Planar tracking preview

by - 2012/05/18 22 Comments Development

I flew to Amsterdam the other week to hang out at the Blender institute writing some code and maybe get a second or two of screen time. We decided that one of the most useful features I could add for Mango was planar tracking. Over the last week, this is what I wrote. The video below shows the new Ceres-based planar tracker. This is on the Tomato branch and is not ready for trunk yet.

Note: this planar tracking is not as sophisticated as some of the other planar tracker packages, but give it time.

Special thanks to Sergey for integrating Ceres into Blender’s build and fixing some UI issues.

  1. riftmaster says:

    Looks great, I have been waiting for planar tracking for ages!

    Can’t wait to play with it

  2. ibkanat says:

    Amazing work Keir…. thanks so much

  3. ibkanat says:

    here is a Ubuntu 11.04(64) build http://www.graphicall.org/930

  4. thatonejondude says:

    Flawless victory! :)

  5. belich says:

    is there any windows build ?? ~_~ i want to play with this

  6. Karlis says:

    Now this is awesome! Something like mocha..

  7. PhysicsGuy says:

    That is really great Keir. With the rate you and Sergey develop this stuff, I’m sure we’ll be using it in no time. Rome wasn’t built in one day. Although that’s probably just because Ton wasn’t around to manage things.

  8. 3pointedit says:

    So awesome I had tears in my eyes. What a wonderful addition.

  9. stephen says:

    Insane, is exactly what I needed and hey-presto, there it is. Trying out a graphicall build and it’s insanely good. Great job Keir

  10. David Bogas says:

    Just amazing! Can’t wait to test it!

  11. Luke says:

    Hey i cant get the ubuntu one to work it says ./blender: error while loading shared libraries: libgettextlib-0.18.1.so: cannot open shared object file: Error 40

  12. David Haymond says:

    Wow, I’m amazed! I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Keep up the good work, Sergey!

  13. captainkirk says:

    Are there any 32-bit Windows builds?

  14. Emu says:

    I especially needed the lightness normalization. But looking at what the perspective markers can handle — wow. Now that’s a motion tracker that deserves respect :)
    Btw. Luke, it should be enough to install the package named “gettext”, if you are on ubuntu 11.04 or later.

  15. Vishahan says:

    Hey! Your using Ubuntu YAY
    [Insert fistbump here]!

  16. Payton Hubbard says:

    I have a question about planar tracking. While the planar tracker is really awesome, I don’t see how it can be useful for things other than 3d camera solves. Currently, as far as I see it, there is no way to use the planar tracker for anything other than its center point, so its just a fancy tracker. There is no way to do things like set extensions or digital makeup. Having an empty follow the track just gives the position data, not the scale and rotation data that makes the planar tracker so useful on its own. Has a way to actually use the planar tracker just not been implemented, or am I just missing something?

    • ArrowheadVenom says:

      This is exactly what I have been wondering! I can track it and it’s all fine and dandy, but how do I use what I’ve tracked? The camera solver still needs 8 different markers to solve it, and it seems to just use their location data in the solve. I would really like someone to explain this to me. I feel like I missed something.

  17. CurtisLee says:

    Hey guys I’ve been looking at some videos using tomato branch and it looks great! I’ve been searching around the internet and can’t seem to find one for Windows 32 bit. Anyone know where i can download tomato branch for windows 32 bit?