Blender All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 3

Mixing Video and 3D with Motion Tracking

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding the best kind of video to use for motion tracking

Familiarizing yourself with Blender’s work environment for tracking

Creating a basic track and integrating it with your 3D scene

One of the most exciting features in Blender is an integrated motion tracking system. In motion tracking, software analyzes video footage and tracks various features in the footage in either two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. With properly tracked footage, an artist can add all kinds of exciting visual effects. Say that you have some video footage of a car driving away from you. With a good motion track (that you can create from right within Blender), you could do almost anything with that footage. It could be as simple as blurring out that car’s license plate or as wild and complex as adding rocket boosters to the car and having it cruise into the sunset through a dystopian wasteland populated by ravenous man-eating cacti. Anything you can do in Blender can be added to that footage!

So much of the visual effects process relies on good motion tracking. The previous chapter in this book covered a lot of the things ...