[Bf-vfx] Plane Tracking naming

Tue Aug 13 01:38:07 CEST 2013

You are correct, that is how it works. However, that is also how more advanced corner pin tools work, like Red Giant's corner pin tool. Basically, once you've defined the tracked corners, now you can freely adjust the image to any place on that "plane". That makes sense to call it a Plane tool because of that, but other corner pin tools allow you to do that, as well. It's what is expected of a good corner pin tool. It's why no one uses After Effect's built in corner pin tool - it doesn't allow adjustment on that plane after tracking.
The thing that makes planar, well, planar, is HOW it tracks. Tracking four points and putting an image with four sides on that plane is corner pinning, regardless of if the corners of the deformed image line up with the four points you tracked. 
So I get it, why it's currently called plane tracking. It makes sense. I'm just saying, if it stays that way, people are going to be confused when it doesn't work as expected, and this will have to be explained over and over and over and over again. Plane is just too close to Planar, and everyone is going to be confused. I myself was for a long time.

From: francoistarlier at gmail.com
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:58:29 +0200
To: bf-vfx at blender.org
Subject: Re: [Bf-vfx] Plane Tracking naming

I haven't tested it yet, but as far as I have seen the demo, this is not quite a corner pin as well. It defines a plane by estimating a normal from your tracks and deform the original normal of your plane as you defined the init shape. 

So it looks like corner pin in simple example as they did in their demos, but in extrem shot, that is not corner pin either. (or am I not getting this planar tool ? )

2013/8/12 Sean Kennedy <mack_dadd2 at hotmail.com>

Hey everyone (especially Keir and Sergey),
I'd like to propose that the name of the new plane tracking tool be changed to something like Corner Pin, along with the plane deform node becoming something like Corner Pin Deform node.

My reasoning is based off of standards that have already become entrenched in the vfx industry. People hear "plane track" and think "planar track", which has already been established and defined by Imagineer Systems ( http://www.imagineersystems.com/ ) as tracking a featureless object that moves as if it's a 3d plane in 3d space. Plane track implies that we are tracking a plane in space with a single track, rather than tracking 4 individual corners of a plane.

People get confused. Like this:http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?302914-Blender-getting-authentic-Plane-Tracker!&p=2439913&viewfull=1#post2439913

And, amazingly, Blender can actually planar track. It would be great to save the tool names relating to "plane" and  "planar" for when those tools mature and become usable in the way they are in Imagineer's Mocha.

(A single track set to Affine or Perspective actually tracks a plane. If we could then position the corner pin outline on a plane based of that single track, I would support calling that plane/planar tracking.)

In the vfx industry, tracking 4 corners and deforming an image to fit those 4 tracks is called corner pinning, and calling it anything else not only confuses people who are familiar with other tools, but it may alienate some people who don't understand why we can't just call our tools what the rest of the industry calls tools. And with Imagineer winning a technical Oscar ( http://blog.imagineersystems.com/2013/01/mocha-team-wins-academy-award.html ) and supporting export to Nuke ( http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/learn-mocha-export-to-nuke-workflow1/view ), they are very much defining the terms professional artists use and are familiar with. Corner pinning has been around for years, and this is definitely what this tool is doing.

And I don't mean to keep comparing to Mocha, I definitely like that we're doing this our own way. I could just as easily point to After Effects' multiple corner pinning tools (corner pin and CC power pin, http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a9d3c597-7b8ba.html#WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a9d3c597-7b88a ) and Red Giant's Warp tool, which is a corner pin tool with pretty much every option imaginable ( http://www.redgiant.com/products/all/rgwarp/ )

I just think we should stick to conventional naming conventions. Artists who use more than one piece of software will certainly appreciate it and be able to pick it up much faster. I myself even thought Blender was going to be able to do Mocha-style planar tracking back when Keir released this clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FBqpE4XO_s . And Blender can track like Mocha, it just uses that data to solve for the center point more accurately instead of piping that plane info into the compositor to use.

Sean

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François Tarlier
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