ZEISS introduces new camera tracking system

ZEISS will showcase the CinCraft Scenario camera tracking system at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles from 8-10 August. Built upon Ncam’s unique tracking technology and ZEISS’ expertise in lens data, the camera tracking system is easy to use and introduces a user experience designed to match the film crew’s workflow.

ZEISS CinCraft Scenario provides camera tracking data for use in real-time rendering engines for virtual production or live compositing. In addition, it lets the user record tracking data for post-production: “While camera tracking is known to be extremely useful for pre-visualisation and virtual production, CinCraft Scenario can bring major benefits to any production that includes VFX as it can record the tracking data on set to be then used in post-production, where it can help significantly optimize an artist’s workflow,” said Tom Evans, product manager and camera tracking specialist at ZEISS.

The new camera tracking system can be used in practically every environment, indoors and outdoors, on film sets, with green or blue screens and in LED volumes. This is made possible by its unique hybrid tracking technology that not only allows for tracking specially placed reflective markers – the industry standard – but also tracks features of the surroundings, like object edges. In addition, CinCraft Scenario also works with digital markers on LED walls that are invisible to the main camera.

As part of ZEISS’ CinCraft ecosystem, CinCraft Scenario also makes use of the ZEISS database of lens characteristics: “When used with ZEISS and ARRI/ZEISS cine lenses, Scenario benefits from the CinCraft lens characteristics. Their inclusion makes the system plug and play and eliminates the cumbersome lens mapping and calibration process,” added Sundeep Reddy, product manager digital cinematography at ZEISS.

Designed to work with regular off-the-shelf equipment, CinCraft Scenario is natively compatible with major camera and lens encoder systems to provide all the data the system needs to track properly. It is comprised of several hardware and software components that can be individually configured to exactly match the users’ needs: CinCraft CamBar captures the raw data out of the environment and hands it over to CinCraft Origin that runs the main software and aggregates the data to compute position and movement. CinCraft Link connects CamBar and Origin and enables user interface access through mobile devices. The software components allow for computing position and movement and recording the data, exporting the recorded data to industry standard file formats as well as for real-time inclusion in Unreal Engine.

Users will be able to configure their CinCraft Scenario camera tracking system according to their specific needs or choose one of four pre-configured bundles. The system will be available through select dealers and the ZEISS CinCraft website by late autumn 2023.