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v3.x Lockdown

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Lockdown 3

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Lockdown

Track Warping Surfaces in After Effects

Lockdown is the original and best plug-in that allows you to track warping surfaces inside After Effects.  Perfect for beauty retouching and other previously difficult cleanup jobs!  Lockdown is a “game changer!”

Lockdown 3 lets you give your mesh 3D depth. Easily send the mesh to Cinema 4D, Blender, and other 3D apps to attach objects, digitally re-light, and more!

Please try the free demo before purchasing to make sure it works for your purposes.

Works in After Effects 2022, 2023, and 2024 with support for M1 Macs.

Lockdown is a tool for tracking warping surfaces and planes in After Effects. Lockdown 3 allows you to add 3D depth to your mesh, so you can attach 3D objects in Cinema 4D, and other 3D applications. Try the demo now to see how it works!

Features:

  • Track Warping and Planar Surfaces in After Effects
  • Cleanup and Paint in a convenient stabilized composition
  • Use Photoshop’s A.I. Generative Fill on moving footage via Paint Link!

New in Lockdown 3:

  • Export 3D Tracking Data to Cinema 4D as a C4D file, or to other 3D applications such as Blender via Alembic.
  • Attach objects in 3D
  • Relight your Mesh

More info, including tutorials and an FAQ, can be found on the Details Tab.

 

Choosing a Lockdown Frame

To set the frame you’d like to paint or apply graphics to, press the “Set Lockdown Mesh/UV Frame” button. It will create a green bar in the popout timeline. The Lockdown frame is no longer set by the “Lockdown!” Button. This is honestly the slowest and most boring tutorial I’ve ever made, but if you’re even slightly confused by the concept of what the “Lockdown frame” is, please watch it. This feature will release with Lockdown 2.5.

Pre-composing and setting up your footage/composition for tracking (After Effects)

The layer that Lockdown is applied to, and the Composition that layer is in, must have the same resolution and framerate for Lockdown to work. If you aren’t 100% sure how to set that up on your own, just press the Pre-compose button at the top of the plugin. The script will pre-compose your layer and set everything inside the pre-comp to all the correct settings, and you can work with Lockdown in there.

Tracking algorithms and how to tweak them

There are two tracking modes:
Accurate 1.6: Fast, and good for simple shots with lots of detail.
Extremely Accurate: Slow, but better than ‘Accurate 1.6’ in every other way. Increasing Tracking Scale can slightly improve the results of Accurate 1.6 when objects are moving quickly, however you won’t get much better results above 25 pixels, except in extreme cases. At that point, you’re better off just using “Extremely Accurate”.

Tracking Target Resolution: There are two steps to tracking, one of which is tracking the general motion of the shot, the second is finding a pixel accurate match. Lowering the ‘Tracking Target Resolution’ ONLY reduces the resolution of step 1. Some people assume tracking a 4k shot at 540p will reduce quality, and the vast majority of the time it will be a pixel perfect match against if you had run the process at 4k, because the secondary processing to pixel match is at 4k for both cases.The summary- track at 540p as often as possible. Sometimes you may want to bump it up to 1080p because the Accurate 1.6 mode isn’t as good at working with low resolution video, and this might prevent points from skipping around. But again, ‘Extremely Accurate’ is probably a better solution than tinkering with Accurate 1.6.

Track Adjustment

When a point drifts away from it’s target, click and drag it to put it back in place. Adjustment keyframes are an additional layer of animation that adds on top of your base track. It’s a very fast way to fix drifts.

Track Refinement

Refinement is for when Adjustment isn’t enough, and you have to deal with a track that’s going in the completely wrong direction. it’s a hugely important concept, please see this video:

Tracking Offscreen Objects, and Expanding Your Mesh

The two different interpolation types (tracking planar surfaces, or non-planar surfaces)

Tracking behind overlapping objects

And please check out this video if you have any difficulty setting up the masks in Resolve. The short summary is your RGB channels should be completely unaffected going into Lockdown, and your alpha channel needs to be below 50%.

Stabilized Tracking

Caching Track data (Make high res video track quickly)

In short, just open the options menu, and enable the disk cache. This will make it so after you’ve tracked a shot once, it maintain that tracking data, and track very quickly every time following. This uses as much disk space as you allow, which is why it’s off by default.

