Nodes
Auto Track
The main solver. Turns an image sequence into a solved camera and a sparse point cloud.
The node that does the actual tracking. It finds features in every frame, matches them across the shot, and solves both the camera motion and a sparse cloud of 3D points.
Inputs
| Socket | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Image Sequence | Yes | The frames to solve |
Lens Data | No | Known lens values, from Lens Grid Calibrate or 3DE Lens Import |
Mask Frames | No | Areas to exclude or restrict to |
Output is Auto Track, carrying the cameras and the point cloud together.
Quality
How many features to extract per frame.
| Setting | Features | When |
|---|---|---|
| Low | 2,048 | Quick check that the shot solves at all |
| Medium | 3,072 | The default. Start here. |
| High | 6,144 | When Medium registers only part of the shot |
Raising this is the first thing to try when a solve half-completes.
Mask Mode
Appears once something is wired into Mask Frames.
| Mode | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Exclude Masked Area | Ignore what the mask covers. Use this to take a moving subject out of a camera solve. |
| Limit to Masked Area | Use only what the mask covers. Use this to solve the subject itself. |
One mask covers both jobs, so there's no need to invert anything. That's what makes Object Tracking straightforward.
Features
SIFT is the classic algorithm and the default.
LightGlue (AI) uses learned features and matching instead. Much more robust on steep
angles, repetitive texture like brickwork, and low-texture surfaces. It needs the AI
runtime installed and wants a GPU. Loop detection doesn't run on this backend.
Loop Detection
Spots when the camera returns somewhere it has already been and adds matches between those frames, which pulls out accumulated drift.
Worth turning on for shots that orbit, circle a room, or pan away and come back. Leave it off otherwise, because it indexes every frame at roughly half a second to a second each and gains nothing on a shot that never revisits anything.
Needs SIFT, so it's skipped on LightGlue.
Lens Settings
Calibrate Lens is on by default and refines focal length and distortion while solving. Turn it off when you've fed in lens data you trust and don't want it changed.
Camera Model picks the lens model. Tick Fisheye to see the fisheye options. Only shown while Calibrate Lens is on.
Calculate Zoom allows focal length to vary per frame. Turn it on only when the lens genuinely zooms.
Solver Tuning
The four values at the bottom rarely need touching.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Min Tracks/View | Fewest tracks a frame needs to be kept |
| Min Views/Track | Fewest frames a 3D point must appear in |
| Loss Threshold | Outlier tolerance during global positioning. Lower is stricter. |
| BA Loss Threshold | The same during bundle adjustment |
Tightening the thresholds cleans up a noisy solve but discards points.
After Solving
The node reports registered cameras, point count and mean error.
| Next step | Node |
|---|---|
| Drop high-error points | Refine Cloud |
| Reinforce with hand tracks | Enhance Auto Track |
| Split camera, cloud and lens apart | Separate Track Elements |
| Build a dense cloud | Densify |
| Straighten the plate | Lens Distortion |
| Put it in the scene | Output 3D |
See Also
Basic Tracking for the first graph to build, and Advanced Tracking for what to do when a solve fails.