Documentation

Account Panel

The Account panel is the first panel you will see in the panel hierarchy and also the only panel you will see when you are logged out from MotionMaster 3D. After you have logged in and your license is valid, you will see that all the other panels appear as well as the user preferences in the Account panel.

Login Controls

Buttons [1] and [2] allow you to either log out or refresh your license status. So if you upgrade your license and you want MotionMaster 3D to recognize that, you might need to refresh it by clicking [2].

User Preferences

Next is the user preferences, and they are only relevant if your license includes things such as email notifications and general progress notifications (see the different license types). The available settings are:

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  On Job Complete [3] — When enabled, you will get an email whenever your current batch operation is done.
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  On Job Failed [4] — Sends you an email if the batch process fails.
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  Min Duration (minutes) [5] — Allows you to specify the minimum time for a batch process for you to get a notification when it is done.
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  Digest Mode [6] — Makes you get an email summary for multiple jobs instead of individual notifications.

Saving Settings

When the settings are how you like them, you can "Save" [7] them to the server, or you can "Load" [8] your previous settings and ignore your current ones. But for them to be activated, you need to make sure that the settings you want are stored.

Feedback & Support Panel

In this panel, you can decide which feedback type you want to send [1], whether "Bug Report" if there are any bugs that you encounter and want to report, "Feature Request" for features you want to see in an upcoming update to the addon, "Question" for a general question (for example, how to use a specific feature), and lastly "Other", which can just be a random statement or something you want to tell the MotionMaster 3D team (for example, user feedback).

Write your text message in the text area [2], and when you are done, you can submit the feedback [3].

Import Results Panel

The Import Results panel provides a standalone way to import tracking results into your Blender scene. This is useful when you want to import results that were generated previously, or when you need to re-import results from a different session. The panel works with both batch processing results and regular workflow results.

Selecting a Result Folder

Start by selecting the folder containing your tracking results in the Result Folder field [1]. This should be either:

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  Batch processing output: The root output folder containing sequence result folders (e.g., mysequence_result)
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  Regular workflow: The image sequence folder itself, which now contains result subfolders like heavy_track_result and quick_track_result

Once you select a folder, the panel will automatically scan for available results. You can also manually trigger a scan by clicking the Scan Folder button [2].

Available Results

After scanning, the panel displays all detected results organized by type. Each result type can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on it.

Selecting Results to Import

Click on a result type header to expand it and see all available versions. Use the checkboxes next to each result version to select which ones you want to import. You can select multiple results across different types to import them all at once.

Import Settings

The Settings section [6] provides options to customize how results are imported.

Importing Selected Results

Once you've selected the results you want and configured the import settings, click the Import Selected button [7] to import everything into your Blender scene. The button will only be enabled when at least one result is selected.

Result Folder Structure

For reference, here's the folder structure that MotionMaster 3D creates for tracking results:

sequence_folder/
  ├── (your images)
  ├── heavy_track_result/
  │   ├── database.db
  │   ├── 0/
  │   └── Undistorted/
  │       ├── sparse/
  │       ├── scene_dense.ply
  │       └── scene_dense_mesh_refine.ply
  ├── heavy_track_result_2/      # Second run
  ├── quick_track_result/
  │   ├── log_forward/
  │   └── log_backward/
  └── quick_track_result_2/      # Second run

Select Footage Panel

The Select Footage panel is the first panel you will encounter in MotionMaster 3D when starting a new project. Here you decide which footage you want to work with. If you ever need quick help while working, remember that you can hover your mouse over any setting in Blender to see a small popup description.

Image Sequence Selection

The first option [1] is Select Image Sequences. This lets you point the addon to the folder containing your image sequence. For example, if you select C:\ImageSequences\Sequence1, the addon will scan the folder, collect all images, and sort them by name.

You can either type in the path directly or use the folder icon [2] to browse for it.

Video or Sequence Converter

The Video or Sequence Converter is where you prepare your media. It can either transform a video into an image sequence or adjust an existing image sequence to a new resolution, color depth, or step rate.

When you select a file or folder [3], the addon automatically detects what you picked. If you select a video, the text "Video detected" will appear, while choosing a folder of images will show "Image sequence detected: [Number] frames".

From here you can adjust a few important settings:

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  Color depth [4] allows conversion to 8-bit or 10-bit images.
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  Step rate [5] determines how many frames are skipped. For example, a video with 100 frames and a step rate of 5 will result in 20 images. A higher step rate is useful when you only need a mesh, while a step rate of 1 is recommended for accurate camera tracking.
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  Target resolution [6] lets you downscale the footage for faster processing or keep the original resolution if you prefer maximum quality.

