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# Animating the Point Tracker

Point Tracker is a useful tool for tracking points through a shot. In situations where tracking a point cloud is impossible, Point Tracker provides an excellent alternative. For example, if Shape Tracker's ROI provides no rigid shapes to track, Point Tracker's ability to track a point remains the best choice. With Point Tracker, you can animate a geometry by applying tracking data to it. Users can assign one or several trackers to a geometry. This is useful when you want a geometry to follow a moving element in a shot. With Point Tracker, you can:

- Animate the position of an entire geometry without changing its shape by assigning a tracker to the geometry's axis.
- Animate the shape of a geometry by assigning a tracker to each vertex. If you are animating a basic geometry, convert it to a free-form geometry first.

When you apply tracking data to a geometry, only the axis or the position of the vertices is animated. Because you can assign multiple trackers to a geometry, you can assign trackers to both its axis and vertices.

Tracking data appears in the Channel Editor. Tracking data for each tracker is contained in a Trackers directory of the channel hierarchy. Use the channel hierarchy to select the tracker and then modify the tracking data. In the channel hierarchy, the channels for each tracker appear.

Tracker Channel | Description
--- | ---
Ref X | The point being tracked on the X-axis
Ref Y | The point being tracked on the Y-axis
Track X | Last tracked (or current) tracker position along the X-axis
Track Y | Last tracked (or current) tracker position along the Y-axis

You can also animate the softness of geometries and the position of their individual vertices using the Animation controls. See About Animation.

The Point Tracker is further improved with sub-pixel accuracy. Subsequently, any subtle movement (including movements less than a single pixel in dimension) can now be analysed and written to the Lustre Animation Channel.

#### Topics in this section

- Animating the Position of Geometries
- Animating the Shape of Geometries with the Point Tracker
- Assigning and Unassigning Point Trackers to Geometries
- Soloing and Ganging Point Trackers
- Deleting Point Trackers