IanHubert
patreon
AE to Blender 3D Scene Setup
🕑 Added 2020-03-14 09:05:06 +0000 UTCI wish I had a sexier title for this post, because from my personal point of view, this is crazy exciting stuff- like, this is the 25 minutes of info I most wish someone had told me a long time ago (although, like a lot of techniques, it didn't really become particularly viable (or at least enjoyable) until you had a fun real-time environment to play in (thanks, eevee!)).
But yeah, copying motion from AE to blender, and (the exciting bit) normalizing/placing the footage in 3d space and getting some geometry blocked in.
ALSO- you can do all this same stuff and just do the tracking in blender, instead. I just didn't this time- though I really should.
The video's a bit out of order (I wasn't planning on getting as in depth as I did), but if you've ever wanted to do this type of shot, there might be some useful bits in here!
Comments
Very much a novice in blender but have lots of experience in AE. Absolutely loved this tutorial! Feel like I'm already too powerful having these blender secrets revealed to me this early on.
Red Belly Media
Quick add on to this Ian so you don't have to mess around with the sphere to get your scene orientation right, in after effects after the camera solve has finished if you place the red target on the ground and find a spot where it appears to be correctly orientated, you can right click and set ground plane. Now when you copy your camera position and orientation info over to blender it also gets the ground orientation right :) cheers for all the help man you are an absolute inspiration.
Simon Salord
WOW. I didn't know this way to share datas between Ae and Blender. I made a Blender addon to do the opposite but I never thought to use the clipboard π¨. Does Ae scripting space allows to do that? ... π€
You can say Again
WTπ ..... Have I dieD ....?? AM i, am I iN VFX HEAVEN..?! THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE .... I Need Answers GoD DAmn i, IS THIS SOME KIND OF revo??! π¨
Kai Christensen
You should rename this post so that people know that it's got the super-cool "parent image to camera and normalize scale" technique in it, because I had no idea until today that's what this was about :) Maybe something like "Dynamically Placing Pre-Keyed People In 3D Space AND Importing Camera Data From AE"
Kai Christensen
ok, THIS video has everything. I can't believe this is the ONE video I didn't watch in the backlog because it has to do with After Effects, and I don't extensively use AE!!! TOP NOTCH CONTENT.
Ian Hubert
Oh THAT'S what that means! I'd seen that posted around, but hadn't watched the video. Yeah, that's super handy, thanks! :D
There's a free ae script for normalizing the tracking data with one click: https://youtu.be/vNfGgJ9k3IE?t=269
Kash
hey Ian, do you export the 4k potage out of AE or you work on a 1080 comp?
this is amazing!
Wow! I have watched this video the most. The light finally went on! This is a great idea. I could see doing some crazy stuff if you 3D scanned the actor with the same clothing, you could use it to bridge keyed footage and crazy stunts with the Model.
You can align the camera simply by rotating it by double pressing R
HeyHo!. Wich Blender/Plugin/AE Version is used on your tutorial?. I have problems by the Camera on blender with the plug in. The markes are on the right position but the camera on blender has a very wrong orientation :( . I need help . Thanks (btw. Great Videos!!). ps: My Software (Blender 2.82a, AE 17.0.5 Build 16, Plugin 1.3)
This was well worth the subscription. Thank you
Hey Ian! That's some dope stuff. Question! Do you render out the final sequence with her (the actress) in Blender or do you do the final composition in After Effects? I'm thinking if you have to clean up the key etc. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!!!
You could just check the field of view value in the 3D tracker camera in AE camera settings and type that value in blender, instead of eye balling it. Also you could specify the angle of view, if you know the lens you used before camera tracking, to get accurate projections.
Jimmy Deface
Dude...... some of this stuff is flippin gene-yuss, and i'm only 8 mins in. a well spent 3 bucks.
Keith Lynch
this technique is absolute genius. thanks for the tutorial!
Pete Burges
This is really illuminating. Not that I ever have to take live action stuff into 3D, but I do have to sync up 3D stuff with 2D animations a lot so this info could come in very handy. Thanks!
Harry Robins
This is super helpful!
Ian Hubert
It's super useful :D
shonal bose
am going to purchase AEtoblend plugin
Ian Hubert
Ahh! You're welcome! I hope it's useful!
Ian Hubert
Yeah!! And at 10:45, you can see that the process of doing that cancels out the original camera motion, so she's just moving normally through the scene- meaning you can add your own camera motion if you want to with a different camera, which is crazybeans! I gotta come up with a better way to explain it, though
Ohhh man definitely getting that plug in. Iβm a little confused on why at the start you had scale her image plate and try to make her feet touch the ground. However when you repeated the process and started blocking out the environment you didn't have to scale her image plate but you still got the illusion thats sheβs moving through the environment.
Erich Stenzel
Excellent Ian! Thank you!
Ian Hubert
Woooo!!!!!! I'm stoked to see what you're doing! :D
Ian Hubert
I don't know what type of work they've done on it, but it's been giving me eerily good results in general (as long as I roto out anything that might confuse it, but even THEN it's pretty good at ignoring anomalies).
Ian Hubert
You totally can! Just check the "Animated Image Sequence" box :D.
Charles Tigner
do you know offhand if you can bring in a sequence with an alpha in any other formats (like .tiffs with alphas for example) or is it limited to the .mov format? It'd be pretty sweet to bring in matte painted elements into a scene that way as well as footage
i feel like AE camera tracking is highly underrated nowadays, amazing job overall!!
Blake Rizzo
(as I watch it) holy crap this is insane
Blake Rizzo
Bless thou tutorial
Phillip Park
This is so cool, Thanks for letting us in on the process!
JΓRGEN WETAAS BULL
Yes, this is just what I needed. Awesome duuuuude.
Chipp Walters
Really good stuff. Thanks π
Ian Hubert
Totally! Although I specifically avoided having it be a "tracking" tutorial (I want to take some time and try to do that right). I do spend some time talking about copying from AE to Blender, but the actual useful bit is once you have the camera/empties cloud set up- and those results are basically identical whether you use AE or blender for the tracking :D. That said, if you're looking for a good intro to blender tracking, this is one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNU_lXjWtWM
Jan van den Hemel
This is gold... thank you Ian.
Mark Pratt
I'm Adobe free so I too wish you had skipped AE and done it in Blender or a freely available tool like Fusion built-in to Davinci Resolve (also a free download).
Ian Hubert
Ah, totally! :D
Yeah.. very exciting to watch.. please (later)make a time-lapse video about the lighting and compositing work flow of the huge environment you did. Example : Train shot. Thank Ian Hubert.
James Ballard
You're doing God's work, Ian Hubert.
