Motion Tracking Question

[JP11]

Hi there,

Im using version 4 hotfix 1 (core 4 (Hotfix 1)) with C4d Cinema version: R20.059, trying to motion track a scene - so far so good on the cinema side of things - the track points are set up , 2d and 3d solving works, I have a shadowcatcher on a plane material that gets a shadow from a simple cube and all this is intergrated ito the scene and works ... only problem is I can't seem to get the renderer to see the tracked footage (png sequence) in the interactive preview; it sees the cube and the plane that the cube casts its shadow on, just none of the actual tracked footage - just displays black where my footage should be.

The viewport sees everything fine. Scene works on the C4d viewport.

Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong? Is there something I need to add to my motion tracker object to get corona to display its footage in the interactive renderview?

Thank you for any help!

[JP11]

Figured it out - need to make a corona sky object and place a texture that runs the footage onto it, then set that to frontal mapping. Umm.. thank you.

[houska]

So where did you have the footage in the first situation?

[JP11]

It was just in the footage settings of the motion tracker object in the object tree. That way cinema could see it. Corona could only see it when I loaded it into a material and placed that material onto a sky object.

[houska]

Ah, now I understand. Yes, we would have to explicitly support the motion tracker object...

[JP11]

Yeah hey, you guys blow my mind on a continual basis. I can't even believe any bunch of humans could make such a stupefyingly complex thing as a renderer.

[JP11]

Ugh. I spoke too soon. The picture viewer and the interactive viewer see the footage now, but only the first frame of it.. it doesn't play the frames on render, even though the length of the video has been defined in the frame number and frame rate settings of the texture I applied to the sky. Trying different things now, if anyone has a solution that works Im all ears.

[houska]

I works for me. I just create a Corona Material with all channels off except for Self-Illumination. Then I load a video into the texture slot of the self-illumination channel and I apply the material onto the C4D Sky object. When changing frames and rendering them in Corona I can see the correct frames from the video.

[JP11]

Huh. Tried that and I just get no movement of the footage in the matrerial in the sky object. I'm working with the same png sequence used to track the scene in the motion tracker object , not video mp4 or mov. Could it be that? For some strange reason the shadowcatcher material seems to update the footage, but the sky material doesn't. Can I ask if you have a corona camera tag on your solved camera (doubt that would make a difference but at this point Im out of other questions).

I'll just start over from scratch using video instead of a png sequence. Thanks for your thoughts.

[houska]

Yeah, I'm using a .avi .mov video, so that might be it. This is handled by C4D though, since all that we do is ask the C4D bitmap to give us color for a given point and the C4D bitmap resolves the video itself.

[houska]

I'd actually be interested in how the .png sequences work. Would you be able to send a simple example scene our way?

[JP11]

Heya. It works when I use videos for everything. Used an mp4. Thanks so much for your help! So.. what exactly can I send you? You need a png sequence?

[houska]

Yeah, actually, I think we can find a .png sequence ourselves. No need to send anything :-) Thanks!

[houska]

So the animation works for me even with a .png sequence. I don't know what it is that you're doing differently :-(

[JP11]

I'm motion tracking for the first time, probably fumbled it up somewhere. Maybe I didn't clear the slot before loading a new sequence in there or something? If I knew where I was a dingus, I wouldn't have been a dingus. Thanks a truckload for your replies, really helped!