Slapshot has announced the launch of an AI Camera Tracking tool.
Designed to meet the needs of VFX artists in 2D compositing, the solution aims to enhance operational workflows. The professional-grade AI Camera Tracking tool aims to deliver precise camera solves and dimensionally accurate point clouds at significantly faster speeds than traditional methods.
According to the company, the tool reduces the time taken on tasks that make up the bulk of real-world compositing work, including background replacements, screen comps, sky swaps and clean-ups.
“A track that might’ve taken a day or more to do manually can now be done in under ten minutes with Slapshot’s new Camera Tracking tool,” said Jon Mason, CEO of Hotspring, which created Slapshot.
The tool aims to provide access to high-quality camera tracks for all types of creators regardless of their expertise in 3D workflows. Mason continued, “For people who don’t routinely work in 3D, camera tracking can be intimidating. It’s a very technical area, so it was really important for us to make it as simple yet powerful as possible. So we designed the tool to be able to produce a great solve with zero camera information–it’s literally just clicking the ‘Solve Camera’ button and we work out the rest. Alternatively, for people who have camera information, you can also provide it and it will be respected and incorporated into the solve. It’s entirely up to you, but it works great both ways.”
Outputs are delivered in a range of widely compatible formats including .abc and .glb camera files, .exr STMaps, undistorted .jpg plates, and a .mov playblast.
AI Camera Tracking is the latest expansion of the Slapshot AI suite which aims to remove friction from the creative process and enhance quality of output across commercial, film and episodic projects. All Slapshot’s tools are hosted on its secure AWS cloud environment supporting resolutions up to 8K.
Ben Stallard, MD at Hotspring, said, “We built Slapshot to tackle the real-world problems artists face every day: the time-consuming tasks that eat into creative time and production budgets. Camera Tracking continues that mission–it takes a complex process and turns it into a ten-minute task, giving artists time back when it matters most.”
