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670 Chapter 12: Animation
• A set of trackable features in the movie, such as
wall markers, balls, corner points and so on,
for which position measurements are known .
The tracker w ill track most small features
w ith good contrast to their surroundings,
have a well-defi ned position in space, and are
unique within their frame-to-frame areas of
movement. There must be six or more tracking
features in the scene at any one time, at least
two of which must be non-coplanar with the
others, for example four on the ground and
two elevated or three on one wall and three on
another. For maximum match accurac y, you
shoulduseasmanyfeaturesasyoucanand
select the featu res that are distributed as widely
as po ssible over the scene. The features don’t
have to be in any particular planes.
• A3dsMaxscenefileinwhichasetofpoint
objects have been created and p osit ioned in 3D
corresponding to all the tracking features in the
scene. The objects should be point or CamPoint
helper objects. The tracker will match-move a
selected Free c amera in the scene, so you need
to have at least one Free camera. You can place
and orient it anywhere in the scene.
Camera Track er: Movie R ollout
Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > Utilities
dialog > Camera Tracker > Movie rollout
Opens the movie for tracking. Also provides
controls for the display of the movie, including
fade display to improve the visibility of the
trackers. Provides controls for loading and saving
MOT files in which tracker inf ormation is stored.
Interfa ce
Movie file—Selects and opens the movie that will
be tr acked. You can open any image file format
that 3ds Max supports. If you use sequential
still-image files, you w ill use an .ifl (image file
list) file. You c an create the .ifl file us ing the IFL
Managerorusinganybitmapselectordialogby
choosing Sequence. When you open the movie
file, it’s displayed in a Movie window.
Display M ovie—Reopens a closed or minimized
Moviewindow. YouusetheMoviewindowto
setup and adjust feature tracking gizmos and
to browse through the movie. For more details
on working with the Movie window, see Motion
Tracker rollout (page 2–673).
Show frame—Allows you to step throug h the movie
displayed in the Movie window. Alternatively,
use the Movie Stepper rollout, which provides
additional browsing controls.
Deinterlace—Causes the tracker to apply a video
deinterlacing filter to the movie frames. If the
movie comes from a video source and the features
you’re tracking show marked interlacing, you
should deinterlace t he video to improve tr acking