How to stick Liquify effect to a tracked object? (CC 2017)

[UltraUber]

Hi.

I tracked motion of an object in a video footage, applied tracking data (Position only) to a Null and then pick-whipped Liquify's Distortion Mesh Offset to the Null's Position and as soon as I did it, all visible Liquify effects disappeared from the footage. I would like the Liquify to stick to the tracked object. How could I do this?

I'm using version 14.0.1.5

Thanks

[Szalam]

Two things:

1. You might consider updating, the latest version is 14.1.0.x, so you're missing some bug fixes. (But don't update if you're in the middle of a project and everything is working fine, of course!)

2. This tutorial is perfect for you. It's an oldie, but a goodie.

[UltraUber]

Hi Szalam.

Yes, that tutorial is great and I did solve my problem with it. However, i feel that in some cases attaching distortion effect to a tracked object using a pick-whip would be simpler.

I stated earlier that I "pick-whipped Liquify's Distortion Mesh Offset to the Null's Position and as soon as I did it, all visible Liquify effects disappeared from the footage". Actually, the distortion did not disappeared - it moved to the lower right corner (I noticed it only recently). So, I thought maybe I shouldn't apply tracking data to a Null but to a Solid of the same size as my Comp, but it didn't help. By the way, when I try to pick-whip Magnify effect to the tracked object's Position, the distortion doesn't move somewhere to the lower corner, but some 100px bellow the original location. So it seems that different distortion effect reacts differently to the attempts to pick-whip them to the tracked data.

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

You could want to add " + value " to the expression created by the pick whip and then scrub the values to offset them relative to the tracker to get the liquefy where you want it to be. That might work in some cases.

[UltraUber]

yes, it works. fantastic. thank you!

[Szalam]

Hooray! Glad it worked for you.

[cb43551664]

The Demon face tutorial is very fun but not suitable for many production tasks. I wish the liquify tool would have an update to handle what is basic in other packages. 

Here are some problems with it now :

1. If one needs to distort multiply parts of the face - left eye, right eye, cheek, mouth, nose, chin, etc. There needs to be an individual precomp for each. That is headache to keep track of.

2. If the track is not perfect and one uses another Null for drift correction, the pick whip method will not work unless the transformations can be "baked" or collapsed in some way.

3. If the track is coming out of mocha, I think the corner pin data makes this a bit more complicated.

4. And finally, it is not 32 bit.

Every other package allows you to add a transform to distort tools as do some of the AE plugins out there.