Expert: Joseph Silver - 8/3/2010

Question
Hi,
I'm just wondering, is motion tracking a person possible? I have shot live video footage with me talking, and I now want to mask myself (make myself into an animation) in the video. I have already created an person using meez.com (a avatar creating studio where pictures of the avatars can be exported as .gif), and I will import it into Adobe After Effects. I want to know if it is possible to cover my real self with the animation using motion tracking, and if so, how would I do it? Additionally, even after I "become" the animation, will the audio (as I am talking in the video) still be present?
Thanks!

Answer
Hi Michelle,

Motion tracking a person is possible, but you need to find a distinct part of them to track. Since a person is made of different parts that are related but move in different directions, you need to pick the part of the body that most closely matches the motion of the item you want to attach to the tracking.

Are you trying to attach just the avatar face to the live video you shot? In that case, you will want to track something on your live video face, and then attach the avatar face to the tracking points. If you are trying to track your entire avatar to the video, then it will be a very complicated process - might make more sense to do 3d motion tracking in that case, although that could be prohibitively expensive.

Audio should be no problem, but you will need to animate your avatar's mouth to the live video or re-record the audio to the motions of the avatar's mouth.

Hope this helps a bit. If you could provide me a bit more depth to what you are trying to accomplish, it might help.

www.designomotion.com