Long 3D Tracking Camera

[SandroAraujo]

I need to track a long and continuous drone shot of a road in After Effects, which means that ever so often the tracked tracking points will eventually leave the screen limits and new will come to be tracked as well. How do I combine it all in ONE SINGLE 3D camera, which I need to export (or crate a script) to export to a 3D softuare (3DS Max in my case). I need to put a new 3D road on top of the existing one, captured by my  10-minute long drone shot.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @SandroAraujo,

Thanks for the question. I'm sorry you didn't get a response here just yet. What have you tried so far? You might try dividing the shot up into several smaller shots, as ten minutes is a long time to track a shot. I suppose you could use null objects and join them when certain tracking points go off the screen, but perhaps someone else in the community would have some better ideas. I hope to hear from our community with a better solution for you. Let's hope!

Thanks,
Kevin

[SandroAraujo]

Thank you Kevin! Unfortunatelly the shot cannot be divided and according to my research, After Effects cannot handle such long shot. The only "solution" I could find was hiring someone on Fiverr!

[ShiveringCactus]

Scratch my answer - I hadn't read your reply properly.

[SandroAraujo]

Thank you for your reply, Cactus...

I tried to do it the way you had explained (I saw your original message in my e-mail). I tried to stich two cameras as I tried to make a test using the first two stretches of my footage, the one in which new trackers had to be created because the first target was about to leave the screen limit. As i exported a script of it and opened it in 3DS Max, I got two cameras, but they didn´t behave as expectes, the second camera didn´t start moving where the first camers stopped - instead it moved in a different direction. I just can´t do this myself, it´s never as easy as the explanations!

[ShiveringCactus]

Oh sorry, I deleted my response because I thought you were ahead of me and I was posting stuff you'd tried.  When using Camera Tracker, be sure to identify three points on the ground, right click on them and choose Set Ground Plane and Origin, then create a null and camera.  But having said that, I don't know what would happen trying to split the clip into 2.

I'd be curious to see the footage (but I'm not going to be near my computer for a few days).