Once the settings are chosen, click Convert Video or Convert Image Sequence [7]. A new folder called Sequence will appear alongside your media, containing the processed images.

Batch Mode

The next option is if you want to use the "Batch Mode" [8], and when you enable it, you will enable the "Batch Processing" panel, which we will talk about shortly. This is used if you want to process multiple footages at once and do multiple operations at once.

Show Command Arguments

Lastly is the "Show Command Arguments" [9], which is used to print out the command arguments used for the current running operator, which can be seen in the terminal (this is mostly for development or debugging/support).

Batch Processing Panel

This is one of the more powerful features of MotionMaster 3D because it allows you to process multiple sequences at once, where each footage has its own set of operators applied to it. The Batch Processing panel is divided into two main sections: the Output section (top) where results are stored and imported, and the Input section (bottom) where you select footage and choose operations. While the Output section appears first in the UI, you will typically set up your inputs and process them before having any results to view.

Output Section

First is the toggle button [1], and this is exactly the same as the "Batch Mode" button in the "Select Footage" panel. It simply decides if you want to use batch mode or process one sequence at a time. Next is the "Output Folder" [2], where you specify where the results will be stored after they are done. Each sequence gets its own folder, and each operator gets its own subfolder inside the sequence's folder.

The "Scan Result" button [3] is used to reread the current output folder for any new results. For example, after you have processed some input sequences, you can press this button and it will reread the contents of that folder. The results then show up neatly in the Output Results view window [4].

In the output results view, you can see all your processed sequences. Each result from an operator is listed (for example, "heavy_track_result" [5]). To import the result, you select the result you want to import [6] and then decide which parts to import. If you remember from the panel overview, the Heavy panel includes a heavy autotracker and also a dense point cloud generator, which needs undistorted footage. In nearly all situations, you want to have "Smart Importer" [7] enabled, and depending on whether you also chose to undistort and create a dense point cloud, you should check [8] and [9] as well. When you have chosen which parts you want to import, press "Import Selected" [10] and it will import your selected parts from the result folder.

Input Section

Now that we have covered how to use the output part of the batch processor, let's look at how to get results in the first place. You need to first choose different input sequences and then process them.

To choose your input footages, you can either import each image sequence separately or enable "Watch Folder Mode" [11], which allows you to specify a folder that contains subfolders with image sequences. To do that, specify the watch folder path [12], scan that folder [13], and the sequences will appear in the input window.

In the window, you can toggle on and off which folders you want to use [14], and you can also specify exactly which operations you want to perform for a specific image sequence:

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  [15] converts the image sequence/video with the current settings you have chosen in the "Select Footage" panel.
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  [16] performs a quick track on the image sequence using the settings from the "Quick" panel.
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  [17] performs the heavy operator using the settings in the "Heavy" panel. For example, if you have specific settings for how the heavy autotrack should be performed and have enabled undistorting the image sequence and dense point cloud generation, it will do all of that.
• •
  [18] is the mesh generation option, which allows you to decide if you want the batch processor to perform mesh generation for the currently selected footage with the settings from the Heavy panel.

Main Settings and Processing

The "Use Main Settings" option [19], when enabled, allows you to specify a general set of operations you want to perform on all the image sequences instead of deciding which operators to apply one by one. When this setting is enabled, you will also get the option to enable autorun. When you then start processing, it will automatically perform the general main operations on all new sequences added to the watch folder. This is currently a new feature and is under development.

The "Start Processing" button [20] begins performing the specified operations on the specified input image sequences, processing them one by one. If you have a license type that allows email notifications and you have turned on this feature in the "Account" panel, you will receive a notification on your email when the processing is done.

Quick Panel

The Quick Autotrack feature in MotionMaster 3D provides a fast way to track your footage using SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). When using this method, you get a live preview of the camera solve combined with your footage, showing how features are extracted and how the camera's movement is calculated.

Keep in mind that this method requires knowledge of your camera intrinsics, such as sensor width, focal length, and resolution in both X and Y, in order to accurately solve the camera. It is also helpful if you know the distortion parameters of your lens, but this is not strictly required unless your footage has significant distortion.

With that said, let us go through the Quick panel in detail and explain what each parameter does.

Saved Optics Presets

The first section is the Saved Optics Presets tab. Here you can save your current configuration as a preset for later use by clicking Add preset [1]. To apply an existing preset, open the dropdown menu and select the one you want [2].

