Recently I worked on a promo for the film Green Zone here at Foxtel Box Office. The film is full of great helicopter shots over Baghdad, so I suggested we work some 3D supers into shots to give the promo more impact. Having just finished beta testing Camera Tracker, The Foundry’s new 3D tracker for Adobe After Effects, I knew it would be perfect for this project.

Camera Tracker—originally developed for The Foundry’s high-end compositing tool Nuke X—gives After Effects users powerful 3D tracking tool directly inside After Effects.

Having used a number of other trackers on the market, I found this to be similar to PFHoe from Pixel Farm. It’s very simple to use and incredibly powerful. Full integration with After Effects means there is no longer any need to open up a stand alone application and have to transfer the data around.

Camera Tracker has the key features you’d expect in a 3D tracker, including free camera and rotating camera options, focal distance and lens distortion settings. Once a scene is tracked, removing weaker points from the point cloud is quick and easy before solving the camera and creating the scene.

You still have control over the point cloud to choose the desired orientation of the scene, and the option to create Solids or Null Objects from the points is handy.

I generally found that the first solve was solid and the camera behaved as expected. Having said that, the camera moves were shot professionally and had plenty of detail to track. I’m yet to test it on long unstable shots with multiple zooms and pans for example.

With CameraTracker, The Foundry has made 3D Tracking more approachable, and given users a new world of creative options inside of After Effects. I certainly recommend it to any After Effects user who wants to add match-moving to their toolkit.

You can check out more of my work at brettmorris.com

This comment was written by Sean, a Motionworks reader:

“I was viewing an article on Creative Cow a few months ago, and like usual got side tracked and looked at some of the demo reels. The first demo reel i clicked on started with a 1:1 copy of Andrew Kramers submerged tutorial/effect. I left the site and haven’t been back since. I just watched a world cup game on the BBC and guess what, Andrew Kramers Ancient Titles had been copied, and not even that well. Pathetic.

I think that you guys have actually devalued graphic design and opened a pandora’s box scenerio in pursuit of your own self interest and ego. Read more…

Peder Norby of Trapcode posted this interesting statement on Facebook today: “Say no to presets and tutorials! All works end up looking the same. Realize that your weakness *is* your strength.” Read more…

Okay, you’ve got After Effects CS5, you’ve watched the Roto Brush tutorial, and you know I love it. But what are your impressions of Roto Brush now you’ve had a chance to play? Is it what you expected? Have you used it in production? Is Roto Brush really that cool?  I’d love to hear about your experiences.

I’ve been noticing recently a lack of attention to detail in some work, particularly with type. In the example below notice how the kerning is uneven. Read more…

Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter the Digieffects Challenge. Here are the top 3 entries and winners of the Digieffects Mega-Bundle. Look out for my critique of all entries soon. Well done everyone! Read more…

Here’s the final group of entries to the DigiEffects Challenge. Thanks for your efforts, we’ll be announcing the top 3 in a few days. Read more…

Footage Firm is an online provider of royalty-free stock footage. I had never heard of them until recently when I received an email stating that I could get dozens of free DVDs packed with HD clips and only pay for postage.

Read more…

Here’s the first group of entries to the DigiEffects Challenge. Thanks for your efforts. One thing I would like to suggest is not to simply apply a series of plug-ins one at a time to showcase the effects. This is a promotion for a company more than the plug-ins! Keep the entries coming because there are only 6 days to go and we are giving away 3 complete Read more…

Being in broadcast and also being a keen Cinema 4D user, I was curious when Maxon recently released the Cinema 4D Broadcast Extension Kit. The Broadcast Extension Kit is a library of 3D Models, pre-made scenes, lighting and camera setups, video clips, audio loops and more, but unless your purchase it there is no way (that I know of until now) Read more…

Are you ready for a new challenge? Well Motionworks is teaming up with Digieffects, and this time your mission is to create an eye-popping animation using Digieffects plug-ins. All entries will be showcased on Motionworks, with the top three entries receiving an entire set of Digieffects plug-ins worth over $1,000. Read more…

It’s been a while coming but here is my review of the final entries to the recent Unplugged challenge. Thanks again to all entrants for putting in a big effort. Watch Review

This promo for our brand new MILG7: MoGraph Unleashed video training, was created using Cinema 4D and After Effects. The Out Now text bounces using MoGraph 2.0 MoDynamics, the sky was added in After Effects using Trapcode Horizon, and the colour grade was created using a combination of Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo. For a 10% discount on Horizon, Looks or Mojo enter “motionworks10″ on checkout!  Watch Movie

It will come as no surprise to Motionworks regulars that I’m a big fan of Brian Maffitt. Brian is a veteran trainer and someone that I have aspired to while developing my own presentation style. The foundations of my After Effects knowledge were built watching Brian’s Total After Effects series. Read more…

MILG 7 Mograph Unleased with Tim Clapham is coming. Teaser 1 – Dynamics

Hollywood Camera Work’s Visual Effects for Directors training series is an invaluable resource for both visual effects and motion graphics artists. The 7 DVD set includes over 11 hours of video with more than 1000 examples. Calm, clear and informative narration make this training a joy to watch, and easier to absorb the wealth of information. Read more…

Due to popular demand we now have a simple forum on Motionworks. The purpose of this forum is to give us a place to discuss Motionworks products, tutorials and posts separate from post comments. This is the first of a number of updates you’ll be seeing on Motionworks in the new year. Best wishes, John.

In this Unplugged challenge review we look a the work of Hussin Kahn, Joshua Timmer, Jens Arnold, Hakan Acarel, David Kopidlansky and Laura Daniels.

Watch movie (11min, 25MB)

In this Unplugged challenge review we look a the work of Marc Leonard, Fabian Van Der Meer, Sarffi Tamas, Daniel Thurau and Denis St-Pierre.

Watch movie (12min, 31MB)