Try It Out for Yourself

Try It Out for Yourself

If you’d like to try out a 3D tracker, look no further than
the book’s DVD-ROM. It includes a demo of SynthEyes, a
reasonably priced 3D tracker from Andersson Technologies

that has been used on feature fi lms (Figure 8.30). For about
the cost of a typical After Effects plug-in set, you can own
your own 3D tracking software (Mac or Windows). The
demo is the full version but with a time limit, and projects
cannot be saved, so you must execute and export your track
start to fi nish before quitting. The output data, however, is
fully usable.


There are also sample fi les to try out before you create a
scene of your own. You may have luck simply importing
your shot into SynthEyes, clicking Full Automatic, and
exporting the result as AfterEffects via .ma. If there’s more
involved in getting a good track, however, you will need
to learn a bit more about how the software works, and it’s
beyond the scope of this chapter to document it. SynthEyes
is the type of application that yields much better results
if you carefully read the online documentation, which is
available from the Help menu.