Customizing a mesh

Sometimes it makes sense to draw your mesh manually, to conform to natural borders in your shot. The geometry on the left may deform better than the geometry on the right, especially when the mouth opens, or when imported into a 3D application.

lockdown custom mesh

Select a point, then Ctrl-Shift-Click another point to connect the two with an edge.
Alt-click an edge to delete it.

Alt-shift-click and drag to draw a line which deletes all edges in its path.

Auto-Triangulate Mesh will triangulate all points can, but will NOT bisect any quads. (This is good because quads render better than triangles in 3D software)

Clear Mesh will remove the entire mesh.
Video Summary:

Locking down your mesh and applying a texture (After Effects)

This button sets up a texture to apply to your mesh.
It creates a “Lockdown Graphics Composition” with a stabilized copy of your mesh inside, and a still frame of the frame you’ve chosen to stick graphics to. It creates a checkerboard for preview purposes. The stabilized layer is created as a non rendering guide layer.
It places this composition in the Lockdown Graphics Comp slot to reference the texture.
It duplicates your layer as a background layer.

If you’re applying graphics, just drop graphics into the stabilized pre-comp. If you’re painting the layer, you should apply paint directly to the stabilized video layer inside the Lockdown Pre-comp. You must first make it not a guide layer, this video explains why:

UnLockdown! (After Effects)

This undoes the Lockdown process, allowing you to refine tracking points.
Please note that if you Lockdown, then UnLockdown a shot, you must press Lockdown on the same frame you had originally, or the graphics will not match. Pressing Lockdown chooses the current frame as the projection frame, so it’s important to keep track of that.

Optional Tracking Filter (After Effects)

This optional button applies effects that sometimes allow our tracker better identify textures. It’s basically an edge-detect with a lot of contrast. You should be in 16 or 32-bit mode when using this filter. Running a denoiser on the original footage, and again on the final result also improves trackability. This is great for a shot where lighting is changing, because it brings out details in cracks and surfaces, and tends to ignore larger gradients. It’s great for faces, where there is tons of detail to be tracked in the pores of the skin. Without the filter, the tracking points may follow shadows and highlights sliding across the face, rather than the skin. With this filter, they will lock onto pores and skin details. Keep in mind this filter becomes far less effective with compressed video, like mp4. This video explains:

Rotoscoping using Lockdown

The short summary is that when you stabilize your composition, you can create masks over the stabilized footage, which will follow the motion of your shot. Here is a fast overview.

Exporting To Alembic (Cinema 4D)

Advanced Controls (After Effects):

Stabilized
This is automatically set by the Plug-in and script, you should never have to think about it. However, for advanced users, it simply toggles whether the mesh is stabilized or moved. Useful if you change a few tracking points on your stabilized comp, then want to copy and paste your Lockdown effect to your un-stabilized comp. You can just paste then toggle Stabilized to off.
Internalize Selected Points
This puts all the points INSIDE the plug-in away, from your view. This is going to make every step of working with Lockdown faster. Tracked points are internalized by default.
Externalize Selected Points
This takes your selected points, and exposes them as normal position keyframes at the bottom of the Lockdown Plug-in, under the “Externalized Points” dropdown. You should only ever externalize points when you notice errors in the track and want to modify them. Whenever you’re done editing points and want to start building a mesh, re-internalize them. It’s not recommended to use expressions with these points, or connect them to outside rigging, at this point it’s something we haven’t tested. We are currently allowing externalized points to be used as part of a mesh with the hopes that eventually this will become advantageous, but please just internalize your points in all normal situations.
Externalized Points
You are given 4 total points which you can manually edit within the typical After Effects graph editor. This used to be 500, but we found that it was causing significant slow down with user interaction speeds.
To get points in from Mocha, you can paste the four corner position data into the externalized points. Upon pasting, an externalized point will be created. Again, please internalize these as soon as possible.
Internal Keyframe time ref
This is a reference keyframe. A big problem with Lockdown’s internalized keyframes is that they are ‘oblivious’ to what timecode they should appear at. Whenever you track, Lockdown takes this keyframe, and places it at the in-point of the shot. All the internal keyframes look at this keyframe and say “I should appear x frames after this reference keyframe” in order to stay in sync with the rest of the project. Please note that you should never have to touch or think about this parameter if you use the script and follow the steps from 1-9. The most common place this may be useful is if you’re conforming color footage, and the timecode changes on a clip when you do a footage swap. For a simple example:
You track some raw footage which is 45 seconds long. Your in-point is at 30 seconds in. When you track, Lockdown places the “internal keyframe time ref” here, at your in-point. Now you receive some new footage back from a colorist, but it’s only 10 seconds long. If you paste Lockdown to the color footage, the timecode isn’t the same, so Lockdown doesn’t know which frames it’s keyframes should be on. You can find the same exact frame in the color footage, and slide this “internal keyframe time ref” to its position, and now the tracking will match exactly, even though the timecode is different.

