3D Parent Motion: Moving Planes
A nice 3D effect is the ability to have two videos fly through space parallel to each other. The secret to controlling multiple tracks in unison is to use Parent Motion. For this to work in 3D, all three tracks must be in 3D mode. Let’s see how it’s done.
- We start by pressing Ctrl+Q three times to add three tracks to the Vegas timeline. We’ll name these “3D Parent”, “Front Plane” and “Back Plane”.
- For this tutorial we will add Generated Media but you can use any video you want. Let’s add a Sony Text Generated Media on each track. We’ll also change the background color of the Generated Media Text to make it more easily identifiable.
- Next we want to change the Compositing Mode for all three tracks to 3D Source Alpha. To do this Press the Composite Mode button in the track header and select 3D Source Alpha from the dropdown list.
- Your tracks should look like the image below with all three in 3D Composite Mode
- Now that all three tracks have Track Motion set to 3D Source Alpha, let’s go back to the bottom track (3) which holds the Back Plane and push it back in 3D space. Press the Track Motion button on track 3 and in the Track Motion window, set the Z Position to 240. This will push the video for that track back.
- Now to control the two tracks in unison we do two things. First make tracks 2 & 3 a child of track 1 using the Make Compositing Child button for both tracks. Press the Make Compositing Child button in the track header for tracks 2 & 3.
Your tracks should now look like this:
- Next we need to use Parent Motion to control the child tracks. Press the Parent Motion button to bring up the Parent Motion window.
- This brings up the Parent Track Motion window. First place the interface in 3D Source Alpha mode by pressing the Source Alpha selection dropdown in the upper left corner of the interface and selecting 3D Source Alpha.
- Now you can spin the cube in the large window in 3D space and your two tracks will spin about as well always maintaining 240 units of Z space between them.
Here is the preview window based on these settings
That’s all their is to it. You should be able to use this same technique to build things like a cube of video and control all sides at the same time using 3D Parent Motion. Here is a small video I made of this project using some keyframes on the 3D Parent track.
Here is a link to the Vegas 6 project: 3DParentMotion.veg
Happy Editing,
Johnny “Roy” Rofrano
Oh my gosh! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, Mr. John!
~Ben
Do you know how to make 2 tracks move in the same direction like what you did, but just without the 3D ? Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi5w7Z8rwL4 At the beginning, the person panned the video around the whole screen with the two main characters still there not moving. I’m dieing to know how to do it, and all my attempts keep failing 🙁
You would still use Parent Motion but without the 3D option. My Parent Motion Filmstrip tutorial shows you how to use Parent Motion without placing it in 3D mode. The Parent track still controls all of the movement and panning of the Child tracks which would contain the background and characters.
this is exactly what i wanted to achieve but wasnt quite sure how to begin to tackle it….this explained it perfectly!
thanks John
Awesome….this was not exactly what i was looking for but it was a trigger to connect me what i was looking for 😉