Optics Configuration

The main configuration box is where you define the core intrinsics. You can enter the Focal length (mm) [3] or the Focal length (px) [4], as well as adjust the Sensor width [5] and the footage resolution in X [6] and Y [7].

These values are linked: for example, if you change the sensor width or resolution, the focal length in pixels will automatically update because these parameters are constrained by a formula. Correct optics settings are crucial for a successful track. Most problems that arise are due to incorrect intrinsics, so make sure these values are accurate. If you notice that almost no features are being extracted, it is likely because the optics settings are incorrect, which results in the wrong focal length in pixels.

Advanced Settings

The advanced settings include the optical centers in X [8] and Y [9]. By default, these are set to half of the resolution values [6][7], and they update automatically when the resolution changes. This is intentional, since most users do not need to adjust them manually. However, if you do want to set custom values, first define the resolution, then overwrite the optical centers.

The rest of the fields are for lens distortion values: K1 [10], K2 [11], K3 [12], P1 [13], and P2 [14]. In most cases, you can leave these at their defaults unless you know your camera's calibration.

Performance Settings

Performance settings affect how the tracker extracts and matches features. The Number of features [15] controls how many features to look for in each frame (default 1000). Levels [16] defines how many pyramid levels are used. A pyramid is a set of downscaled copies of each frame, which allows the tracker to find features at different scales (zoomed in or out).

Each level is scaled according to the Scale factor [17]. For example, with a scale factor of 1.20, level 0 is the original image, level 1 is scaled to 1/1.2 of the original size, level 2 to 1/(1.2²), and so on. A smaller scale factor gives finer steps between levels but requires more levels to cover large zoom differences, while a larger scale factor is faster but less precise.

The Init threshold fast [18] sets the primary threshold for the FAST corner detector. It looks for strong, obvious features first. If not enough are found, the tracker falls back to the Min threshold fast [19], which accepts weaker features. If you are not getting enough features, try increasing the feature count [15] and lowering the threshold values [18][19].

Viewer Settings

The Viewer settings control how the live preview window looks. While most users will not need to change these, they can be useful for customizing the display.

You can adjust the keyframe size [20] and keyframe line width [21] to change how keyframes appear, and the graph line width [22] to control the thickness of the motion path. The point size [23] changes how large feature points are displayed. The camera size [24] and camera line width [25] affect how the drawn camera rig looks. Finally, the viewpoint parameters [26–29] set the default viewer position and focal length, which define the angle and distance from which the tracking scene is shown.

Tracking Direction and Overlap

At the bottom of the panel are the Forward [31] and Backward [30] options, which control the tracking direction. Quick Autotrack is a SLAM-based tracker, meaning it only has access to past frames, not future ones. This allows real-time tracking but also requires an initialization period before it can begin solving the camera. As a result, the first few frames will not have a solved camera position.

For example, in a 100-frame sequence, the tracker might only start solving at frame 20, leaving frames 1–19 without a solution. To minimize this gap, try to include parallax movement (camera translation) early in the footage, as this helps the tracker initialize faster.

The Smart overlap [32] feature improves this process by limiting the backward pass to only the region where the forward tracker failed, plus a margin. The margin is controlled by the Overlap setting [33]: Low (factor 2), Medium (factor 3), or High (factor 4).

For example, if the forward pass starts solving at frame 20, the initialization period is 19 frames. With Smart overlap set to Medium, the backward pass will start at approximately frame 77 (20 + 19 × 3) and track backwards to fill the gap. In most cases, you can leave these settings at their defaults.

Running Autotrack

Once everything is configured, press Autotrack (Quick) [34] to begin. Two windows will appear: one showing the live camera solve and one showing the feature extraction. If both Forward and Backward tracking are enabled, these windows will reopen for the second pass. When the process finishes, you will see the extracted 3D points and a moving camera in your Blender scene.

Focal Length Estimation

The Quick panel also includes a Focal length estimation tool. Set a start frame [35] and an end frame [36], then press Estimate focal length [37]. The addon will run a short process using the Heavy Autotracker in the background to estimate the focal length from that section of footage.

Heavy Panel

The Heavy panel is the primary processing panel in MotionMaster 3D. It combines COLMAP, a custom-compiled GLOMAP, and OpenMVS to deliver robust and high-quality results. In this panel, you can configure all major operations: feature extraction, matching, mapping, and mesh generation. The Heavy tracker is reliable and stable, offering a balance between processing time and accuracy. By adjusting the available settings, you can fine-tune performance and result quality to suit your project.