 

 


FAQ

WHY DID YOU NAME YOUR PLUGIN ‘LOCKDOWN’ AFTER THE WORST DISASTER IN HUMAN HISTORY?!

We didn’t! We named it in 2018 before this all happened. We were going to rename it, but doing so would permanently break old project compatibilty. Every project ever created with Lockdown would be lost the second our users upgraded to the new version with a new name. There was no way we could do that to our users, so we simply had to accept the unfortunate name was permanent. I’M SORRY!

How do I install Lockdown 2.4 using the aescripts manager app?

Go to https://aescripts.com/learn/aescripts-aeplugins-manager-app/
Download the manager app and launch it.
(If you’re using the trial or beta) Go to Account/Add Trial and add Lockdown.
Select Lockdown in the main menu list.
Press Install.
Press License.

How do I manually install Lockdown 2.4 (Resolve)?

Go to aescripts.com/lockdown (Top of this page)
Press the green “Try” button to access the downloads, and download/unzip.
Enter the Windows folder for a Windows install, copy and paste the .ofx plugin file here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins\Vranos
Enter the Mac folder for a Mac install, copy and paste the .ofx file here: /Library/OFX/Plugins/
(Please note that the OFX plugins in the Windows folder and Mac folder are NOT interchangeable)
Go to aescripts.com/downloadable/customer/products and find your license code. It takes about 15 minutes to generate after purchasing.
Copy your License Code.
Apply Lockdown to an empty layer.
Press “License” at the top of the plug-in.
Paste in your license code.
Press “activate”

How do I manually install Lockdown 2.4 (After Effects)?

Go to aescripts.com/lockdown (Top of this page)
Press the green “Try” button to access the downloads, and download/unzip.
Enter the Windows folder for a Windows install, copy and paste the ..aex plugin file here: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 2021\Support Files\Plug-ins
Enter the Mac folder for a Mac install, copy and paste the .plugin file here: Applications/Adobe After Effects 2021/Plug-ins/
Go to aescripts.com/downloadable/customer/products and find your license code. It takes about 15 minutes to generate after purchasing.
Copy your License Code.
Apply Lockdown to an empty layer.
Press “Register” at the top of the plug-in.
Paste in your license code.
Press “activate”
In After Effects, go to Edit/Purge/All Memory & Disk Cache

Sometimes I crash (out of memory) when tracking high res footage, or very long footage (Ae)

In After Effects, go to “Preferences/Memory & Performance/RAM reserved for other applications”. By default, it’s set to something like 3gb. Try to set this number very high. If you have 32gb of RAM on your computer, maybe try releasing 16gb. We’re digging into an official fix, but at the moment, Ae and Lockdown aren’t properly sharing RAM. Ae is battling to create a RAM preview with as much RAM as it can get it’s hands on, and Lockdown needs a good amount for the motion vectors, point data, etc… Sometimes the system runs out. It’s our top priority fix this. You should really only be seeing issues in extreme cases where Lockdown may need an unusually high amount of RAM for high res footage.

I’m missing install files that I’ve seen in older versions or tutorials. I also get the “Unable to execute script at line 4” error when running the Lockdown script.

Lockdown 2.2 and later ONLY requires a single self contained install file. It’s Lockdown.aex for Windows, Lockdown.plugin for Mac. You may still have the following files in your computer from older versions. You can safely delete these from the “Plug-ins” and “script UI panels” folders:

GenerateVectors.aex
GenerateVectors.plugin
Lockdown.JSXBIN
GV.aom

The JSXBIN side script is not used in later version of Lockdown, and running it will give you an error message. Please delete that script entirely, and follow the latest tutorial on this homepage to run Lockdown.

