I missed the workshop this week (alarms aren’t what they used to be) so I’m going entirely off of what I learned in the videos on blackboard. This week we were learning about how to use the 2D tracking tools in After Effects. We were given a video of a box with 5 dots in it moving around while keeping the dots visible at all times. We could use the dots to track the movement of the box and attach something to it.

It achieves a simple but striking effect. The dots in the corners make the tracking process much simpler as it is easier for After Effects to see the movement as it is happening. But if there aren’t any big obvious dots that are purposely kept in frame at all times, you’ll need to find something else to use.

In this video I changed the sky to look more interesting, added the sun and lens flare effects and changed the colours of the whole scene. To track the movement of the shot I used the head light post on the right and the top right corner of the first building from the left. Since these had quite defined shapes (circles and corners) and never left the shot, After Effects was able to track their movement and from this the movement of the camera. This allowed me to attach the sky and sun to the movement that After Effects tracked so that they would move with the ground.

The box video was good to get to grips with 2D tracking, but second ones definitely shows the true potential of motion tracking. Since After Effects can track how the camera is moving, as well as the things in the scene, you can add in whatever you need, e.g. a new sky, and it won’t look out of place.