Motion tracking allows us to analyse the movement in footage and assign position, rotation, and scale keyframes to other assets based on that data. With motion tracking, we can follow a moving object in a shot, stabilise camera movement, or work within camera movement. Motion tracking is often used to composite visuals into moving images, over time.
The motion tracking workflow goes something like this; Observe footage for trackable artifacts, assign tracking tools, analyse footage over time, apply the tracking data to the target.
To create motion tracking in After Effects, we use the Tracker panel. Window > Tracker.
Camera tracking
In this video, I track the movement of the camera to composite text and images into the base footage.
Motion tracking
In this next video, I analyse the movement of an object, and apply the data to the animation properties of a text layer.