How do I get rid of the grid watermark?

When you buy the Plugin (or get a temp license), you’ll get access to a code that looks something like this: VRL*YOUR*NAME*LOTSOFLETTERSANDNUMBERS
Apply the Plug-in to a layer, then at the top of Lockdown, press “register”. Paste this code in, and press activate. The watermark will still be there. To clear it, go to the After Effects Menu “Edit/Purge/All Memory & Disk Cache”. This forces Lockdown to re-render, this time without any grid.

The “UnLockdown” button breaks my Lockdown 1.4 projects, when opening with Lockdown 1.5.

Please see this tutorial.

Sometimes I get dark edges on my composition

Please either shut off your stabilized footage layer inside the stabilized pre-comp, or add a 4 pixel simple choker to it. Effect/Matte/Simple Choker. This video shows how to solve the problem. Fixing this is somewhere on our to-do list, but honestly it’s very low priority because a comp fix is so easy. Sorry for the inconvenience, we figured you would rather we focus on faster and more accurate tracking.

How do I get motion blur on my shot with Lockdown?

Please use the effect “CC Force Motion Blur” after Lockdown. Shut off “override shutter”. Turn motion blur on for the layer, and in the composition. In the composition settings, make sure the shutter phase is (shutter angle * -.5). CC Force Motion Blur with Lockdown.

I want to make a mesh larger than my actual video, that extends off my frame. Can I do that?

Lockdown 2.0 can place points outside of the composition, but you can’t place textures there. Lockdown is limited to the bounds of the composition. There is a relatively easy workaround. Let’s say you have 1920×1080 footage. After running out 1) pre-compose script, go into that composition. Set the resolution of the composition much higher, perhaps 3000×2000. Now take that layer (delete the Lockdown instance on it.) and pre-compose that layer “moving all attributes”. Now place Lockdown on that composition, which is 3000×2000. You can now track THAT composition. If you don’t do this correctly, things will go bad very quickly.

How do I create a log file?

Please watch this video. Log files contain a record you can send to us, that tells us basically everything that happened since you opened Lockdown, until you closed it. It makes it much easier for us to find bugs. Please make sure to delete the log folder after sending us the log, because the log file will get very very large over time if you keep the folder. Basically, if the folder exists, the log file is created and written to. If not, the log file is not created or written to. So you don’t want the log folder to exist for any longer than it needs to be.

Lockdown turns a clip black, and nothing works

Please make sure you’re using the CURRENT version of After Effects. We built Lockdown with the 2019 API, so it’s a guarantee 2018 and earlier will not work at all. We keep it up to date with the latest version of Ae.
Some users report they have to update their graphics card drivers to get Lockdown working. More troubling, some Nvidia users claim GeForce experience says it’s up to date, but they had to go to the Nvidia website to manually update drivers before Lockdown would work. Our team on Lockdown updates our graphics drivers immediately, so to minimize the chance of rendering errors, please stay up to date with your drivers.

I have a problem not listed here, can you help me?

We can sure try. All the help tickets for this product regarding technique are answered us, the creators of Lockdown. If you send us footage that poses unique challenges from every other video listed above, we can test it. That being said, we have a policy to ONLY send back screen recordings of your project for guidance, we will never send back any project files, no exceptions. We answer help tickets to assist you, and to improve Lockdown, but the help ticket systems is not a way for us to complete your projects. Please make sure you have all necessary permissions before sending a project file. You can open a help ticket here.

Compatibility

After Effects 2024, 2023, 2022
Blender 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0
Cinema 4D 2024, 2023, S26, R25, S24, R23, S22, R21, R20, R19, R18, R17, R16, R15

 

 

3.0.0   –  Jul 11, 2023

  • New 3D Tab for all new 3D workflow
  • New Depth estimator
  • New 3D Planar Tracker
  • Added a new ‘rigid’ tracking algorithm
  • Added a depth rendering output mode
  • Added a 3D preview rendering mode in the After Effects composition

3.0.0  –  Jul 10, 2023

initial release of Lockdown 3.

