The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack is now $35 a month for a Personal Subscription. It’s Mac and Windows only, no Linux, and allows usage on up to 2 activated machines, one entitlement at a time.
In order for Linux support or access to the PFBucket Entitlement Server, you’ll need to step up to the Enterprise Plan at $1,300 a year ish.
Not bad The Pixel Farm, not bad.
They used to have a product called PF Hoe. Simple 3D tracker that worked better than Flame’s 1st gen camera tracker. This was around 2005 I think. I had a permanent license for 100 USD. Discontinued after a couple of years.
thats very interesting, now I am very deep into 3de and never really used pftrack but thats actually a good offer that makes me think if its worth to spend time with pftrack, mostly everyone says 3de is better and tbf their licensing is pretty fair as well offering weekly licenses that I love to use.
I like the idea of it beign node based, not going to lie, 3de took me a lot of time to get used to with their general very “semi-destructive”(dont know what to call this really) workflow. its very weird.
anyone with experience in both can chime in wether its worth it to learn pftrack if one is allready “pretty good” in 3DE?
I like PFTrack a lot, but have always heard that 3DE is better.
I think each of three (PFTrack, SynthEyes, 3DE) has different strengths. There’s not one of them that is a perfect choice. I’ve tried them all three at various times.
PFTrack has probably the most intuitive UI from them, in a way of using a node tree for the process steps. It’s also quite comprehensive, makes it easy to draw masks to hold out elements, etc.
SynthEyes is the most affordable, but also has a really quirky UI. It does support texture extraction (PF Track may too, but not certain). It also has quirky licensing. On the positives, it has a good auto track feature that sometimes gets you there fast. I had trouble getting it to work on Rocky, though in should work.
3DE also has an unusual UI, though slightly more memorable than SynthEyes. Its stand-out feature is the ability to refine parameters particularly when your lens data is not known. That can put it beyond the rest of them. It’s pricey, but it’s license is by default flex managed and floating, which can be useful.
They also all differ in their ability to export data into various apps, particularly Flame. SynthEyes seems to have the most comprehensive exports and does Flame well, they all support Nuke better than Flame though I think.
In the end it may come down to specific features you care about, and which UI you can tolerate more. Learn one of them good, keep the others on standby as needed.
Speaking of learning, PFTracks tutorials are weirdly locked up behind logins, and you cannot skip a step, you have to work through them all. SynthEyes has a ton of tutorials, though many of the basic functionality is in tutorials that are a decade old when the UI looked very different. So it’s a bit challenging at times. 3DE actually has the best tutorials available (fxphd, vfx expert, and vfx tutors)
Personally I’m sticking with 3DE, with SynthEyes as backup. But YMMV.
The more I learn SynthEyes the more I dislike it. For me, there are just too many quirks that make performing advanced compositing tasks far too difficult.
I think PFTrack is the best companion for people that do what we do…solve for cameras to solve compositing problems.
And now, it’s the same price as SynthEyes. Result.
PFTrack can do texture extraction. Its licensing is also quirky.
Funny, I remember when PFTrack was called Icarus and was developed by the University of Manchester as a forensics analysis tool for the Police.
Having said that I also remember using the first ever cut of 3DEqualizer on an O2 while buried in a noisy machine dungeon in London.
Shiiiiiit, we ran that on an Indy in 97. Try harder…
It must have been 95 or 96 because I was in the dungeon at smoke and mirros
They also used to have a simple solution called PF Hoe. 100$ permenant license.