The Pixel Farm has introduced all new spherical tracking toolset in PFTrack. This toolset comprises of three brand new nodes: Spherical Track, Spherical Orient and Spherical Render.

The Spherical Track node is a solution for tracking and solving the full equirectangular image from 360° cameras. The node tracks six cameras at once from the equirectangular panorama, all aligned and contained in the same scene, which are then passed downstream through the node tree.

The Spherical Orient mode allows users to stabilize the camera rotation of the spherical track, as well as re-orient the panorama and focus the front view on animatable look-at points.

Finally, the Spherical Render Node allows rending of the equirectangular panorama which, used alongside tracking data from the six cameras, offers a fully equipped spherical toolset for 360° content creation.

The Pixel Farm will be having a short webinar on Thursday 6th October at 11:00am BST. To join in all you have to do is register your place using this link: Register Now. The webinar will be covering the following:

• Importing equirectangular footage and its specific issues.
• The Spherical Track node – The gate-keeper of 360° footage in PFTrack
• Tracking the equirectangular panorama
• Controlling camera orientation
• Testing the solution using PFTrack’s built in toolset
• Review, re-render and export results
• Creating a textured mesh model from tracked 360° footage
• 360° and beyond: Adam and Giles share research;
• Asset planning for games
• Compositing considerations
• 360° camera choices and issues
• Planning and shooting 360° footage
• Q&A with TPF team

You should also check out an in-depth tutorial on using the new features:

http://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/tracking-360-degree-equirectangular-clips-in-pftrack/