2.8.4  –  Aug 21, 2022

Updated the license system to conform to the aescripts’ latest version.

2.8.3  –  Jul 16, 2022

  • Updated the license system to conform to the aescripts’ latest version.

2.8.1  –  Jun 2, 2022

### Added
An automatic correction tool for Lockdown keyframes that are not on whole keyframes.### Fixed
An issue that prevented keyframes with no tracking data from being moved while inside a mask dead zone.
An issue that sometimes prevented a point from tracking within the stabilized Window

2.8.0  –  Apr 18, 2022

### Added – The ability to change the preview frequency during track-all. Previewing fewer frames will make the process faster.
– 8 bit images are always sent to the popout. This will make things much faster, and the quality difference has shown to be entirely insignificant in testing.
– Low res tracking support.
– Cache for tracking: Added cache file compression (at least 4x less disk space used).
– Cache for tracking: Added “reset to default” button to settings. – Cache for tracking: Apple Silicon support.
### Changed – Cache for tracking: Improved overall performance.
– Cache for tracking: Default disk space limit is based on available disk space.
– Cache for tracking: Automatically clears the cache when the application version is updated.
### Fixed
– A visual error where some text boxes may be unreadable on 4k displays.
– In/Out point change causes incorrect translation of hidden mesh parts.
– Inability to re-track adjustments after changing tracking algorithms’ parameters.
– Status bar issues on Windows with large screen resolution.

2.7.4  –  Mar 16, 2022

Made significant improvements to Mac M1 support in both Resolve and After Effects. All known errors where the plugin did not show up, or failed to open should be resolved.

2.7.3 –  Feb 23, 2022

### Added
– Added Alembic Import/Export dialog and settings in Popout interface. (This now allows Resolve users to use Alembic tools.)
– Added button which can remove all ‘base keyframes’ for selected point(s). This leaves a point with nothing but adjustment tracks, allowing you to regenerate all tracking data if needed.
– Now all mesh points show up in the stabilized mesh tab. This makes tracking much easier.
– Each time you open Ae or Resolve, the Lockdown Window position and zoom level will be saved for the duration of the session. (A convenience feature)
– Allowed points to track within the stabilized mesh, even if they at times exit it’s boundaries.
– Added the “Reapply interpolation” button for all tabs.
– Added the ability to remove custom UVs.### Changed
– Removed Alembic controls from After Effects parameters panel.
– When ‘non-trackable’ keyframes are created, autogenerate interpolated keyframes for them.### Fixed
– A bug where pressing the H key would clear the selection.
– A possible crash when clearing the UVs.
– An issue where expansion points might translate incorrectly between tabs.

2.7.1 –  Jan 17, 2022

### Added
– Ability to remove custom UV coordinates.
– added UI control for perspective warping in AE and Popout.
– Store “created” version of the project for debugging purposes.
– Save host information into logs.
– Added a Split/subdivide edge command by Shift+Cmd dragging.### Changed
– Support perspective warping for an arbitrary number of quads.
– Allow quad based stabilization in the two stabilized tabs, not just triangles.
– Forbid dragging in AE preview, all work will now take place in the Popout.
– Triangulation doesn’t take into account invisible points for the current frame.
– Duplicate controls for parameters have been removed from the host application UI.### Fixed
– Performance issue of translation in Resolve.
– Fixed compatibility with old projects.
– Fixed possible effect reference handle leak.
– Fixed Resolve license window UI scale for system settings.
– Fixed a crash in OFX Resolve when changing plugin modes.

2.6.3 –  Dec 23, 2021

### Fixed
– Memory leak issue in the OFX Resolve plugin on Windows. Please note that this will not fix a potential crash when pressing ‘popout’ effecting some users, we are still working on that.

2.6.1 –  Nov 3, 2021

Added

-Complete Multi-Frame Rendering support in AE 2022.

Fixed
– A possible crash when changing tabs in the middle of tracking.
– An issue where points may be lost when changing between the stabilized and primary tabs, while interpolation is off.
– An issue where the blue and alpha channels were swapped via a code typo, so images with very low levels of blue might actually not track in the stabilized tab.
– Fixed an issue where custom interpolation may not carry through the full shot in some cases.

