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You begin creating the planar tracker from the Planar Control panel by turning on the Create wand (or by holding down 'C' when you click the first corner). You should have already moved to the new main-frame-to-be. And you should have set the planar tracker motion type.
Push, adjust, and release to locate each of the corners in succession: top-left, top-right, bottom-right, and bottom-left (clockwise from top left). You can hold down the control key to drag even more precisely, as with regular trackers.
The exact orientation is somewhat arbitrary: SynthEyes doesn't care if you start at the bottom left, and proceed clockwise from there, for example. It will simply cause the tracker mini-view to display a rotated view of the tracker. (If you need to, you can rotate the tracker later to fix that.)
You've been warned : don't create counter-clockwise or twisted (X-shaped) planar trackers. It won't go well.
But you ignored the warning : Use the Rotate planar script (in the Planar Tracking submenu) to rotate the corners into place, or reverse the order. If you created an X-shaped planar, you're on your own.
If you are creating a 3-D planar tracker, you'll notice that something dramatic happens when you get to the fourth (bottom-left) tracker: the tracker takes on a mind of its own, wanting to do its own thing rather than following the cursor exactly.
That happens because given the three corners you have placed, there are only certain other regions where the fourth corner can be placed that correspond to a valid 3- D plane. SynthEyes is guiding you to them; it won't let you create an invalid 3-D planar tracker.
If the first three locations you have placed are problematic, it may not be possible to place the fourth where it needs to go.
Important : Sorry, we can't change the rules of physics to make something that isn't rectangular into a rectangle.
If placing the fourth point is difficult, problematic, or impossible, hold down the ALT/command key as you drag. This will "free up" the first three trackers so that they can move a little, to make it possible to place the fourth tracker where you want. The changes to the first three trackers will be kept as small as possible, and will usually be quite small.
Here, we show a newly-created 3-D planar tracker. Notice the tracker's pyramid, which sticks out from the plane in 3-D with a handle at the apex. The pyramid shows the 3-D orientation of the tracker; the handle allows it to be changed, as well.
As you create a 3-D planar tracker, you should monitor the tracker's pyramid display, the tracker's Own FOV (field of view) value, and its 3-D Aspect, to make sure
that the pointing direction is appropriate, and that the FOV and aspect are reasonable values based on your knowledge of the shot.
If there is a known FOV or 3-D Aspect, those values are applied and enforced while you are creating the tracker (and any time you move the corners), which further reduces the possible locations the fourth corner can be placed given the first three.
Once you've created the tracker, you may want to fine-tune the positions a bit; we'll describe methods to do that in a moment. After that, you can configure some of the additional planar tracking controls, leading up to tracking your planar tracker through the entire shot.
Be sure to see "Adding More 3-D Planar Trackers" before you add additional 3-D planar trackers to the scene.
©2023 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.