Camera track to Houdini

#1

Is anyone aware of any tutorials or guides on using the output of Mocha’s 3d camera solver in Houdini? In my case, I’ve gotten a moderately good solve. When I bring the fbx file into Houdini, aside from everything being very far apart, the camera view doesn’t seem right. I attached some spheres to each of the nulls, so that I could see them, but the view through Houdini’s camera was much narrower than the view in my scene. I could adjust the focal length to get something closer to my scene, but I’m not sure how I would line that up accurately. For example, the output of Fusion’s 3d camera tracker includes a plane attached to the camera that can be textured with the original footage to see how things fit together.

I’ve only gotten decent output from the 3d solver once, and in this case, there were two walls, and a floor, all with tracking markers on them. My other attempts seem to usually just result in a bunch of seemingly randomly positioned nulls, and a camera that moves wildly.

Thanks,
David

#2

We do not have any Houdini and Mocha tutorials that I know of. I have never made any and I do not think any of our contractors have either. You have to use the FBX data from Mocha as the Camera too, not just the nulls. That might be the issue.

The 3D solver is meant to put single objects, text, particles, or single plane set extensions into a scene or attached to moving objects based on a single camera solve, if you need a full scene solve with the exact camera that shot the footage, the camera solver is not the best tool for the job.

I hope that helps!
Mary

#3

Thanks. I was actually using the camera from the FBX file as well. I was hoping to be able to add a simple object to a scene this way.

#4

What’s the solve quality? I don’t trust anything that isn’t over 90% to work well.