User Manual

Create Planar Transform
After tracking footage, this button can be pressed to create a Planar Transform node on the
Node Editor. The current tracking data is embedded in the Planar Transform node so that it can
replicate the planar distortions tracked by the Planar Tracker node. Unless you are compositing
a full frame foreground that matches the same dimensions as the raster, it is best to create a
Planar Transform and use it to apply motion to the foreground.
Steady Mode
In Steady mode, the Planar Tracker transforms the background plate to keep the pattern as
motionless as possible. Any leftover motion is because the Planar Tracker failed to follow the
pattern accurately or because the pattern did not belong to a physically planar surface.
Steady mode is not very useful for actual stabilization, but is useful for checking the quality of a
track. If the track is good, during playback the pattern should not move at all while the rest of
the background plate distorts around it. It can be helpful to zoom in on parts of the pattern and
place the mouse cursor over a feature and see how far that feature drifts away from the mouse
cursor over time.
Steady Time
This is the time where the pattern’s position is snapshotted and frozen in place. It is most
common to set this to the reference frame.
Invert Steady Transform
This causes the Planar Tracker node to reverse the effects of the steady transform. This means
two Planar Tracker nodes connected back to back with the second set to invert should give
back the original image. If you place an effects node in between the two, then the effect will be
locked in place. This should only be used to accomplish effects that cannot be done through
corner pinning, since it involves two resamplings, causing softening of the background image.
Clipping Mode
Determines what happens to the parts of the background image that get moved off frame by
the steady transform:
 Domain: The off frame parts are kept.
 Frame: The off frames parts are thrown away.
Domain mode is useful when Steady mode is being used to “lock” an effect to the pattern.
As an example, consider painting on the license plate of a moving car. One way to do this is to
use a Planar Tracker node to steady the license plate, then a Paint node to paint on the license
plate, and then a second Planar Tracker to undo the steady transform. If the Clipping mode is
set to Domain, the off frame parts generated by the first Planar Tracker are preserved so that
the second Planar Tracker can, in turn, map them back into the frame.
Corner Pin Mode
In Corner Pin mode, one or more textures can be attached to a previously tracked planar
surface and undergo the same perspective distortions as the surface.
The corner pin workflow with Planar Tracker is:
1 Track: select a planar surface in the shot that you wish to attach a texture to or replace
the texture on. Track the shot (see the tracking workflow in the Track section).
2 Switch the Operation Mode to Corner Pin: When Corner Pin mode is entered from
Track mode, the pattern polygon is hidden and a corner pin control is shown in
the viewer.
Chapter – 107 Tracker Nodes 2411