2.5.1 August 15, 2021

Fixed

  • When starting tracking (usually on Mac) some systems would crash after a few frames.

2.5.0 – Aug 11, 2021

Added

  • Stabilized Tracking Window
  • UV layout Window
  • Set Lockdown UV Mesh button
  • Disk cached based tracking
  • Settings Window

Fixed

  • An issue where the mesh may not update properly when closing the popout in Resolve

2.4.3 – Aug 4, 2021

Added

  • We now have a progress bar to show interpolation progress. This is the first step to optimizing it and making it faster.

Changed

  • Increased maximum point radius to 60 for high res footage.
  • We now render interpolated points as empty circles instead of solid so it’s easier to evaluate quality.
  • For future proofing, we’ve removed the dropdown menu to change interpolation within the After Effects window, and it will only exist in the poppet.
  • Removed Enter Hotkey.

Fixed

  • Fixed an issue where the licensing window in Resolve may prevent access to things behind it.
  • Fixed a crash that may happen if Lockdown is rendering from multiple applications. For example, Ae, Resolve, and Premiere can all render Lockdown at once. This fix should solve an “unhandled exception” crash.

2.4.2 – Jul 14, 2021

  • This update should fix crashes on Mac Pro systems with AMD graphics cards in Resolve.

2.4.1 – Jul 13, 2021

  • Fixed a licensing error in which case some licenses may not activate when registered in Resolve.

2.4.0 – Jul 12, 2021

Added

  • A timeline to display base keyframes, Adjustment keyframes, trackable keyframes, and track refinement status.
  • A toolset to keyframe points as trackable or not-trackable. This will make tracking behind overlapping objects much easier.
  • A padlock tool to lock points that you are done working with.

Changed

  • Changing tracking algorithm resets “no changes” state for all tracks.
  • Optimized two point based interpolation.
  • Triangle interpolation use only mesh geometry triangles as guide points.
  • Tracking modes (Normal, Directional, Adjustment refinement) are affected by “trackable/not-trackable” regions of the track.
  • Updated UI icons;
  • For clarity, point buttons are greyed out when no points are selected.
  • Logs are created automatically.

Fixed

  • The adjustment incorrectly changed the state of the track, which affected the refinement process.
  • Overflow in mean vertex calculation iduring interpolation.
  • Time comparison for interpolation gaps in merge procedure.
  • Guide points filtering: not allow estimated to become guide points.
  • Discarding eligible guidepoints based on missing future frames depends on interpolation type.
  • Fixed tracking cancelation if all points are lost on the backward pass.
  • Fixed a visualization issue when regular keyframe was rendered as an adjustment after refinement.
  • Fixed adjustment points misbehaving after directional tracking.

2.3.2 – Jun 16, 2021

BugFixes

Fixed an issue where when baking points, or exporting to alembic, points may not have exactly the same values as they did before baking.

2.3.1 – Jun 10, 2021

BugFixes

  • Fixed an issue where where when a point has multiple groups of tracking keyframes, the position across keyframe gaps would snap, rather than blend smoothly. Now the gaps are always handled correctly. Please note that we’ve already started building a timeline with keyframe editing tools to make you much more aware of, and in control of your keyframes. (Coming soon.)

2.3.0 – Jun 4, 2021

added

  • Add unified plane interpolation mode. This treats all points as if they were a single plane, and interpolates any dead points to follow on that plane.
  • Made the Adjustment cross hair a bit easier to see through, with a single pixel dot at the center.
  • Added a hotkey description for creating an edge between 2 points.

Changed

  • Removed “Set to track X” functionality, points are always eligible to track in both directions by default (except “extension” points).
  • Enabled frame caching for After Effects and Popout. (Faster playback)
  • When a point is baked, it is now set to ‘non trackable’
  • Fixed an issue where textures might get blocky when stretched very far.

BugFixes

  • Possible sudden image shifts that may occur when interpolation switched on.
  • Delete keyframes left/right now deletes adjustment frames, completely clearing the track.
  • Fixed a bug with 2 point interpolation where points may behave unpredictably, or not move off screen.
  • Points without key-frames are semi-transparent now.
  • Interpolation now supports single point guidance.

