Matchmove Training.

I don't want to turn this blog into a lame place for repeating what's been posted on Twitter or on other blogs but I thought I'd post this link to some SynthEyes training at www.cmivfx.com because any promotion of SynthEyes is a good thing. The tutorial looks fairly basic but includes camera and object tracking combined and for $60 you can't go wrong.

Do check out fxphd.com for other excellent SynthEyes courses as well as PFTrack courses too. Introduction to SynthEyes SYN101 is running this term.

I've not taken the SynthEyes courses at fxphd but I have it on good authority that they are excellent. I've taken most of the PFTrack courses there and they are first rate giving the student a real lesson in matchmoving not just pressing buttons.

That should keep you going while waiting for the release of SynthEyes 2011 and PFMatchit in September.

SynthEyes 2011 New Features List

Wow, the Set Reconstruction tools look comprehensive and something I've been wanting for sometime, well worth the upgrade alone. Russ has done some work on the interface which is further good news.

Of course a list of features is only as good as they perform in the real world but they have whetted my appetite and I'm actually looking forward to SynthEyes 2011 more than PFMatchit now.

If you haven't used SynthEyes and thought perhaps that it is too cheap to be a serious production matchmover, just give it a go. There really is no need whatsoever to spend several thousand £$£$£ on other software and with every release Russ makes you look even more stupid if you do.


Thanks to Dr. Sassi for taking this snapshot from Siggraph and sharing it.

Matchmoving Software

So it looks like Pixel Farm are going to be duking it out with Ssontech for the affordable matchmoving crown as both companies have made significant announcements at Siggraph.

Pixel Farm have introduced PFMatchit a nodal flow based GPU accelerated solution priced at $700 which lacks many of the image based modelling tools of PFTrack. Incidentally PFTrack has been reduced in price to $3300 which is good news. There has been a lot of stir on the twitterverse about PFMatchit as it a new technology base rather than a stripped down version of PFTrack. GPU support obviously is welcome as those of us that used PFTrack will know it wasn't exactly a speedy beast being only single threaded.

Syntheyes 2011 has been announced by Russ Andersson in a typical media unsavvy way shunning publicity with almost nothing coming out of Siggraph. What little he did say sounds very interesting with the latest update sporting a whole toolset for set reconstruction and modelling. This is exactly what I've been waiting for and to be honest I'm more excited to see Syntheyes 2011 than the Pixel Farm technology. Russ has done a fine job bringing a highly optimised accurate solver and the best point trackers I've ever used to the masses and the inclusion of modelling tools has to be a good thing.

I'm really looking forward to test driving them when they are both released in September (got to confirm that but twitterverse seems to know).

Who is going to buy Boujou and 3D Equalizer?

Update:

The Foundry of NUKE fame are releasing a Camera Tracker for After Effects on August 10th (today). More info here:http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/cameratracker/

There are several lack lustre demos and an excruciatingly tedious three part AE - C4D - AE tutorial to be found on ae tuts which capably shows what a fag it is to work with. No word on pricing yet but one can only hope that it is priced at PFHoe levels as that would appear to be the main competitor for this plug-in. This tracker looks like it is aimed at those who only have a passing interest in matchmoving and there's not too much to get excited about if you already own SynthEyes or are interested in PFMatchit.

Update2:

The Foundry's Camera Tracker for AE is priced at £170+VAT. This is approx $320 at current exchange rates. For $79 more you can get SynthEyes 2011. There is nothing I've seen in the Training Resources that would make me purchase the Foundry tracker over SynthEyes. The scenes that are "tricky tracks" look like they would solve on full auto in SynthEyes. I've downloaded the training materials and SynthEyes has no problems with jumping trackers shown in Class 07 and estimates the correct lens focal length.

Give the Foundry's rather expensive CameraTracker a miss and get SynthEyes. Buy SynthEyes now and get the 2011 version as a free upgrade when it is released. That's a really good deal.