SynthEyes™ Feature Summary

For information about camera tracking and matchmoving: what it is, how to use it; see the tutorials, our special introduction (FAQ) page and the more advanced Good Question! page.

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Types of Shots
Image Preprocessor
Object Separation
Tracking
Solving
Coordinate System Setup
Graph Editor
Perspective Window
Imports and Exports
Scripting
Workflow and User Interface

Types of Shots

  • Camera tracking
  • Moving-object tracking
  • Stereoscopic tracking
  • Fully automatic match-moving for straightforward shots
  • Rapid supervised tracking for difficult tracks.
  • Fixed (known or unknown) or zooming lens field of view
  • Manual or automated lens distortion calculation
  • Nodal solving: compute camera pan/tilt and tracker directions when camera was mounted on a tripod (ie computes a ~2½-D track because 3-D is not possible)
  • Mixed nodal and translating shots
  • Nodal "all-far" stereoscopic shots
  • Multiple cameras and moving objects with simultaneous solving, including mixes such as tripod-mounted camera(2½-D) with moving object(3-D), or a video shot plus digital camera reference stills
  • Reference-mesh-based tracking
  • Motion Capture — for faces or whole bodies, using multiple cameras. Single-camera mixed rigid- and deforming- facial mocap (2011)

Image Preprocessor

  • Flexible image preprocessing engine for easier tracking and RAM storage of large film-resolution shots
  • Image stabilization engine, directable by user, integrated with 3-D tracking.
  • Image format re-sampling and aspect changes.
  • Traditional hue/saturation and animated level adjustments
  • 3D Color LUTs: .3dl, .cube, .csp
  • R/G/B channel selection and inversion
  • Blur to remove film grain and compression artifacts
  • High-pass filter for varying lighting, such as strobes and explosions
  • Lens distortion removal—animate for zooms with distortion
  • Quadratic, cubic, or table-based preset distortion models.
  • Optic axis re-centering
  • DeRez to maximize RAM cache
  • Mirror imaging for mirror-based stereo rigs
  • Maintain multiple setups to focus on different regions or objects.
  • Save processed image sequence to disk (see exports below)
  • Reapply lens distortion and cropping for total lens distortion workflow
  • Selectable resampling filter
  • 8-bit, 16-bit fixed, 32-bit float processing available, storage in those formats plus 16-bit float
  • Use for geometric conform of stereo shots
  • Animated Region of Interest to reduce RAM on object-tracking shots
  • Multi-threaded image fetch for exceptional performance

Object Separation

  • Automatically select trackers only within a green-screen region
  • Set up regions for each moving object or garbage mattes for actors, for example
  • Keyframe-animated splines to define regions
  • Quick square and circle spline setup
  • Import spline control points from tracker paths for rapid setup
  • Animated enables for splines
  • Use a rotoscoped alpha-channel
  • Can store roto-spline and green-screen mattes to disk

Tracking

  • SimulTrack window for simultaneous atemporal monitoring of multiple supervised trackers (2011)
  • High-performance multi-threaded autotrack
  • Stereoscopic autotrack with automated correspondence
  • Rapid supervised stereo-pair creation (2011)
  • Mix supervised and automatic tracking on the same shot
  • Match, white spot, black spot, symmetric trackers
  • Offset trackers (2011)
  • Bidirectional tracking
  • Automatic periodic keying
  • Smoothing at keys
  • "Radar" display to quickly identify problematic trackers or frames (2011)
  • Tracker cleanup wizard to locate problematic trackers
  • Real-time error calculation and position calculation after initial 3-D solve
  • Special tracking modes for hand-held shots
  • Option to re-track automatic trackers with supervised algorithms to increase accuracy

Solving

  • "Overall distance" constraint for camera/origin or object/camera distance allows smooth control over this jittery direction, especially for low-perspective object tracks. (2011)
  • Flexible camera/camera locking controls for stereo—work with varying IOD and vergence
  • Controlled post-solve camera/object path filtering (2011)
  • Tracker monitoring during solving for increased robustness
  • Object and tracker weighting
  • Zero-weighted trackers: 3-D positions without affecting the camera path. Used for instant position calculation during tracking. Stereo version also (2011)
  • Skip-frame track for auto-tracking and solving
  • Refine previously-computed solutions, for rapid tweaking
  • Hard and soft camera path and field of view locking
  • Rapidly add additional trackers with specified accuracies after initial solve
  • Coalesce co-located trackers: trackers on the same image feature, but typically during different sections of the shot
  • Light solver to determine light position or direction from ray or planar geometry, or from a reflection from a mesh
  • Novel 3-D curve tracking and solving system to find 3-D curve shape even if the curve has no point features

Coordinate System Setup

  • Auto-placement tool analyzes scene structure to create a good initial scene coordinate system
  • Quick precision setup wizard - click 3 trackers, then realign
  • Easy manual complete-scene re-positioning and scaling
  • Line-based alignment for nodal-tripod and lock-off shots.
  • Flexible coordinate system alignment controls for complex situations
  • Coordinate placement methods based on camera positioning
  • Easily select the desired solution when several are possible
  • Exact constraints for survey data, including infrequent GPS waypoints
  • Distance constraints to utilize on-set sizing measurements
  • Coordinate system setup before or after solving