2.2.2 – May 19, 2021

BugFixes

  • On some Radeon cards on Mac, the mesh would be distorted and points would go to the wrong place. We have fixed this.
  • Fixed a bug where the arrow key might move the slider two frames instead of one.
  • Fixed a bug where clicking on the timeline would not take the time slider to the frame you clicked on.

2.2.1 – May 13, 2021

BugFixes

  • We found a crash introduced in Lockdown 2.1.0 on some Mac Pros which had Radeon cards. This build fixes it.
  • Fixed an issue where sometimes interpolated points could be calculated incorrectly, and move in strange paths, unrelated to the motion of the other points.

2.2.0 – May 6, 2021

New Features

  • The “Extremely Accurate” tracking mode brought into the popout, with no pre-rendering required.
  • Down sampling for the first stage of tracking has been introduced with a dropdown menu. In practice, this allows much faster tracking with almost identical results.

Changes

  • Removed tracking controls from the After Effects Control Window. All tracking will take place in the popout.
  • Removed the assistant plugin “Generate Vectors”, which is now obsolete and irrelevant.

2.1.0 – Apr 27, 2021

New features

  • Finalized and stabilized popout tracker for official out-of-beta release.
  • Added a functionality that uses frame’s alpha channel as a “dead-zone” mask during tracking.
  • Added three guide points (triangle) interpolation.

Changes

  • Adjustment now acts more like an animation layer system, or parent system. Dragging a single adjustment down 10 pixels will move the entire track down 10 pixels. Simplifying this feels more intuitive.
  • Interpolation is possible between keyframe gaps.
  • All new points are created with adjustment points, to preserve the exact position on that frame.
  • Points are rendering with semi-transparent color if they don’t have keyframe for the timestamp (visible if seleted or “hide non-moving tracks” is switched off).
  • Adjustment points are not created when selecting a point.
  • Render pipeline changes for efficiency and future features.

Bugfixes

  • Adjustments are always taken into account to calculate the coordinates of a point, therefor improving interpolation.
  • Fixed UI controls scaling issues for large display scales.
  • Popout UI responsivenes during tracking is fixed.
  • Fixed a bug with tracker stopping after losing all points.

1.7.0  –  Jan 29, 2021

New Features
  • Added a new point interpolation method to better handle rotation of objects.
Improvements
  • Shutting off “Interpolate partial tracks” when pressing track buttons.
Bugfixes
  • Fixed possible crashes.

1.6.1 – Dec 21, 2020

  • Further updated the accuracy and speed of the default tracker in Lockdown.
  • Added a new parameter for tracking “Tracking Scale” which has a few effects on tracking. Generally the larger it is, the more it will favor large textures and large motions, and ignore small noise patterns. The larger it gets, the slower the processing is.

1.6.0 – Nov 28, 2020

  • Added quad based mesh smoothing.
  • Added adjustments point refinement (integrated into “Track All”).
  • New tracking mode – Accurate 1.6.
  • Lockdown now creates a quad based mesh upon click and drag.
  • When triangulating, extra long connections are disconsidered.
  • Edges can now be disabled from view.
  • Adjustment points are now always preserved, even during baking operations.
  • Other quality improvements.

1.5.7 – Nov 11, 2020

  • Fixes a minor bug where the Lockdown button may not work if the layer has opacity keyframes on it, in the latest After Effects build.

1.5.6 – Oct 1, 2020

  • Fixed a bug that may cause a crash when using Lockdown with a track matte.

1.5.5 – Sep 8, 2020

[New features]

  • Added mesh export/import to/from Alembic format.
  • Added keyboard shortcuts for some frequently used actions.

[Improvements]

  • Record move information in the log file.
  • Full vector setup sets sequence background to black, other colors lead to wrong tracking results.
  • Points are added and moved with sub-pixel accuracy now

1.5.4 – Jul 3, 2020

02_07_2020
1.5.4
-Added “Track Left” and “Track Right” buttons to preview tracked points in real time.
-Fixed a bug where tracking may not work after pressing “escape”.

1.5.3  – Jun 12, 2020

  • Fixed an upload issue.

1.5.2 – Jun 12, 2020

  • Fixed a crash when dragging points on machines with certain graphics cards.

