How to a Add 3D Object into your Footage in Blender

>> I'm going to show you how to put a 3D object

into your video using the camera
tracking features in Blender.

And if you want to follow along with me
in this tutorial, click the link below

to download this exact video clip.

So open up Blender and go into the
motion tracking tab by clicking here.

Then here.

You can either drag your footage in here,

but I'm going to click open
and select our video clip.

The first thing I'm going to do is
click on set scene frames so that in

and out points matches the
length of the video clip.

Then click on prefetch to
load the clip into memory.

Then under tracking settings,
I'm going to set the motion model

to affine and the match to previous frame.

Affine takes into account the
perspective changes in the shot.

And previous frame basically just tracks the
pattern from the current frame to the next one.

Then I'm going to tick normalize.

This makes sure that if there's
any changes in light

in the video clip, the track
is not affected by it.

Now that's done, I'm going to go to the
first frame by pressing shift arrow,

and then click on detect features.

Now these boxes on the scene
are tracking markers.

They track points of contrast within the clip.

Now I want more tracking markers, so I'm going
to click on this little tab on the bottom left.

I'm going to change the threshold to 0.1.

I'm going to change the distance to, say, 50.

And I'm going to set the margin
from the edge of the frame,

or the borders of the frame, to about 50 pixels.

Now if you go into our tracking setting
over here, we need to set the value

of this margin lower than the
value of the other margin.

So I'm going to set this to about 40.

Now, with all the markers selected, I
want to press control T to track forwards.

Yeah, brilliant.

Once you've finished tracking forwards,
making sure all the markers are highlighted.

And if you want to highlight all the
markers, just hover your mouse over here

and press A. Now I'm going
to press H to hide them all.

And while still being on the last frame, I'm
going to once again click on detect features

to bring up all the tracking points.

And I'm fully happy with these tracking
markers so I'm going to track backwards

by pressing shift control
T, or control shift T. Nice.

Next, I want to reveal all the trackers,

so I'm going to press alt H
to bring up all the trackers.

Now we have a couple of trackers
that are problematic.

For instance, maybe these ones
here that follow the cars.

So what I'm going to do, you
can either delete them manually

by selecting them and pressing X to delete.

Or you can also click on solve right here.

Then select cleanup to get rid of any glitchy
tracks or tracks that have high error value.

I'm going to click on filter tracks.

And, as you can see, it's selected
all the markers that are glitchy.

So all I have to do is hold my mouse
over the footage, press X and delete.

I'm going to go halfway throughout
the clip and select filter tracks.

And there's none.

And just to make sure, I'm going to go to
the last frame and select filter tracks.

And there's none showing up, so that's good.

Okay, so next, while still on the solve tab, I'm
going to select focal length and optical center.

Then for keyframe A and B, so you want to pick
a frame range where the camera is moving a lot

so Blender can actually track the shot.

So I'm going to pick a frame range
between 100 to, say, frame 180.

I've just seen some tracks that are
wild, so I'm going to delete them now.

Like so. Get rid of this.

Get rid of that one.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's fine.

Now I'm going to click on solve camera motion.

And we have a solve error
of 0.35 which is fantastic.

Any solve error below a pixel is good.

And anything below 0.5 is great.

Any solve error above one pixel is
not a good track, I wouldn't use it.

Now in the scene setup, on the
left, click on set as background.

And, as you can see, it puts the
video in the background of the camera.

Then I'm going to select setup tracking scene.

Next, I'm going to hold shift
and select these three tracks,

and click on floor to set the floor plane.

Now I'm going to set the origin of my scene by
clicking this track and selecting set origin.

Just to make sure that's the middle of
my scene, I'm going to delete this cube

and I'm going to go into the layout view.

So I'm going to click this tab.

Then I'm going to press zero on my
numpad to look through the camera.

And I'm going to click this little scroll down
button here and I'm going to select 3D cursor.

Once I've selected 3D cursor, I'm going
to make sure my camera is highlighted.

And I'm going to place R for rotation and I'm
just going to line up the camera's perspective

so that the Y direction is going
along the road and the X is going

across the road, just like that, in this field.

Just so it lines up like that.

That's perfect.

I'm going to select the scroll down button
again and select bounding box center.

Next, I'm going to change the scale.

And I'm going to move the plane about here.

Yeah, that's nice.

That's perfect.

I'm happy with that.

Now I'm going to press space bar just to make
sure that the plane is sticking to the ground.

Yeah, that looks good.

Now we can easily put a 3D
object into the scene.

I'm going to press shift A,
mesh, and select the monkey.

I'm going to place the monkey so
that it's kind of facing the camera.

Also so that it's just sitting above the plane.

Yeah, that's good.

I'm going to decrease the scale a bit.

Yeah, perfect.

Now I'm going to go into render view by
either pressing Z then clicking render.

Now, as you can see, we can't
really see the video footage.

But to show the video clip, click
on the render properties tab,

go to film, then select transparent.

And we can now view the clip through the camera.

Now, as you can see, we don't
have any shadows cast.

That's because we need to bring the ground plane

from the ground collection
into the foreground collection.

So I'm going to do that.

I'm going to change the light to a
sunlight by clicking on this light.

And clicking on the light
properties and selecting sun.

I'm going to decrease the
power to about three or five.

And I'm going to change the angle to match
where the sun is coming from in our clip.

And I'm going to change the angle
so that the shadows aren't so harsh.

Nice. Perfect.

Now there's a lot of other things you can do
to increase the realism of this object fitting

in this clip, like adding realistic reflections,
lighting with a HDRI, adding blur and glare.

But I'll cover that in another tutorial.

There's also several other ways you
can track a more difficult shot,

and I'll also cover that in another tutorial.

But, for now, I hope you learned something
new and any questions let me know.

And I'll see you in the next one.

Take care.

Cheers.

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