Introduction to Camera Tracking

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A complete introduction to one of Blender’s newest features: Camera Tracking.

Length:
57 minutes
Software:
Blender 2.62
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.9/5 (236 votes cast)

In case you didn’t hear, Blender recently came bundled with an awesome new feature called Camera Tracking. This tutorial will give you a complete beginners introduction to what it is and how to start using it right now.

In this tutorial you will discover:

  • The basics of camera tracking
  • How to track your very first video
  • How to create a sweet sinkhole hoax

Finished Result

Did I fool you? This video was posted on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook 24 hours ago. Many of you rightly called it fake, but a few thought it was real. So if that’s you, no hard feelings! Welcome to the wonderful world of camera tracking ;)

Download the Source Files  Download the Final .blend

What is Camera Tracking?

Camera Tracking is a process which involves taking a video that has been filmed with a real live camera and tracking it’s motion so that 3d elements can be added to it.

This process is used countless times throughout movies and tv shows to add special effects, backdrops, robots, you name it. A perfect example is the Transformers 3 trailer. Anytime there’s a moving camera shot, and there’s a cg element, camera tracking has been used.

Traditionally this process is done using a dedicated camera tracker like Syntheyes. But third party software is expensive, and also quite awkward to work with as you have to deal with the whole export/import issue.

But now, Blender has it’s own camera tracker… and it’s built right into the program.

Now you can track a video, add 3d elements and render it, all without ever leaving Blender.

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:


Further Inspiration

Not sure where to go with this tutorial? Check out these videos for more camera tracking ideas:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! Create something cool? Post it in the comments below.
Introduction to Camera Tracking, 4.9 out of 5 based on 236 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
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  • Jason Bain

    I was also learning from this tutorial and everything went fine. The Average solve error was about 0.8 so I’m guessing that’s good. But when I put the camera solver on, the tracking points were scattered everywhere around the scene in 3D view. Any help?

  • Jesus Pereira

    Awesome tuts man, um, when I put the clip into Blender 2.66 the playback is choppy and the video starts to stutter something fierce. How can I avoid that and what am I doing wrong?
    Oh yeah I set my sequence cache to max.
    Thanks in advance!

    • Jesus Pereira

      I got it I was using another clip and it wasn’t the quality that your source file had. Thanks for the tutorials man you are the best. Cant wait for another Academy course from you. Still trying to get me funds together to get the first one you did, Nature Academy. The exchange rates are killer in my country and I am a suffering non-artist. :) Thanks again for the awesome tuts!

  • Gordon

    I really liked that tutorial a lot, downloaded the source files (because I don’t have my own footage yet) and tried repeat it. By the end of the clip almost every marker is lost – and the ones still there don’t point at the right place anymore even after a few frames. It doesn’t seem to work not even a little bit as good as in your video. So without getting the tracking I don’t have to bother for the rest of the process. I have no idea why I can’t get even close to your tracking result although all settings are like yours.

    Unfortunately as I have Blender 2.66a there is no “Tracker” setting like “Hybrid”, as someone mentioned before. There’s only “Motion Control”, and none of the possible options seem to work as good as shown in the tutorial. So what did I do wrong, if it’s not just because there changed a lot in the new Blender version?

  • Cassandra Valente

    So I don’t know what i did wrong, but when I went back to 3d view it just showed the cube and camera you see when you start the program

  • Cassandra

    Hey! great tutorial! I used an Insignia camcorder and online for the Sensor width it just says “electronic sensor” so what should I set it at?

  • Faridlox

    Can someone help me? When i put the track at the pixels the track doesnt follows like my other track.
    And how do i export it as video?

  • acaonweb

    there is someone who read this? I’ve a video taken with an iphone5. What are the right camera settings? Thanx in advance to all

  • kalimeroo

    Thanks for this great tutorials. They all are very well done and easy to follow.
    I was just wondering if this scene could be rendered in cycles (for shadow casting) ?

  • Chris

    Can you do a video on object tracking?

  • http://www.facebook.com/richard.plewa Rich Plewa

    I am using 2.66a the camera tracking video I made has a slight problem the object near the end of the video slides. I tried several times to fix the problem, reloaded the video from clean start and made sure the track stayed where they should be but it still slides the object near the end of the video. Great tutorial thanks.

  • kalimeroo

    Great tutotial. Thanks Andrew.
    Do you know if there is any possibility of rendering the scene with cycles ?
    I set the film to transparent but then my models fade away.

  • raf

    I found that having two perpendicular surfaces yields quite a good track. I got something around .6 with only 14 tracking points.

    Thank you so much for your tutorials Andrew. Here my vid(may be inapropriate for children): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seSFIsJxY_A

  • Spy93

    Hi,I’m a NEWBIE in Blender and this is my first attempt in using Camera Tracking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irB8Nh_0oPM

    Thx a lot for the tutorials!

  • christian finne

    Wauv, great tut…;) Now Ive been trying to use the same teqniques with several different videoshots and the tracking goes ok…my problem is with “plane” (background) and “cylinder” (foreground)… when I render plane, it looks like a light square that just barely blends in with the ground and not like in your vid… Ive triede checking/unchecking various boxes, but havnt got a clue what to do…

    • dave niewinski

      I’m running into exactly the same problem. Has anyone figured out how to fix this?

      • dave niewinski

        After enough trial and error, I got it figured out. Not sure why, but under the Background render layer, Sky is checked off. Deselect this and everything works great!

  • Brandon Okert

    Great tutorial! One thing that really helped me when tracking more complex scenes: You can change your markers on any frame, and it’ll basically ‘keyframe’ that change for you. Say you’re tracking successfully, but then your marker is close to the edge after 300 frames. You can change the height of the marker on frame 301, and it’ll keep that width for the rest of the frames, but retain it’s old width for the previous frames.

  • Ray

    Hi,i’m using Blender 2.64(i’ve also tryed with older versions of Blender like 2.62/2.63/etc)and i can’t play my video in blender,when i press play,the green line moves,it shows that the video is playing but i can see only the first frame in my movie clip editor window…i’d be verry gratefull if u could help me with this issue…thx a lot xD

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