1.5.1 – Jun 10, 2020

  • Fixed a bug that may prevent Lockdown from working with non-English language versions of After Effects.
  • Removed a filter that prevents points from being created too close to each other. You can now overlap points at your own discretion.
  • Fixed an issue where Lockdown would track incorrectly if the composition viewer was at less than full resolution.

1.5.0 – Jun 8, 2020

  • Added the ability to extend existing tracks.
  • Changed the composition structure to include a Lockdown Graphics comp, which allows the user to easily UnLockdown a composition.
  • Fixed potential GPU compatibility issues.
  • Removed influence of adjustment points to interpolated points. Everything will update faster now.
  • Fixed a bug where the message “Lockdown Effect must remain selected…” may appear frequently without need.

1.4.2 – May 18, 2020

  • Fixed a bug that would cause points to not render on some AMD graphics cards, particularly those on Mac Pro systems.
  • Put a clamp on colors in 32-bit mode, to prevent over-bright or over-dark artifacts.
  • Removed “min frame count for each track” parameter, which was useless with the newly improved tracker.
  • moved “merge points” button to a more logical location next to tracking buttons.
  • Removed anti-aliasing toggle. Recent performance improvements made it reasonable to keep it always on, and never need to turn it off.
  • Changed the point creation lasso color to blue. This helps users know if the control/cmd key is pressed when lassoing.

1.4.1  –  Apr 30, 2020

  • Greatly improved interactive speeds
  • Added “alt-shift drag” delete edge tool
  • Added Delete Adjustment Point button
  • Changed adjustment point keyframes to render as crosshairs, and as empty circles when near a keyframe in time.
  • now internalizes the entire track when importing from Mocha, to make room for further mocha imports.
  • Sets and adjustment point keyframe anytime a point is selected or tracked.
  • Fixed “Something went wrong” precompose error.
  • Added “bake keyframes button”
  • Set “min frame count” parameter to 0 by default, (meaning infinite).
  • Fixed a bug in which changing one instance of Lockdown may make temporary visual changes during the duration of the click and drag to other instances of Lockdown.

1.4 – March 31, 2020

How do I upgrade to Lockdown 1.4? Please follow this video.Please note that 500 Externalized Points are no longer supported in Lockdown 1.4. We only allow 4 because we recently discovered 500 would effect click and drag responsiveness. If you have 1.3 installed, please internalize all points for all Lockdown instances, then save your project before installing Lockdown 1.4.

New features

  • Added vector tracking
  • Added click and drag to adjust track points
  • Added lasso tool to create and delete points

Improvements

  • Improved overall performance with many points.
  • Prevents points from being created too close to each other.
  • Added possibility to work with temporary licenses
  • Installation of Lockdown.jsxbin is not needed anymore, all the functionality is moved inside the plugin.
  • Reduced Externalized point count from 500 down to 4. This was to increase interactive speeds.

Bugfix

  • Fixed some cases when new points could not be automatically triangulated to the existing mesh

1.3.0  –  Feb 25, 2020

  • Added a new default tracking mode “Accurate”. This mode significantly improves automatic tracking, and makes the “option tracking filter” no longer necessary.
  • Renamed the old tracker “Fast”, under Tracking Engine.
  • Moved all point and line rendering to the render thread, burned into the image. This is so your points and lines remain strictly in sync with your footage, so it’s easier to tell which points are tracking well, and which aren’t.
  • Added “merge tracks” button.
  • Added Anti-aliasing checkbox for geometry edges, points, and lines.
  • Made minor text updates to the Plug-in in the Effects Control Window.
  • When a stabilized mesh is ‘applied’ points will automatically not render. This is because you likely only want to see points while tracking them.
  • Updated Mac Catalina notarization.

BugFixes

  • Fixed a bug in which an externalized point keyframe may be off on the first frame.
  • Fixed a bug in which changing the in or out point of a shot may de-sync tracking points.
vranos lockdown

Lockdown for After Effects Quick Start Tutorials #gettingstarted

Here is a set of 3 tutorials for Lockdown for After Effects.  The first is a brief intro if you need to learn and use Lockdown fast.  The second tutorial goes in depth and covers everything you need to know about using Lockdown, and the 3rd explains how to get tracking data from Mocha into Lockdown.

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