< Previous | Contents | Next >
Exporting a 3D Scene for Efficiency
The Camera Tracker saves all its 2D tracks into the composition, sometimes resulting in a rather large file on disk. If you are dealing with a large clip with many 2D tracks over a long duration, the saved composition can reach over a gigabyte in size. Using a Camera Tracker node in a composition can make it cumbersome to load and operate. While it is possible to use the Camera Tracker node directly to composite via the 3D output, you’ll achieve better performance by exporting. Once the quality
of the solve is satisfactory, the Export tab can generate a “low memory” alternative by producing individual Camera 3D, Point Cloud, Ground Plane, and 3D Renderer nodes.
Before you can export the 3D scene, you must provide a bit more information about it. You’ll do this using controls found in the Export tab. Cameras do not include tiltmeters, so clips do not contain metadata that indicates how the camera is tilted or oriented. This is critical information when recreating the virtual camera. It is also useful to determine the location for the center of this 3D scene. The Export tab provides various translation, rotation, and scale controls to set these options.
Unalign the 3D Scene Transforms
By default, the Export tab is set to Aligned in the 3D Scene Transform section. The Aligned setting locks the orientation and scale of the 3D scene to prevent accidentally changing it. So, before you can set the ground plane and origin location, you must change the Camera Tracker to be unaligned using the 3D Scene Transform menu in the Export tab. After you have gone through the Export settings and configured them how you want, you must set the menu back to Aligned before exporting.
Set the 3D Scene Transform menu to Unaligned before setting the ground plane
Setting the Ground Plane
The Camera Tracker has no idea if the camera is on its side or tilted in some way. So, it is up to you to indicate where the ground plane is in a clip. After choosing Unaligned from the 3D Scene Transform menu, you can begin identifying the ground plane.