Set Reconstruction

  • Texture-extraction subsystem uses all (or specified) images in the sequence for high-quality results (2011)
  • Mesh-to-mesh blocking of textures (2011)
  • Garbage matting for textures (2011)
  • Add-Card with lasso and robust automatic plane-fitting (2011)
  • Mesh-building commands to turn a collection of trackers into an exportable 3-D mesh, to build shadow catchers and proxy geometry (additional functionality in 2011)
  • Assemble-mesh mode for quick mesh building (2011)
  • Automatic alpha-channel creation (2011)
  • Alpha channel painting (2011)
  • "Far meshes" allow reasonable-size meshes to hold distant backdrops (2011)
  • "Punch-in" tool for adding trackers to meshes (2011)
  • Linkage system between trackers and the vertices they create in meshes (2011)
  • Alignment tools for aligning meshes to trackers, or the entire scene to a mesh (2011)

Graph Editor

  • Graph and track editing for monitoring and cleanup
  • Works on trackers, cameras, image preprocessor
  • Sort trackers alphabetically, by error, by history, or by lifespan
  • Advanced multi-curve display
  • Squished-track view and other features to learn about the entire shot at a glance
  • Quick glitch fixing
  • Bake animation to keys, or decimate keys to spline
  • Embed in viewport, or floating; any number at once

Perspective Window

  • Navigate the 3-D scene independent of the solved camera (improved for 2011)
  • Projection screens with green-screen or alpha keying permit better previewing of scenes (2011)
  • Place seed points on imported meshes to aid tough object tracks
  • Anaglyph and Interlaced stereo display in perspective view (including for 3-D viewing of non-stereo shots)
  • Create preview movies for real-time playback in the Quicktime Player, including antialiasing
  • Texture display with alpha and alpha only (2011) and front-projection onto meshes
  • Shaded, outlined shaded, wireframe, or cartoon outline wireframe display modes (2011)
  • Depth map outputs
  • Shadow-casting onto the ground plane or constructed mesh(es)
  • Object-manipulation handles

Imports and Exports

  • Imports: AVI*, BMP, Cineon, DPX, DV*, JPEG, MPEG, QuickTime™ (Apple) MOV*, OpenEXR, PNG, SGI RGB, Targa, TIFF. RED R3D available on request (includes HDR, RED ROCKET).
  • Exports: AVI(PC)*, BMP, Cineon, DPX, JPEG, MOV*, OpenEXR, PNG, SGI, Targa, TIFF.
  • Any practical resolution, image or pixel aspect ratio (no resolution limits), ie SD, HD, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K, 6K, ...
  • 16 bits/channel and floating-point for selected image types
  • Included exporters for After Effects (2- & 3-D, with AE effects matching SynthEyes's distortion model); Bentley Microstation; Blender (2.4x and 2.5x versions); Carrara; Cinema 4D python script (new!); COLLADA; Combustion (2- & 3-D); Electric Image; FLAIR motion control cameras; Flame (2- & 3-D); Fusion 5 (2- & 3-D); Hash Animation:Master; Houdini; Inferno (2- & 3-D); Lightwave; MAXscript (3ds max, 3D Studio VIZ); Maya; Mistika; MDD animated mesh vertices; Modo; Motion(2- & 3-D); Nuke; OBJ meshes; Particle Illusion Poser; Realsoft 3D; Shake (2- & 3-D); Smoke2008 (2- & 3-D); Softimage dotXSI; toxik (pre2009); trueSpace; Vue 5 & 6 Infinite;
  • Flexible generic ASCII text importers and exporters for tracker 2-D paths and 3-D positions, and camera/object paths
  • Sample exports available. Features can vary from exporter to exporter
  • If you are keen on a certain export and are willing to help, see what is needed to develop new exporters

*: Due to operating-system limitations, AVI/MOV processing on 64-bit systems must go through a 32-bit server, slowing speeds and limiting output capabilities somewhat.

Scripting

  • SIZZLE™ scripting language, so you can modify existing exporters, or add new importers, tools, or exporters
  • Extensive script access to the scene, including image preparation system
  • Detachable free-floating script user-interfaces. Scripts on toolbars, with keyboard accelerators.
  • Start-up and Post-solve script
  • XML read/manipulate/write
  • HTTP Get/Post*
  • Access and pass 'global' variables from one script to another
  • 'System' call to interact with other applications and shell scripts*
  • Available capability to be remote-controlled via TCP/IP socket from 3rd-party applications*

*: Remote-control capability and a small number of functions used for automated workflow functionality in large facilities are available only with an "Extreme scripting" licensing add-on, contact sales.

Workflow and User Interface

  • Stand-alone application for Mac or PC. See system recommendations. 64-bit versions available, or 32-bit versions run under 64-bit operating systems.
  • Extensive multi-threaded/multi-core optimization throughout the application; tuned for efficient operation on machines with many cores.
  • Multi-shot batch processing for unattended track/solve or sequence writing
  • Merge tracked files
  • Scrubbable and real-time RAM Buffer Playback with 3-D CG object overlays
  • File-information dialog for comments and image and mesh version tracking
  • Handy free-floating toolbars and manager
  • Configurable keyboard mapping
  • Configurable viewport layouts
  • Configurable shot presets
  • Configurable coordinate system definition (Max, Maya, Lightwave)
  • Configurable color scheme, including dark studio and light office presets (samples).
  • Floatable camera view and control panel
  • Interface can be leaned down as a RAM player, including user-configurable safe area display
  • Customer care center featuring automatic downloads of new versions, messaging system, and feature suggestion system

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