Unless the composition you’re working on is extremely simple or ideal for tracking, troubleshooting your tracks and solves is a necessary part of the CameraTracker workflow. Effective troubleshooting can improve your end result immeasurably and can be the difference between a good 3D result and a composition with slipping elements. Knowing when to refine tracking or solving is also an important concept. If your scene doesn’t create successfully, the solve may be faulty and some fine-tuning may be necessary. Bear in mind, though, bad solves are often the result of bad feature tracks—if it seems that no amount of solve fine-tuning is improving your results, try going back to square one and refining and retracking the layer.
Bear in mind that a problem in one stage of the process can be caused by any of the earlier stages. If you create a solid and get unexpected results, this may be caused by a bad solve or bad feature tracks. If you have a bad solve, this may be caused by bad feature tracks. The following table attempts to illustrate the troubleshooting process. The recommended workflow is to go to the step where you have a problem and work your way up from there.
| Step |
Result |
Troubleshooting Method |
Potential Solutions |
|---|
| 1. Track Features |
2D Tracks |
- Play through the sequence in the 2D View and look at the tracks in the Viewer. See if any tracks slip, jump, or seem too short.
- Have a look at the Track statistics under the Refine group.
- Use the Track Finder to locate poor tracks.
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- If only a few of the tracks seem poor, you can delete those tracks, give precedence to tracks that you know are good, set thresholds for the tracks, and click Solve Camera again.
- If you have a lot of poor tracks, adjust the Tracking parameters or add a matte, and start again by clicking Track Features. See Setting Tracking Parameters, Using Mattes, and Retracking Features.
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| 2. Solve Camera and Create Scene |
Camera, null, and point cloud |
- Have a look at the Solve statistics under the Refine group.
- Use the Track Finder to evaluate the quality of the solve.
- Play through the sequence while looking at the Point Cloud in the 3D View. See if any points slip.
- Look at the 3D scene from a Custom View, move around the scene, and see if any feature points are offset from the rest.
- Create a grid on the ground plane.
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- Remove bad tracks, give precedence to tracks that you know are good, adjust the Solve parameters (Keyframe Separation in particular), and/or set thresholds for the solve, and click Solve Camera again.
- Of course, the problem could also be in the tracking stage of the process. Proceed to troubleshooting tracks.
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| 3. Create Objects |
Solids, nulls, text, etc. |
- Select some points, create a solid, and see if the solid looks as you’d expect.
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- If the solid looks wrong but isn’t moving around over the course of time, try troubleshooting the solve.
- If the solid is moving around over the course of time, you’ve probably got a bad track rather than just a bad solve. Try troubleshooting the track.
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