3D Camera Tracking

Want an easy way to insert graphics and text into your footage? Learn how in this 3D Camera Tracking tutorial from Noble Desktop. 

Inserting Text with the Tracker

1. Make sure the footage is at 100% Scale.
2. Right-click the footage and go to Track & Stabilize > Camera Tracking.
3. Wait for the footage to be analyzed.
4. In the Effects & Presets, change Track Point Size to 200.
5. Right-click on any of the points, preferably on an upward-facing plane.
6. Click on Create Solid and Camera.
7. Right-click on the new Solid layer.
8. Create a Precomp.
9. Name it Text 1.
10. Double-click on Text 1 to go inside it.
11. Delete the Solid layer.
12. Use the Text tool to write out some text.
13. Navigate to the main Comp by clicking on the footage name in the Project window.
14. If needed, resize Text 1 using the Scale tool.
15. Repeat Steps 5-15 to create two more text graphics.

Creating Shadows

1. On the footage layer, right-click on a track point near Text 1.
2. Click Create Shadow Catcher and Light.
3. Toggle open Light settings.
4. Change Intensity to 900.
5. Increase the Radius until it lights up the other graphics.

Video Transcription

Hi guys, this is Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop. And in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to use 3D camera tracking and Adobe After Effects. So first, can I just show you how to set up the tracking in your project? Then I'll take you through putting your own graphics and text inside the scene. Once that's done. Finally, we're going to be using a Capture Shadows effect tunes like Some Positioning to Create Some Shadows.

So here's what the project looks like when it's done. So you've probably seen this technique done before. It's very popular in ads and infographics. It's very useful for dropping information about whatever is being displayed in this video. So with some shadows and general lighting, it's also useful for like inserting footage to cover up anything within the scene or just like to outright replace other graphics.

So for this project, you can see we're going to be using this footage of some Desert Park Brush, and that's about it for exterior assets and you can find these files down below in the video description. So yeah, let's get started. So as you can see, I have my composition right here. My footage fits to my composition at scale to 100%.

If the scale is off, this effect won't work. So fuck your footage right click, go to check and stabilize that track camera. So give it a moment. It's going to have to analyze everything. OK, now that's done. Let's go over to Section Controls and let's go down here to track point size. Now you see all these little points here.

These are track points and these are going to serve as kind of like the anchors to where we can attach different graphics to place them within the scene. So I'm going to make them as big as possible, maybe not that big but I think 200 ought to do it for what I need. And then we are going to as you can see, you can move your mouse over any of these little points, and that will create a plane that we want to attach stuff to.

So I'm going to first let's see, I want a little bit of a forward placed facing plane right here. Come on, come on. I'm all right. Click on those. I right click and I want to create a solid OK, I'm going to repeat that with two other points in the scene. OK, so these three solids we're then going to do we're going to actually right-click on any of these solids and we're going to pretty copy them.

And I'll repeat that with other two. This is so we can replace the graphics within this pre com. So double click to go and then text one, delete that solid. We're going to make a new text layer here screen right click here, new text and I'm going to type in see something about this place. So I'm going to call it there's a garden inn in the southwest of America called Garden of the Southwest.

There we go. I'm just going to break it a bit. A little bit. So looks like that I'm going to do a little bit of typesetting. So we're going to go to Effects and Presets over here and put it in typewriter drag that on to our text over here. Now you can see that it like typewriter on, but I'm going to select this layer you and I'm actually going to bring these closer together, these keyframes closer together.

So type on pretty quickly. Now, let's go back to our path over here. Charming composition over here. And you can see that we replace this graphic with a graphic of our own. I'm going to repeat these steps with text two and text three. So I'll skip ahead to that. Now we have a are graphics here but they're pretty small, so I'm going to select them.

I'm going to hit scale as for scale and I'm just honestly just going to scale it up and repeat that for text three now I'm going to show you how to make a shadow for this. Go back to this layer, the path layer the footage. I'm going to go over to my track points over here and let's see if you don't see them.

You can adjust this size and they'll become visible. I'm going to go over here to where I have my first graphic. And what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be clicking on a plane that is closest to my graphic over here. I'm going to right click and I'm going to create Shadow Catcher and Light. So what that does, that creates a really strong light and shadow for my graphic, but I am just going to adjust the light here a little bit.

I'm going to open up light options and just bring up the intensity to like maybe like 900. That way it can also touch the other graphics over here and the really sad thing is OK and yeah, it's OK as a point light, but check this out. So scrub my timeline backward. So you can see it. But now you can see with this light and I renamed my shadow catcher S.C one, you can see it creates a realistic shadow underneath the text over here.

And I've gone ahead of actually repeated it with the other two graphics. And as you can see, they're writing themselves on this is a little harder to see because it's kind of buried already in the preexisting shadow here. But you can see it under the word quit. So great. So I'm probably mispronouncing that I'm but yeah, the shadow catcher creates a shadow and a light that falls along your own graphic.

So that's that you can use this technique to insert signage into scenes, even other pieces of footage and term in video like a TV screen or a video game console. Try doing these infographics, writing your own custom graphics. So plane footage so yeah, that's all for this tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to use this tracking fact and Adobe After Effects.

If you ever have any questions or suggestions for future tutorials, let us on the comments. If you have any approximate working on with us. Yeah, let us know. So this has been Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop.