Effects process in order from top to bottom, so while it could be either plugin, it might be an RSMB issue. Lockdown isn't 'aware' of effects that come after it in the layer stack, and doesn't take future layers into account when processing. That being said, I've said "x crash is impossible because" in the past, and been entirely wrong many times.
One fast fix, you could pre-compose the Lockdown layer and the stabilized layer into a new comp, then put RSMB on top.
You could also apply CC Force Motion Blur instead of RSMB, which is slow, but accurate.
I just tested Lockdown and RSMB on Windows on my machine, but didn't get a crash with RSMB 5.1.5.
Feel free to send in a project file as a help ticket.
Just wanted to share with the Vranos team and any body else that might be using and older than version of AE, I tried lockdown v2 in AE 2018 and so far everything seams to be working. Unless there is anything the Vranos team wishes to share that I might have not noticed that would not be working properly in this version I will be getting a license for this version of AE soon. P.S. I am stuck on AE 2018 at the present unlit I finish this many years in the making feature film.
Just wanted to share with the Vranos team and any body else that might be using and older than version of AE, I tried lockdown v2 in AE 2018 and so far everything seams to be working. Unless there is anything the Vranos team wishes to share that I might have not noticed that would not be working properly in this version I will be getting a license for this version of AE soon. P.S. I am stuck on AE 2018 at the present unlit I finish this many years in the making feature film.
I'm not necessarily surprised it works in 2018, it's just that we only 'support' the latest version of Ae, and one previous. Let me explain what 'support' means in this context, since I get questions about this all the time:
When we test any new release of our plugin, we test it with:
The latest Windows OS. The latest Mac OS.
The latest version of Ae The previous version of Ae
The latest graphics cards/drivers (AMD, Nvidia, M1)
If you look at all the possible combinations of those variables that any given Lockdown user may have on their computer, that's a lot of variables. It's already a ton of work to just quality control any given release, because we need to thoroughly test on several different computers, each with two installs of After Effects on it.
We're a pretty small team, so we realized we'd spend more time testing than developing new features if we included all past releases of After Effects in those tests. We figured the most practical way forward was to support just the last 2 versions of Ae. Most users stay up to date with the latest version of Creative Cloud anyway, and most others are only behind one version to finish a project, or wait for community feedback before upgrading. (2018 is quite the commitment, I'm rooting for your success!
1. I would like to know if there is any important difference in functionality between Resolve and AE versions of Lockdown or if any particular Lockdown tasks are better accomplished in one platform or the other because of different strengths in core application UI, plugin architecture, etc. We use both, and would like to know if one is better than the other for Lockdown-specific work.
2. Have you considered moving any of the commands currently accessible through key combos into menus? (Right-click in the image or dropdown in the sidebar, for example).
1. I would like to know if there is any important difference in functionality between Resolve and AE versions of Lockdown or if any particular Lockdown tasks are better accomplished in one platform or the other because of different strengths in core application UI, plugin architecture, etc. We use both, and would like to know if one is better than the other for Lockdown-specific work.
2. Have you considered moving any of the commands currently accessible through key combos into menus? (Right-click in the image or dropdown in the sidebar, for example).
Thank you!
Put bluntly, the After Effects version is much faster. I've been working on Ae plugins for 10 years now, my team really knows it's way around the Ae API. We've even humbly suggested some features for the API that the Ae team was kind enough to add in for us to help our tools run better. The Resolve version is stable, but I think you'll get a significantly better experience with the Ae version. All new features will come to Ae first too, before being considered for porting to Resolve.
Put bluntly, the After Effects version is much faster. I've been working on Ae plugins for 10 years now, my team really knows it's way around the Ae API. We've even humbly suggested some features for the API that the Ae team was kind enough to add in for us to help our tools run better. The Resolve version is stable, but I think you'll get a significantly better experience with the Ae version. All new features will come to Ae first too, before being considered for porting to Resolve.
Just wanted to share with the Vranos team and any body else that might be using and older than version of AE, I tried lockdown v2 in AE 2018 and so far everything seams to be working. Unless there is anything the Vranos team wishes to share that I might have not noticed that would not be working properly in this version I will be getting a license for this version of AE soon. P.S. I am stuck on AE 2018 at the present unlit I finish this many years in the making feature film.
I'm not necessarily surprised it works in 2018, it's just that we only 'support' the latest version of Ae, and one previous. Let me explain what 'support' means in this context, since I get questions about this all the time:
When we test any new release of our plugin, we test it with:
The latest Windows OS. The latest Mac OS.
The latest version of Ae The previous version of Ae
The latest graphics cards/drivers (AMD, Nvidia, M1)
If you look at all the possible combinations of those variables that any given Lockdown user may have on their computer, that's a lot of variables. It's already a ton of work to just quality control any given release, because we need to thoroughly test on several different computers, each with two installs of After Effects on it.
We're a pretty small team, so we realized we'd spend more time testing than developing new features if we included all past releases of After Effects in those tests. We figured the most practical way forward was to support just the last 2 versions of Ae. Most users stay up to date with the latest version of Creative Cloud anyway, and most others are only behind one version to finish a project, or wait for community feedback before upgrading. (2018 is quite the commitment, I'm rooting for your success!
One week on the lockdown demo and nothing has gone wrong in AE 2018, just that the buttons look a little different in shading. So a green light in purchasing. BTW, that was a lengthy response; you do good work for a small team! Mad props on your work and good additude you have torwards your customers. (If I don't forget) I'll be sure to message you a link to the feature film with you when finished.
Hi Vranos, I just bought Lockdown, and I have some recommendations (which I may
update here) - Once PopOut is clicked, please could you change the pan canvas keyboard shortcut to something else, like
Mocha (hold 'z/x') Mac users with a magic mouse don't have a 'middle
mouse.'
Also, could you please let me know where the official manual
can be downloaded? It's incredibly difficult to learn Lockdown from your YouTube channel since it's a mixture of old interfaces, and the most recent version doesn't look or work like most of the tutorials. Much appreciated.
Hi Vranos, I just bought Lockdown, and I have some recommendations (which I may
update here) - Once PopOut is clicked, please could you change the pan canvas keyboard shortcut to something else, like
Mocha (hold 'z/x') Mac users with a magic mouse don't have a 'middle
mouse.'
Also, could you please let me know where the official manual
can be downloaded? It's incredibly difficult to learn Lockdown from your YouTube channel since it's a mixture of old interfaces, and the most recent version doesn't look or work like most of the tutorials. Much appreciated.
There's no official manual, it's all intended to be learned from aescripts.com/lockdown. If you start at the top, and scroll down, all videos on that page are placed in the order that they should be viewed. I know some of the videos on the homepage are from earlier versions, but it shouldn't cause any confusion because the older videos remaining on the homepage only highlight things that haven't changed since then. So for example, the interpolation tutorial is from Lockdown 2.4, but the interpolation settings and functionality shown in the video are still exactly the same as they were then.
At some point we had spacebar allow panning the canvas, I'll dig into that soon. Hopefully not hard to squeeze into a future release.
Any Idea why after I hit lockdown, and I place my graphic in the stabilized comp, in this case I have some veins that I want to put over someone's face, that when I go back to the main comp, and I make the "Main Plate" a color classic dodge layer" everything goes black around the track area? I can use almost every other mode, Screen, Add, but Classic Color doge doesn't want to work. I am comping in 32 bit. Dodge is working fine, but Classic is not. Maybe it's a 32 bit thing?
Any Idea why after I hit lockdown, and I place my graphic in the stabilized comp, in this case I have some veins that I want to put over someone's face, that when I go back to the main comp, and I make the "Main Plate" a color classic dodge layer" everything goes black around the track area? I can use almost every other mode, Screen, Add, but Classic Color doge doesn't want to work. I am comping in 32 bit. Dodge is working fine, but Classic is not. Maybe it's a 32 bit thing?
Thanks
Hey, I'm looking into this, and while I have no idea what it is, I am able to reproduce the problem. Not sure if it's on Lockdown's end, or After Effects'. If it's on our end, we'll probably be able to patch it within a week or two. The black values are showing as NAN instead of 0, which is a huge red flag. Hopefully just a bad colorspace conversion or something similar.
Also, how does one use the Render only license? I'm trying to use it, but it say it requires the full version? Currently I have a single node on one computer, and I want to render it on 2 machines, so I purchased a render only license for the other machine, should this not work?
Also, how does one use the Render only license? I'm trying to use it, but it say it requires the full version? Currently I have a single node on one computer, and I want to render it on 2 machines, so I purchased a render only license for the other machine, should this not work?
Thanks
Will
I'm sorry to say you'll have to send in a help ticket to aescripts with a subject regarding a render-only or floating license to speak with someone who better understands that. I did make Lockdown, but the licensing systems are all made by aescripts.
thanks for this tool i did paid but not even used it so much. the reason is there is not enough tutorials and not uploaded any new videos in youtube for different scenarios for beginners like me...
Hi there, I'm curious if the Lockdown 2.8.7 doesn't work with the latest AE? When I open the popout and drag a lasso around an object... nothing happens. No mesh or points of anything created. This didn't used to be the case on older versions of AE for me. Any tips?
Hi there, I'm curious if the Lockdown 2.8.7 doesn't work with the latest AE? When I open the popout and drag a lasso around an object... nothing happens. No mesh or points of anything created. This didn't used to be the case on older versions of AE for me. Any tips?
It should work. Are you holding Control on Windows, or Command on Mac when you click and drag? The lasso should be blue not yellow to indicate it's creating points. If the lasso is yellow, there might be an input error, in which case Control/Command is not being read for whatever reason, and we can address it via a help ticket and some tests.
Hi there. I'm using the latest lockdown in AE2022.
I'm finding that when I track something and it goes off the screen, all my points are bunching up at the edge.
I already watched your tiger video, and made sure to switch the "Interpolate unified" on, but its still doing it. I cleared the mesh and re-autotriangulated, but no good. What am I doing wrong?
Also, I find that sometimes in the "Stabiliized Tracking Window", that there's dark triangles in the stabilized footage... as though some trackers are overlapping in odd ways and breaking it. How do I fix that?
Hi there. I'm using the latest lockdown in AE2022.
I'm finding that when I track something and it goes off the screen, all my points are bunching up at the edge.
I already watched your tiger video, and made sure to switch the "Interpolate unified" on, but its still doing it. I cleared the mesh and re-autotriangulated, but no good. What am I doing wrong?
Also, I find that sometimes in the "Stabiliized Tracking Window", that there's dark triangles in the stabilized footage... as though some trackers are overlapping in odd ways and breaking it. How do I fix that?
Nick
For points bunching up at the edge, is it possible your footage has a border on it? A pillarbox or letterbox? If not, absolute worst case scenario you could manually select a point and set it to not trackable on the frame it begins moving incorrectly. But you should probably send me the project via a help ticket so I can take a look.
The interpolation has nothing to do with how points behave when tracking. It only tells a dead point that is no longer tracking how to move and follow living points. The mesh itself and triangulation also has nothing to do with how points track or interpolate. Hopefully this is helpful, because knowing that these are all totally independent processes can make it easier to know where to look for fixes. So just to clarify, tracking will work exactly the same way regardless of how points are or aren't connected into a mesh. And will work exactly the same way if interpolation is on or off. interpolation just tells an untracked point how and where to move when following living-tracked points. And the mesh and shape of the mesh determine the UV coordinates.
For the dark triangles, it sounds like the mesh is incomplete. Go to the hero frame, and press "set lockdown mesh/uv frame" again, and that should fix the UVs, therefor fixing any gaps in the UVs. (Even just reading this back myself it sounds confusing, so don't be shy about sending the project, it's easier to see it than read it).
Currently tracking points shouldn't overlap, Lockdown doesn't have a smart way of knowing which polygon should be in front or in back. Overlapping geometry will make the render behave strangely. We are actually working on updating this, although it's a huge update so we won't have that soon.
Hi there, I'm curious if the Lockdown 2.8.7 doesn't work with the latest AE? When I open the popout and drag a lasso around an object... nothing happens. No mesh or points of anything created. This didn't used to be the case on older versions of AE for me. Any tips?
Hi there, I'm curious if the Lockdown 2.8.7 doesn't work with the latest AE? When I open the popout and drag a lasso around an object... nothing happens. No mesh or points of anything created. This didn't used to be the case on older versions of AE for me. Any tips?
Same issue here. Please advise. AE 2022 & AE 2023
Are you holding Control when you click and drag? (Holding Command on Mac). Try Control or Command clicking, or clicking and dragging. The lasso should be light blue when the key is held and the intention is to create points. If it's yellow, that means Lockdown is not seeing the modifier key input, and not going to create points.
Can we use shortcuts for Lockdown inside the pop up interface ?
In the hand painting tutorial it seems that you use a shortcut to navigate frame to frame. Is this real or just in my imagination ?
On this subject, I think some shortcuts could really give Lockdown a much more pleasing and powerful user experience. That's what makes Mocha really pleasing and easy to use. I know you are far from having mocha budget but I'm just saying in case you could implement some shorcuts.
Can we use shortcuts for Lockdown inside the pop up interface ?
In the hand painting tutorial it seems that you use a shortcut to navigate frame to frame. Is this real or just in my imagination ?
On this subject, I think some shortcuts could really give Lockdown a much more pleasing and powerful user experience. That's what makes Mocha really pleasing and easy to use. I know you are far from having mocha budget but I'm just saying in case you could implement some shorcuts.
Sorry for the delays, I've been living out of airports for the last few days. I was just using the arrow keys. When I'm at the first frame, I push arrow left which shoots over to the last frame. And the opposite on the far end. We are eventually going to add J/K to move between keyframes, start and end points, and keyframe midpoints. There are some existing shortcuts already, you can press the ? button to see which already exist.
And yes, we need more shortcuts and UI love, but it's absolutely shocking how much work it takes to update the UI. And I don't mean it's a lot of work to know "This needs a shortcut, this UI needs a change", I've got a wish-list a mile long. But actually programming the UI takes forever. There's a hard decision that I still struggle with on a daily basis: Do we put our effort into making our current capabilities easier for the user, or create new capabilities?
In the end, we look at the two types of frustrations our users have:
1) The software is doesn't have all the hotkeys and buttons it could, which is annoying when compared to Cinema 4D or some similar application.
2) The software doesn't have X capabilities, which prevents the artist from completing a job and getting paid.
At the end of the day, 2 takes priority the vast majority of the time, as I don't believe any motion tracker comes even close to our capabilities. For example, one UI feature I'm always wishing I had, is the ability to grab a chunk of points and move all of them at once, or rotate and scale them, rather than moving points one-by-one. But I can still get a track done in Lockdown faster than I can in anything else.
The reason I'm telling you this is because I have similar conversations about the growth of Lockdown with other users all the time, and I just want to be clear that most of the time, the user feedback is dead on, and I agree with it. It's simply that every development choice takes a lot longer than you'd expect, and I have to pick our roadmap very carefully.
While we're on the topic, a lot of users have noticed we haven't released anything significant for Lockdown in the last 6 months or so. We have some absolutely huge features coming that we're working on daily. We hope you'll think our efforts were worth it when you see them, even if it means we did not spend those 6 months creating much needed shortcuts and UI love.
Can Lockdown v2.8.1 to replace the track object with "Content-Aware Fill" in After Effects?
Thank you in advance
Tom
Sorry for the delay
Yes, you can definitely use Content Aware Fill in the stabilized Composition. I'd bet it would work very well in there.
To do so, I would enter the stabilized composition after it's created, and delete the checkerboard, and delete the lowest layer which is just a still frame. The remaining layer is a guidelayer of your stabilized footage. Just right click, and make it not a guide layer, so it renders. Then pre-compose it "moving all attributes into the new composition". At this point, your stabilized video is basically just footage! You should be able to mask it the same way you would with footage, and run the content aware process as you would with any other footage. My guess is it will work even better than it would on regular moving footage, because it's completely stabilized, and the Content Aware workflow doesn't have to do it's own tracking. You already know it's tracked perfectly by Lockdown.
Is there a method for the UVs to automatically "fit all UVs to canvas"? I have encountered a shot where I have points entering and leaving frame, and the "set lockdown mesh/UV" button doesn't fit all of the UVs to the canvas. It only fits the ones on screen at that frame. I could of course make the mesh a few points at a time, and manually move them all into the UV canvas, but when I do that, I end up making a sloppy weird grid that has a lot of unevenness and distortion, and it is a very slow work process.
I know you mentioned hoping to eventually have options to select multiple UV points and scale/position/rotate them which would be amazing. But in the mean time, I wonder if a "fit to canvas" button would solve a lot of the problems.
Is there a method for the UVs to automatically "fit all UVs to canvas"? I have encountered a shot where I have points entering and leaving frame, and the "set lockdown mesh/UV" button doesn't fit all of the UVs to the canvas. It only fits the ones on screen at that frame. I could of course make the mesh a few points at a time, and manually move them all into the UV canvas, but when I do that, I end up making a sloppy weird grid that has a lot of unevenness and distortion, and it is a very slow work process.
I know you mentioned hoping to eventually have options to select multiple UV points and scale/position/rotate them which would be amazing. But in the mean time, I wonder if a "fit to canvas" button would solve a lot of the problems.
Yeah, that's a pretty good idea, and all of those features are somewhere on the world's longest to-do list. Normalizing to the canvas is pretty reasonable for sure.
For now, what I'd recommend is expanding the canvas. It'll be a little awkward, but should totally solve the problem.
Take a look here:
You actually can move a group of points all at once, but it's just an exploit I discovered, not an intentional feature. It's possible there are some strange bugs in here where points could go flying if you try to trick Lockdown like this. Points you move one by one with the mouse should be 'safer' because they've been intentionally set, but these points that are being moved with a cheat probably aren't getting the safeguards they're supposed to, and might snap back to their original positions in the video if you edit the edges and geometry too much. I'd say to follow the steps exactly as seen in this video, and save often if you're going to attempt this method, but I'd highly recommend you just stick to the method above.
Hey Chris! I I've been using lockdown since launch and I still LOVE it. I'm having an issue where I keep getting a white border in my render where the lockdown boarder is. I've made Ae Masks, Mattes, etc etc. It goes away in my comp window but when it renders- white boarder. Any idea what may be causing this or if there is a quick fix? Also, I followed the AE 22 setup instructions- nothing seems to be fixing this. Next step is painting out the boarder and I REALLY don't wanna. haha Thanks for such a great product, its been a life saver since day one.
Hey Chris! I I've been using lockdown since launch and I still LOVE it. I'm having an issue where I keep getting a white border in my render where the lockdown boarder is. I've made Ae Masks, Mattes, etc etc. It goes away in my comp window but when it renders- white boarder. Any idea what may be causing this or if there is a quick fix? Also, I followed the AE 22 setup instructions- nothing seems to be fixing this. Next step is painting out the boarder and I REALLY don't wanna. haha Thanks for such a great product, its been a life saver since day one.
What's the background color for your composition? Lockdown is expecting a black background, which plays nicely with all forms of pre-multiplication, because pre-multiplication always assumes the background is black. I wouldn't be surprised if changing the After Effects background composition color caused an issue in Lockdown's semi-transparent areas, or edges. The Ae Background color can actually render differently depending on if you're previewing in Ae, rendering to different export formats, rendering in media encoder, or through a dynamic link in Premiere.
That's a shot in the dark though. If your project isn't under NDA, please do feel free to reduce and send it as a help ticket. I usually solve these problems pretty quickly one way or another once I get my hands on them.
Hey Chris! I I've been using lockdown since launch and I still LOVE it. I'm having an issue where I keep getting a white border in my render where the lockdown boarder is. I've made Ae Masks, Mattes, etc etc. It goes away in my comp window but when it renders- white boarder. Any idea what may be causing this or if there is a quick fix? Also, I followed the AE 22 setup instructions- nothing seems to be fixing this. Next step is painting out the boarder and I REALLY don't wanna. haha Thanks for such a great product, its been a life saver since day one.
What's the background color for your composition? Lockdown is expecting a black background, which plays nicely with all forms of pre-multiplication, because pre-multiplication always assumes the background is black. I wouldn't be surprised if changing the After Effects background composition color caused an issue in Lockdown's semi-transparent areas, or edges. The Ae Background color can actually render differently depending on if you're previewing in Ae, rendering to different export formats, rendering in media encoder, or through a dynamic link in Premiere.
That's a shot in the dark though. If your project isn't under NDA, please do feel free to reduce and send it as a help ticket. I usually solve these problems pretty quickly one way or another once I get my hands on them.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Thanks for the fast response! The background is black. I'm only in AE (No dynamic link or etc). I've played with various color spaces and etc. I still can't get it to go away. I'm afraid I won't be able to send it but maybe a screen share is possible? I was able to get the outline to turn black by turning off "Display color management". but now its just black and just as thick. I've tried masks, Mattes, etc etc.
Hey Chris! I I've been using lockdown since launch and I still LOVE it. I'm having an issue where I keep getting a white border in my render where the lockdown boarder is. I've made Ae Masks, Mattes, etc etc. It goes away in my comp window but when it renders- white boarder. Any idea what may be causing this or if there is a quick fix? Also, I followed the AE 22 setup instructions- nothing seems to be fixing this. Next step is painting out the boarder and I REALLY don't wanna. haha Thanks for such a great product, its been a life saver since day one.
What's the background color for your composition? Lockdown is expecting a black background, which plays nicely with all forms of pre-multiplication, because pre-multiplication always assumes the background is black. I wouldn't be surprised if changing the After Effects background composition color caused an issue in Lockdown's semi-transparent areas, or edges. The Ae Background color can actually render differently depending on if you're previewing in Ae, rendering to different export formats, rendering in media encoder, or through a dynamic link in Premiere.
That's a shot in the dark though. If your project isn't under NDA, please do feel free to reduce and send it as a help ticket. I usually solve these problems pretty quickly one way or another once I get my hands on them.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Thanks for the fast response! The background is black. I'm only in AE (No dynamic link or etc). I've played with various color spaces and etc. I still can't get it to go away. I'm afraid I won't be able to send it but maybe a screen share is possible? I was able to get the outline to turn black by turning off "Display color management". but now its just black and just as thick. I've tried masks, Mattes, etc etc.
Actually I saw a help ticket just like this a few weeks ago. I know NDAs are strict, but can you send just the project file, but no media/footage? I would just need a single frame of a single layer where the error is showing.
With the other user who had this issue, the root of the problem was that somehow the alpha channel values were going far below zero, and far above 1. We used levels to clamp the non-normalized values on just the alpha channel, and it fixed it. I can't remember but I think we put that levels effect just before Lockdown, or in the Stabilized Composition on an adjustment layer. (I tend to delete ticket files pretty quickly to save storage space, unfortunately that ticket is lost to the infinite abyss of the recycling bin)
Switching to 16 bit mode also fixed it because 16 bit mode clamps automatically.
We also found one comp where the user's footage layer was scaled, which is not allowed with Lockdown. The composition and footage must be the same resolution and framerate, with no transforms, to work as expected. In that case, even in 32 bit mode, everything worked properly.
So please either give these a try, or send an empty AEP through a help ticket, and I'm glad to play around with it until I find the fix.
Please provide a screenshot or a short tutorial that shows how to "export" or "copy" the tracking data from lockdown to regular after effects time line to a "null" for example.
This is very important to task that I have to do: A walking character on green screen
I need to attach objects (a characters) to motion of his back area - above him as a separate objects (not as a organic tatoo),
I didn't find a good tracking result with a regular motion tracker. Please help
Please provide a screenshot or a short tutorial that shows how to "export" or "copy" the tracking data from lockdown to regular after effects time line to a "null" for example.
This is very important to task that I have to do: A walking character on green screen
I need to attach objects (a characters) to motion of his back area - above him as a separate objects (not as a organic tatoo),
I didn't find a good tracking result with a regular motion tracker. Please help
In the popout, you can select up to 4 points, then close the popout. Then press "externalize points", which will send the keyframe tracks to the Lockdown Externalized Points section. But most users that want to extend a track above the character just use expansion points to widen the mesh outside of the main surface, and use the typical Lockdown workflow.
The "externalized points" feature has never been popular. We are replacing it with a button that just sends whatever selected points to timeline nulls in the future. Because of that, I'd highly recommend duplicating your layer, and externalizing points from the duplicate. Then once you have them on nulls, delete that duplicated layer, because I expect those 4 externalized points keyframe tracks to be gone in an future update, and replaced with a simpler system.
If I can ask/suggest to add to replaced "externalize points" option with the new one - a button - that you talking about one or two more features?
When I selected more than one point to export from pop up:
1) May it "understand" a rotation? (like as an option when exporting X+Y etc)
2 Can it create the average data null with a position & rotation of selected more than 2 points with
3 An option to choose export all selected points as a separate individual nulls.
I use a Lockdown more than 2 years! This is a first time I found with you help a solution to made this kind of motion tracking.
(just grab a points to null)
I am really shocked - be cause your product is high in tracking ,but a regular workflow always was stop me with a boundary of selected mesh. (and it always keept me to use this plugin only for cleanup painting & organic stuff "on the surface"
I always was surprised why we have an option to send a limbic file but didn't have a "connect data to null".
With this point data export - you bit by far the regular motion tracking - if there was a tutorials that shows that lockdown actually have this kind of solution I sure this will bring a lot of new users & make very happy all existing. (like me now).
Again so cool Plugin! Thank You for keep it update!
If I can ask/suggest to add to replaced "externalize points" option with the new one - a button - that you talking about one or two more features?
When I selected more than one point to export from pop up:
1) May it "understand" a rotation? (like as an option when exporting X+Y etc)
2 Can it create the average data null with a position & rotation of selected more than 2 points with
3 An option to choose export all selected points as a separate individual nulls.
I use a Lockdown more than 2 years! This is a first time I found with you help a solution to made this kind of motion tracking.
(just grab a points to null)
I am really shocked - be cause your product is high in tracking ,but a regular workflow always was stop me with a boundary of selected mesh. (and it always keept me to use this plugin only for cleanup painting & organic stuff "on the surface"
I always was surprised why we have an option to send a limbic file but didn't have a "connect data to null".
With this point data export - you bit by far the regular motion tracking - if there was a tutorials that shows that lockdown actually have this kind of solution I sure this will bring a lot of new users & make very happy all existing. (like me now).
Again so cool Plugin! Thank You for keep it update!
Yes, the new feature will allow you to use several points, and to get position and rotation on them.
The expansion point feature can also help you paint outside of the boundary of the surface. You can see it here:
The points can go outside of the object, and follow points that are tracked on the object.
I do however have some suggestions/ideas if I may:
1) Ability to copy and paste Adjustment Points 2) Ability to select Points and transform them (move/scale/rotate) 3) A function to ease out the sharp corners of the mesh transformation (like with the workaround with ft-UVMap)
I do however have some suggestions/ideas if I may:
1) Ability to copy and paste Adjustment Points 2) Ability to select Points and transform them (move/scale/rotate) 3) A function to ease out the sharp corners of the mesh transformation (like with the workaround with ft-UVMap)
This would greatly improve the workflow
- Lasse
I realized I didn't reply to this, sorry about that. But what I meant to say (in my head anyway) was that these are 3 highly requested features that are on the todo list!
how is the update policy for lockdown? To clarify, when do you charge for a major release
and how long does maintenance last if I, for example, purchase the current release?
Best regards!
Your satisfaction is our top priority and we will always support our products to the best of our ability regardless of when you purchased it.
However, to sustain healthy development, we have to charge for major upgrades but we always try to be fair with our upgrade policies. We usually offer a bigger upgrade discount based on when you purchased the previous version.
I love Lockdown and have used it many times on tough shots. Is it possible to use Lockdown to make someone look thinner? I just need to pull their sides in a bit while they're moving in the shots. I've had a little bit of success using the liquify effect tracked to the actor, but I thought Lockdown might be a good tool for this type of thing too. Any ideas how that would be accomplished?
Hi Chris, since I bought Lockdown and used it on a mac, the undo shortcut has never been working. Every time I press cmd+z the Lockdown pop up window closes and I'm back in After Effects. At first I thought that it was because undo was not a Lockdown feature but I just discovered the shortcut list and the existence of the undo shortcut. Any idea why is it not working for me on a mac ?
I love Lockdown and have used it many times on tough shots. Is it possible to use Lockdown to make someone look thinner? I just need to pull their sides in a bit while they're moving in the shots. I've had a little bit of success using the liquify effect tracked to the actor, but I thought Lockdown might be a good tool for this type of thing too. Any ideas how that would be accomplished?
Thanks!
David
Hey, I'm sorry I missed this message. I don't have a good reason for it either, it just gets tough to keep track across all the various platforms: aescripts, instagram, youtube, twitter, etc...
It would be somewhat possible to thin someone out using Lockdown, but it would depend a lot on how much they're rotating around the Y axis. If they're walking straight towards camera and never turn, it might be reasonably possible to track and stabilize using just one or two points on their hips and chest, and use liquify inside the stabilized pre-comp. I'd use very few points, I think having fewer points would make the illusion more forgiving and smooth. Also, there's likely a point where if they spin around far enough, it'll become obvious that they're behind a liquify. Glad to take a look if you're able to send in a help ticket with examples, and I can't miss help tickets because I get aggressive system-automated-emails whenever I go too long without responding!
Hi Chris, since I bought Lockdown and used it on a mac, the undo shortcut has never been working. Every time I press cmd+z the Lockdown pop up window closes and I'm back in After Effects. At first I thought that it was because undo was not a Lockdown feature but I just discovered the shortcut list and the existence of the undo shortcut. Any idea why is it not working for me on a mac ?
All the other shortcuts are working by the way.
Thanks !
I think it's likely a time-out. As far as I know, undo works well on both operating systems. BUT, for very very long operations, whether it be creating a million points, deleting many points, interpolating across hundreds of frames, or undoing a large action, etc... Lockdown is seen as 'frozen' by After Effects, and is minimized after a lengthy timeout clock. If you press undo, and Lockdown falls offscreen after a while, it might just be hiding. You can press alt-tab and the pop-up interface should re-appear, with the undo operation completed. I haven't looked into what's causing this bug yet, hopefully I can get to it when the dust settles.
Hi Chris, since I bought Lockdown and used it on a mac, the undo shortcut has never been working. Every time I press cmd+z the Lockdown pop up window closes and I'm back in After Effects. At first I thought that it was because undo was not a Lockdown feature but I just discovered the shortcut list and the existence of the undo shortcut. Any idea why is it not working for me on a mac ?
All the other shortcuts are working by the way.
Thanks !
I think it's likely a time-out. As far as I know, undo works well on both operating systems. BUT, for very very long operations, whether it be creating a million points, deleting many points, interpolating across hundreds of frames, or undoing a large action, etc... Lockdown is seen as 'frozen' by After Effects, and is minimized after a lengthy timeout clock. If you press undo, and Lockdown falls offscreen after a while, it might just be hiding. You can press alt-tab and the pop-up interface should re-appear, with the undo operation completed. I haven't looked into what's causing this bug yet, hopefully I can get to it when the dust settles.
Cheers Chris Lockdown Creator
Unfortunately the undo shortcut closes the lockdown window every time no matter what. I tried everything but undo is just something I cannot use with Lockdown. I already tried to reinstall Lockdown.
Hi, I have a problem with AEScripts lockdown 2 in after effect 2023.My result layer never in the right place. I don't understand the reason. What should I do to remedy this other than try to replace it at random so that it falls exactly where I want it to be?
Effects process in order from top to bottom, so while it could be either plugin, it might be an RSMB issue. Lockdown isn't 'aware' of effects that come after it in the layer stack, and doesn't take future layers into account when processing. That being said, I've said "x crash is impossible because" in the past, and been entirely wrong many times.
One fast fix, you could pre-compose the Lockdown layer and the stabilized layer into a new comp, then put RSMB on top.
You could also apply CC Force Motion Blur instead of RSMB, which is slow, but accurate.
I just tested Lockdown and RSMB on Windows on my machine, but didn't get a crash with RSMB 5.1.5.
Feel free to send in a project file as a help ticket.
Cheers
Chris
When we test any new release of our plugin, we test it with:
The latest Windows OS.
The latest Mac OS.
The latest version of Ae
The previous version of Ae
The latest graphics cards/drivers (AMD, Nvidia, M1)
If you look at all the possible combinations of those variables that any given Lockdown user may have on their computer, that's a lot of variables. It's already a ton of work to just quality control any given release, because we need to thoroughly test on several different computers, each with two installs of After Effects on it.
We're a pretty small team, so we realized we'd spend more time testing than developing new features if we included all past releases of After Effects in those tests. We figured the most practical way forward was to support just the last 2 versions of Ae. Most users stay up to date with the latest version of Creative Cloud anyway, and most others are only behind one version to finish a project, or wait for community feedback before upgrading. (2018 is quite the commitment, I'm rooting for your success!
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
The interpolation has nothing to do with how points behave when tracking. It only tells a dead point that is no longer tracking how to move and follow living points. The mesh itself and triangulation also has nothing to do with how points track or interpolate. Hopefully this is helpful, because knowing that these are all totally independent processes can make it easier to know where to look for fixes. So just to clarify, tracking will work exactly the same way regardless of how points are or aren't connected into a mesh. And will work exactly the same way if interpolation is on or off. interpolation just tells an untracked point how and where to move when following living-tracked points. And the mesh and shape of the mesh determine the UV coordinates.
For the dark triangles, it sounds like the mesh is incomplete. Go to the hero frame, and press "set lockdown mesh/uv frame" again, and that should fix the UVs, therefor fixing any gaps in the UVs. (Even just reading this back myself it sounds confusing, so don't be shy about sending the project, it's easier to see it than read it).
Currently tracking points shouldn't overlap, Lockdown doesn't have a smart way of knowing which polygon should be in front or in back. Overlapping geometry will make the render behave strangely. We are actually working on updating this, although it's a huge update so we won't have that soon.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Try Control or Command clicking, or clicking and dragging. The lasso should be light blue when the key is held and the intention is to create points. If it's yellow, that means Lockdown is not seeing the modifier key input, and not going to create points.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Can Lockdown v2.8.1 to replace the track object with "Content-Aware Fill" in After Effects?
Thank you in advance
Tom
I was just using the arrow keys. When I'm at the first frame, I push arrow left which shoots over to the last frame. And the opposite on the far end. We are eventually going to add J/K to move between keyframes, start and end points, and keyframe midpoints.
There are some existing shortcuts already, you can press the ? button to see which already exist.
And yes, we need more shortcuts and UI love, but it's absolutely shocking how much work it takes to update the UI. And I don't mean it's a lot of work to know "This needs a shortcut, this UI needs a change", I've got a wish-list a mile long. But actually programming the UI takes forever. There's a hard decision that I still struggle with on a daily basis: Do we put our effort into making our current capabilities easier for the user, or create new capabilities?
In the end, we look at the two types of frustrations our users have:
1) The software is doesn't have all the hotkeys and buttons it could, which is annoying when compared to Cinema 4D or some similar application.
2) The software doesn't have X capabilities, which prevents the artist from completing a job and getting paid.
At the end of the day, 2 takes priority the vast majority of the time, as I don't believe any motion tracker comes even close to our capabilities. For example, one UI feature I'm always wishing I had, is the ability to grab a chunk of points and move all of them at once, or rotate and scale them, rather than moving points one-by-one. But I can still get a track done in Lockdown faster than I can in anything else.
The reason I'm telling you this is because I have similar conversations about the growth of Lockdown with other users all the time, and I just want to be clear that most of the time, the user feedback is dead on, and I agree with it. It's simply that every development choice takes a lot longer than you'd expect, and I have to pick our roadmap very carefully.
While we're on the topic, a lot of users have noticed we haven't released anything significant for Lockdown in the last 6 months or so. We have some absolutely huge features coming that we're working on daily. We hope you'll think our efforts were worth it when you see them, even if it means we did not spend those 6 months creating much needed shortcuts and UI love.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Yes, you can definitely use Content Aware Fill in the stabilized Composition. I'd bet it would work very well in there.
To do so, I would enter the stabilized composition after it's created, and delete the checkerboard, and delete the lowest layer which is just a still frame. The remaining layer is a guidelayer of your stabilized footage. Just right click, and make it not a guide layer, so it renders. Then pre-compose it "moving all attributes into the new composition". At this point, your stabilized video is basically just footage! You should be able to mask it the same way you would with footage, and run the content aware process as you would with any other footage. My guess is it will work even better than it would on regular moving footage, because it's completely stabilized, and the Content Aware workflow doesn't have to do it's own tracking. You already know it's tracked perfectly by Lockdown.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
For now, what I'd recommend is expanding the canvas. It'll be a little awkward, but should totally solve the problem.
Take a look here:
Cheers,
Chris
Lockdown Creator
That's a shot in the dark though. If your project isn't under NDA, please do feel free to reduce and send it as a help ticket. I usually solve these problems pretty quickly one way or another once I get my hands on them.
With the other user who had this issue, the root of the problem was that somehow the alpha channel values were going far below zero, and far above 1. We used levels to clamp the non-normalized values on just the alpha channel, and it fixed it. I can't remember but I think we put that levels effect just before Lockdown, or in the Stabilized Composition on an adjustment layer. (I tend to delete ticket files pretty quickly to save storage space, unfortunately that ticket is lost to the infinite abyss of the recycling bin)
Switching to 16 bit mode also fixed it because 16 bit mode clamps automatically.
We also found one comp where the user's footage layer was scaled, which is not allowed with Lockdown. The composition and footage must be the same resolution and framerate, with no transforms, to work as expected. In that case, even in 32 bit mode, everything worked properly.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
This is very important to task that I have to do: A walking character on green screen
The "externalized points" feature has never been popular. We are replacing it with a button that just sends whatever selected points to timeline nulls in the future. Because of that, I'd highly recommend duplicating your layer, and externalizing points from the duplicate. Then once you have them on nulls, delete that duplicated layer, because I expect those 4 externalized points keyframe tracks to be gone in an future update, and replaced with a simpler system.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
When I selected more than one point to export from pop up:
Best Regards!
Oleg Ukrainski
The expansion point feature can also help you paint outside of the boundary of the surface. You can see it here:
The points can go outside of the object, and follow points that are tracked on the object.
Cheers
Chris
Love the plugin!
I do however have some suggestions/ideas if I may:
1) Ability to copy and paste Adjustment Points
2) Ability to select Points and transform them (move/scale/rotate)
3) A function to ease out the sharp corners of the mesh transformation (like with the workaround with ft-UVMap)
This would greatly improve the workflow
- Lasse
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator
It would be somewhat possible to thin someone out using Lockdown, but it would depend a lot on how much they're rotating around the Y axis. If they're walking straight towards camera and never turn, it might be reasonably possible to track and stabilize using just one or two points on their hips and chest, and use liquify inside the stabilized pre-comp. I'd use very few points, I think having fewer points would make the illusion more forgiving and smooth. Also, there's likely a point where if they spin around far enough, it'll become obvious that they're behind a liquify. Glad to take a look if you're able to send in a help ticket with examples, and I can't miss help tickets because I get aggressive system-automated-emails whenever I go too long without responding!
Chris
Lockdown Creator
I haven't looked into what's causing this bug yet, hopefully I can get to it when the dust settles.
Cheers
Chris
Lockdown Creator