[Bf-vfx] Re: Plane Track (and more) small features request

[Sebastian König]

Hi Sergey!

Here finally some feedback on plane track update:
What would be the cons of live update? Because for me that sounds the most logical. If I retrack one point or move it, I would expect the plane track to update. 
But maybe others have different opinion about that. Or maybe there can be a "lock plane track" button or so? Just like for normal markers? Retracking or deleting the corner markers would then not affect the plane track. 
Most importantly though it should be made so that it doesn't crash if i retrack a marker and then move a corner of the plane track.

Speaking of which:
I would prefer the plane track to be not keyable. Because typically if I move the plane track on any frame, then because I realized that it didn't fit correctly. But most certainly I wouldn't want to have sudden jumps. Alternatively, What might be more interesting, if the plane track deformation would blend linearly between the keyframes, just like mask deformations.

If we get a "lock plane track" button, there could be an "animatable" button as well? Maybe in 1 row?
:)

Cheers!

Seb





On 30. August 2013 at 10:45:39, Sergey Sharybin (sergey.vfx at gmail.com) wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback, answers are inlined.

1) Once I create the Plane Track there is no way to update it by changing the markers/tracking them for more frames. Which means the four corners I so carefully pinpointed are now lost forever.

Not actually truth. You might extend plane if you track markers for more frames. You even might re-track markers on the "existing" frames. Just currently you'll need to wiggle plane track corners a bit to trigger it to take care of changes made to point tracks (plane track is updating every time you edit it corners).

Alternatives here would be:

- Have a button to re-evaluate plane for the whole frame range
- Do life-update of plane as you're changing point tracks (after you moved them, after you tracked them and so).

Both ways have their conz and proz and more feedback is welcome (Seb, Hyper?)
 
2) [related to #5] Option to auto-update the planar tracker while I'm editing the markers (otherwise it gets really hard to track vertices after they move off-screen).

If i get it correct, it's totally related to what i described above.

Further, please do stick to blender terminology. Tracker is an algorithm which tracks feature point across the frames. Entity is called "plane track". You guys are keeping adding confusing meanings from all over the software which only keeps making understanding of you more complex.
 
3) An option to start the Planar Tracker with the four vertices matching the four trackers would be nice (this should be super simple, I can try to tackle it myself).

Plane Track.

For sure we thought of all obvious things in the beginning and it's in fact not so obvious. Rotation of the plane is really crucial and the way how you detect which point track corresponds to image's left bottom corner is really ambiguous.

Here's an example. Imagine you've got a billboard on the footage which you're gonna to replace. It might be any of this orientations: http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=58406 If you could think of robust way detecting left-bottom corner i'm all ears.

But for now it seems in ~50% cases guessed orientation would be just wrong, and you'll still be frustrated and need to re-do orientation anyway. And a tool which behavior totally depends on number of tracks select combined with ambiguity makes me totally dislike suggestion above.
 
Not related to Plane Track:
===========================
4) Allow for multiple selection of markers in graph view (to delete/clean them, when using "Detect Features"

You could select multiple markers within the same track. I guess you're taking abut being able to select multiple tracks? Then it makes sense, yes.

5) [related to #4] Allow for 'C'ircle selection in Graph mode.

Not sure how Circle selection would be much more usable than box selection in terms of motrack, bit it's not difficult to add.
 
6) 3D Viewport snap on markers (any markers) - just like we have for empties now. Note: it's to snap mesh/geometry to the markers (also it may be relative simple, it can be tackled by someone else)

You might snap cursor to bundles positions already. But making general snapping aware of bundles is indeed interesting. Unfortunately, snapping code is one of the most pitch-black magics is the code, so i have no predictions about human-months to do this at this point.

--  
With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
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