3D Tracking Analysis Solved Failed, please help.

[Disney Up, Boiler Up!]

I'm trying to use the 3D tracker in After Effects on a video clip of some first-person roller-coaster footage, so I can import it into Maya, add a 3d object, then import it back in AE to add some additional greenscreen footage…but the tracker keeps telling me “Analysis Solved Failed”. I’ve done a couple 3D tracking projects in AE, but for the most part I do 3D Animation in Maya. I’m fairly new to AE, so please be forgiving for may lack of AE knowledge. My guess is that there’s just too much camera movement for it to track.

Being that the 3D tracker wouldn't work, I wondered if the point tracker could be exported in Maya. So, I tracked the back of one of the seats on the roller coaster, (took a while as I had to manually drag the box in almost every frame). There wasn't an option to create a Null & Camera at the same time with the point tracking. So, I thought maybe I could parent a camera to the null layer that I parented to the point tracker. It sounded logical to me.

I was actually able to import the single tracker and the camera into Maya, but it definitely didn't work the way the 3D tracker does. I imported my video onto an image plane connected to the camera imported from AE. The camera seemed to move approporately,  but when I made a  regular poly plane to follow the tracker (for the 3D model shadow matte), it was all over the place. I also tried just importing the tracker without a camera, then tried to create an image plane with a camera within Maya and match it up to the tracker, but that didn't work either. I just need the 3D tracking info to make it work correctly.

I’m not finding a lot on Google to answer my questions, So I'm hoping someone may have some advice how to track the coaster. I’ve watched several “fix” videos that only told me to cut the moving parts of the video out, or only to track one single frame, which defeats the purpose of trying to track the footage.

I need the 3D tracker just to track a small area on the top of the rear seat, where I will be placing a 3D object. In the video you can see where I put the point tracker on the back seat the back seat where I want some greenscreen footage to follow; that will all be done in AE so I think the point tracker will be ok there. You can see the visible Null object connected to the point tracker in the attached video. Thanks, I appreciate your knowledge and suggestions.

And again, I’m here because I need help, please don’t condemn my lack of knowledge.

I’m using the lated updated After Effects, Maya 2018, and an HP Spectra 360 with Windows 10 🙂 

[Mylenium]

Long and short: There is nothing to track. Not in 3D, not in 2D. The highlight on the padding will change, hence there is no stable pattern even for a simple 2D marker and forget about any 3D tracking on such a wildly changing footage. As an Maya artist the concept of spatial consistency certainly should ring a bell and you can't get that with features being in view for a few frames at a time and the camera almost doing 180 turns every few seconds. That's a big No! on all acounts. You can't defeat the math. This stuff wouldn't track in any program. Not Maya's own tracker, not AE, not SynthEyes or whatever. If at all, you can try to manually matchmove it, but otherwise this is a classical case where major preparations are required like actually plastering the carriages with dot markers and mounting the camera on gimble. As always - 80% of a successful track lies in the preparation of the shoot.

Mylenium

[Rick Gerard]

The footage you shared is only about 10 fps. It repeats every frame 3 times. The only possible solution to that shot is to somehow manually track the specific seat back you are trying to replace and end up with a good corner pin solution to that track. Then you would set up a grid or checkerboard layer attacked to that corner pin track to give you a simulated 3D plane. That layer could be camera tracked to give you a camera that would follow that plane. You could then insert your 3D object and start working out the required roto.

If it were my project I would budget about 2 days and offer no guarantee that it would be perfect.

[Disney Up, Boiler Up!]

Thank you. I also wanted to clarify that the video I shared is not the original video. It was just a screen capture of the video which is 30fps.