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Tracking additional points

Lesson 1: Track and solve

Importing tracking data

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Live > Lesson 1: Track and solve > 

Deleting tracking data

Because the fence corner disappears from view in the middle of the shot, you need to skip several frames and track from where it reappears. First, you need to remove the bad tracking data where the track box moves off target.

To delete the bad tracking at the end, you use the Track Summary panel (the panel below the pointCenteredCamera view).

To delete the bad tracking data

1. To see fenceCorner’s tracking graph better, click the Track Summary panel and tap the space bar.
2. You need to select and remove the tracking data after frame 52—the last frame still on track. To identify this frame in the graph, move to frame 52 in the Time Slider. In the Track Summary panel, a black bar shows the location of frame 52.
3. In the Track Summary panel, draw a selection box from right to left around the end of fenceCorner’s graph. Do not select beyond the black bar that indicates frame 52. Also, be careful to select only the frames for fenceCorner, not flower1.

   

4. In the Track Summary panel, choose Edit > Delete Region. Live removes the bad tracking data from fenceCorner.

   Deleting regions where the track is off target is crucial to successfully solving your shots. Whenever you find difficulty tracking a point for a specific segment of frames, consider deleting the tracking data.

5. Tap the space bar to shrink the Track Summary panel.

To continue tracking data in the shot

1. Move to frame 143, where the fence corner reappears in view. In the following steps, you will continue to track from this frame to the end of the shot.

   You’ll skip tracking a large amount of frames for the fenceCorner point (the ones in the middle of the graph), which is common practice when creating track points. In general, track as many frames as possible for each point and skip, retrack, or delete any frames where the tracker does not stay on target.

2. Reposition the track box over the fence corner. In the pointCenteredCamera view, align the vertical cross-hair line with the edge of the fence post and the horizontal cross-hair line with the bottom of the post.

   

3. Shorten the track box’s inner target box by clicking the inner target box’s bottom edge and dragging up as shown below. The tracker will not work if the target area extends beyond the image.

   

4. In the Track control panel, click Start Track. If the tracker successfully tracks to the last frame, you’ll see a graph similar to the following illustration. (The second track area will be mostly green or all green in the Track Summary.)

   

   If the tracker fails to create a graph similar to the above illustration, three actions might have occurred:

• The tracker stays stuck at the same frame and the animation frame doesn’t advance
• The tracker stops before the final frame
• The tracker drifts off target

  Whichever of these actions occurred, repeat the previous step, but this time shorten the track box’s inner target box.