't discuss the "sequential solver" in this video because it's more rare use case scenario but give it a shot. It's a tab on the bottom right.
@@UpperState You rock sir! That did it. Only silly frame and that fixed it. Ty so much for taking the time to help.
@@poltdesigns glad it worked!!
@@UpperState I have a couple technical questions for you.
1. So I am focusing on doing reels for IG so when shooting I am doing Vertical. Thus far everything been tracking well and I have done about 5 shots already. My question is, for tracking, does it help to shoot horizontal and then crop in post?
2. Does shooting at higher FPS help for sharper footage/tracking? Atm I was doing 4k at 24fps but my camera does allow it to shoot at 120fps.
Looking to do anything to help track easier, esp if I want to do fast moving pans.
Thanks as always!
@@poltdesigns horizontal or vertical shouldnt really matter, it calculates it all the same. Motion blur would be the thing that can make it harder to track, so if you can shoot with a higher shutter speed, you might get better results. Increasing the fps essentially is doing this, most phone will automatically increase the shutter speed when you change it to a higher frame rate. But you don't necessarily need the extra frames.
So basically you mask everything that moves like plants in the wind and stuff like that? otherwise it will confuse Bojou?
That's correct, when calculating a camera move you usually want to mask out anything that's moving, as it's an unreliable source for Pixel data. However, sometimes you can just leave it if there's too many things that are moving and would take too long to mask out. Boujou also has a way of determining the quality of the track based on an error threshold. So that in combination with several manual tracks would solve it
@@UpperState okay thank you :D
thanks a lot
that really helpful thank you
Every time I export camera to 3Ds max, it freeze and crash. But exporting to other file seems to work fine. I don't know why. :(
I repeated several times what you did. In the Blender scene, the parallax of the sequences and the object are different - the slow shift of the object in relation to the video. In Boujou the test object showed perfect tracking. The error occurs in Blender. I think it's a matter of scale. But I don't understand how to find this error.
If you motion track looks correct in boujou but not in blender....try looking at the frame-rate of both projects, and make sure they are the same. Also, try looking at the keyframes in your blender timeline and make sure it starts on the first frame of your timeline. Sometimes it will import onto frame 1 instead of frame 0. Scale shouldn't affect motion tracking.
@@UpperState Thanks for the reply! I checked the frame rate and 1 frame offset. I spent all day today running tests on yours and another video and reproduced them thoroughly. I just discovered that the FBX from Boujou works perfectly in Maya. Error in Blender.
@@MrGravicaper Sure thing, cool glad you found a workaround, don't know too much about blender!
@@UpperState Thank you so much for your reply! I understood a lot from your Boujou lesson. It was very helpful for me to watch this video. I will ask other people about Blender now! Best wishes.
Boujou to Blender?????
why you saying at 7:38 you dont have z axis and you cut to where u already have them.
Hi because it's the same procedure for all three axis and since I already showed how to do it for x and y axis I skipped showing the z axis to cut down on tutorial time. I don't like when tutorials are too long!
Why haven't the developers made it more straight forward to import the camera into c4d?
I am sorry that i am late. but how to do rotoscope all those things.. like human body. thanks :D
No problem, you would need to use a program like "Mocha" The newer versions of aftereffects have it built in. Go to Animation > Track in Mocha AE and it should pop up. Otherwise, if you don't have it you might have to rotoscope in aftereffects with masks!
@@UpperState Yes it was so many feature on mocha plugins. Thanks
Nice...but sloooowww downn please
Thanks for the feedback ill take that into consideration next time
so... no cherry pi ? ..lol
Is it free?
Boujou? No but you can check the company website for more details:
www.vicon.com/products/software/boujou they also have educational licenses
Doesn't work in R21, worked perfectly until I try to import into Cinema4d. I tried many times and followed instructions perfectly. It's a shame that it was a great track in this software.....
Thanks for letting us know. Maybe someone else that has a current version knows a workaround they could share. Hopefully soon I can upgrade
Also too, from what I understand Vicon isn't doing support for boujou any longer, as they are refocusing their brand for real time motion capture. I'm considering moving over to pftrack for all my work in the future.
Great tutorial , good narration. Biliyorsun bu işi krdşm :)
thanks bro
Great tutorial!
Thanks for the tutorial. I realize this vid is 6yr old, but do you have any tips for when the tracking points jump or shift to another place when tracking difficult shots, such as having a camera following a person from behind exiting a room, and heading to another room? The tracking program gets one part right, but as soon as the actor exits the room the tracks are all over the map, so I can't get a consistent lock. Any tips would be appreciated
That's a good question, you can try a few different things. in the lower right hand corner there's a function called the sequential solver, if you use click into that and then use the solve forward 1 frame at a time button, you can use an existing "good" track to carry the solve further down the timeline. from what I understand It uses some sort of math to predict the camera movement based on the existing flow of movement. Sometimes that can save you some headache, it may not be the most accurate but sometimes any track is better than no track.
The other option could be to solve the first half, then solve the second half with a separate camera layer and then export them separately and merge both movements in a single 3d comp by blending between the two camera movements.
You can also try running the camera footage through a denoiser, that can help improve the quality of target tracks. Or try undistorting the footage in something like AE before tracking.
Depending on your shot you might be able to execute two separate vfx shots for your purposes and sorta rotoscope the door frame to hide the fact that there are two.
From what I read online many years ago, vicon has discontinued maintenance on boujou and doesn't even sell or support it. Maybe try seeing if you can get a copy of PFTrack that's what we use now-adays. Or try tracking with the C4d internal track, or AE's sometimes one just randomly works better than the other. Good luck!
Thanks a lot! I was able to solve most of the issues but still have a slight bump in one part of the tracking. I'm gonna try your first suggestion and see if I can get rid it. Boujou is still great, sometimes beats Mocha for my shots
Cheers
@@UpperState
I tried the seq solver, but nothing is happening when I click one solve button at a time. I tried selecting tracking points, but still nothing happens. @@UpperState
@@ProvVFX Yeah it's tough to say without having worked on it directly. Sometimes if most of the track is good but there is a slight bump in the middle you can export the camera and them smooth it out in your 3d program like c4d by looking at the spline curve of the motion and then shifting the value of the keyframe manually, sometimes you can get it to look just good enough where it could go unnoticed.
Thanks man. That's a good idea. I work with LW and Max, so I probably can look at the curves editor and see if I can solve it there. Much appreciated again @@UpperState
Please make a tut on how to bring tsunami on a scene with bifrost maya and match moving
can you import this camera data into unreal engine 5?
Unreal engine will accept a large variety of file types from various programs, personally i've used FBX and it works well. You could export from boujou to C4d and then export FBX from there....Although it looks like the documentation for UE5 says c4d will work with datasmith directly, so give that a try. I haven't done it personally, but I've been impressed with unreal's capability. I should learn more! docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/WorkingWithContent/Importing/Datasmith/SupportedSoftwareAndFileTypes/
@@UpperState Thank you for your reply, however i was hoping to be able to export straight from boujou into unreal engine as I have no experience with c4d (after effects/element 3dguy)
@@paulyboy29 Boujou can export a c4d file directly. look at 11:53 in the tutorial. Unreal says it is able to use that file. You'll have to experiment with that as I've never done that before.
Nice vid, helped a lot.