After Effects — Motion Tracking

The motion tracking is the technique to track a movement of an object, so other elements can follow the movement or this motion data may be used for another applications. After Effects make the motion tracking easy, as long as the footage contains objects with clear contours with high color contrasts.

In the above image, the Track Point square helps targetting where in the footage to track. The small center dot is going to be a position reference for this tracking object. The middle rectangle targets to identify a shape that the After Effects should look for. Then, the large rectangle defines the area where it should look for the reference shape in the middle rectangle. In theory, the large rectangle could cover the entire screen, but it would eat up too much processing power.

Steps:

This week’s project was to isolate a moving figure using the Roto Brush (After Effects — Rotoscoping and Roto Brush), and add an effect that tracks and follows the moving object.

1: Observe the footage and select points to track

The Track Point should target the clear contour and the target should not be hidden throughout the entire duration of the footage. Making the good decision on the right target is the crucial first step.