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Known Participant
May 19, 2025
Answered

3D Motion Tracking, Not Camera Solve

  • May 19, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 465 views

Hi.
I've been Googling and YouTubing this and all the info I can find is about 3D camera solving.
Here's what I want to do: I have some footage of someone turning their head, and I want to put a 3D model of a hat on them that follows the movement of the head. Is this even possible? Would camera solve work for this? Or just a normal Motion Track with position and rotation? I've tried the latter quickly and I can't seem to get results. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.
So first, is it even possible? If yes, anyone know how I could go about it?

Thanks

Correct answer thepixelsmith

3D Camera tracking wouldn't work for this since that tech is designed to calculate the movement of the camera that shot a video.

Motion Tracking in AE is a 2D technology so it can tell you rotation, position, scale and skew (How something turns and distorts as it turns).
This is a tutorial from AE Tutorials with Mikey: https://youtu.be/IbKeXYTxalc?si=dGjIVnydJNM2HBld

In it he tracks a head turning towards the camera and uses it to attach a mustache. 
It actually may be less trouble though to manually animate the 3D hat.

2 replies

Community Expert
May 20, 2025

For some shots, Mocha AE would get you close. Mocha Pro is better. Syntheyes is another app that will do object tracking.

 

The lowest-cost solution that would probably solve your problem would be Blender. It has good object tracking. Here's one of the dozens of decent tutorial videos on how to do the:

IregroundAuthor
Known Participant
May 20, 2025

Thanks. I'll try this one too. 

thepixelsmith
Community Expert
thepixelsmithCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
May 20, 2025

3D Camera tracking wouldn't work for this since that tech is designed to calculate the movement of the camera that shot a video.

Motion Tracking in AE is a 2D technology so it can tell you rotation, position, scale and skew (How something turns and distorts as it turns).
This is a tutorial from AE Tutorials with Mikey: https://youtu.be/IbKeXYTxalc?si=dGjIVnydJNM2HBld

In it he tracks a head turning towards the camera and uses it to attach a mustache. 
It actually may be less trouble though to manually animate the 3D hat.

IregroundAuthor
Known Participant
May 20, 2025

Thanks. I'll try that.