This panel includes two modes: Simple mode and Custom mode. As you can tell from the names, one is intended to be much simpler than the other, which allows you to make custom changes and apply the exact settings you want. We will first go through how to use Custom mode and then Simple mode.

Main Settings (Custom Mode)

The first section is the Settings box, which defines the key operations and processing options.

• •
  Advanced Feature Detection [1] enables domain size pooling during feature extraction. This makes the system more robust on difficult footage with motion blur or large perspective changes. Note that enabling this forces the extraction step to run on the CPU, even if CUDA [9] is enabled.
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  Zoom [2] allows focal length to vary across frames. Use this if your footage contains zooming, as the solver will no longer assume a constant focal length.
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  Undistort [3] processes each image to remove lens distortion and saves undistorted versions in a subfolder.
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  Max Size [4] sets a limit on image resolution. For example, if your footage is 6000 × 4000 pixels, and you set Max Size to 3000, the images will be downscaled to 3000 × 2000.
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  Features [5] controls the maximum number of features extracted per image. More features increase detail and accuracy but also processing time.
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  High Quality Dense [6] is available only when Undistort [3] is enabled. It generates a dense, colorized point cloud from your footage, allowing highly detailed 3D scene reconstruction.
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  Intelligent Matching [7] uses a smarter strategy for feature matching between images, improving efficiency and robustness.
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  Upright Footage [8] assumes the footage has no roll rotation, greatly speeding up feature extraction.
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  CUDA [9] enables GPU acceleration for supported operations.
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  Overlap [10] sets how many neighboring images are compared during matching. Lower values are faster but less accurate, while higher values improve reconstruction quality at the cost of speed.

Advanced Settings

The Advanced settings allow further control over tracking and reconstruction. For most cases, simply select the Medium preset [11], which balances speed and quality.

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  Fast preset reduces processing time significantly but may lower tracking accuracy.
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  Heavy preset is slower but produces higher quality than Medium.
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  Extreme preset switches to exhaustive matching and additional refinements, producing the highest quality results but with very long processing times.

All presets adjust the values in the advanced settings, but you can also override them manually:

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  Feature Extractor [12] improves extraction on footage with strong perspective changes.
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  Confidence [13] sets the geometric verification threshold. Higher values are stricter, filtering out more bad matches but also potentially discarding good ones.
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  Max Ratio [14] controls how selective matching is. Lower values give fewer but more reliable matches; higher values keep more matches but risk false positives.
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  Min Inlier Ratio [15] defines the minimum ratio of inliers required for a match to be accepted.
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  Min Inliers [16] is the absolute minimum number of inliers needed between two images for them to be linked.
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  Max Matches [17] limits the number of matches per image pair to avoid memory overload and excessive processing time.
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  Max Trials [18] sets the maximum number of attempts to fit a geometric model. Higher values improve reliability but slow things down.
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  Max Error [19] sets the maximum pixel error allowed for a point match. Lower values enforce stricter accuracy; higher values are more forgiving but less precise.

Loop Closure

Enable Loop Detection [20] activates loop closure detection. This helps when the camera revisits the same area, such as walking in a circle or orbiting around an object, ensuring consistent alignment.

Track Establishment

These settings control how many observations are required for reliable tracks:

• •
  Min Views Per Track [21] is the minimum number of images that must observe a 3D point for it to be accepted. More views increase reliability but may discard useful points if set too high.
• •
  Min Tracks Per View [22] defines the minimum number of points required for an image to be included in the reconstruction.

Optimization

Optimization settings refine the final reconstruction:

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  Bundle Adjustment [23] sets how strongly the system refines camera poses and 3D points. Higher values improve accuracy but require more computation.
• •
  Global Positioning [24] controls how strictly global position constraints are enforced. Lower values allow flexibility, while higher values enforce tighter alignment.
• •
  Min Triangulation Matches [25] sets the minimum matches needed to triangulate a new 3D point. Lower values create more points but may add noise, while higher values give cleaner geometry but fewer points.

Running the Heavy Tracker

To start the Heavy Autotrack, press Autotrack (Heavy) [26]. Make sure the system console is open so you can follow progress in real time. To stop the process, click inside the console window and press Ctrl+C.

Now that you have a good understanding of the different settings in Custom mode, let's go through Simple mode:

Main Settings (Simple Mode)

Now nearly all the different settings are gone, and left are some presets and a few options. Currently, the simple view offers 9 different premade presets [1], which are each intended to be used in different scenarios. We will go through them one by one:

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  Fast preview: Use for a fast first pass to see if the clip reconstructs.
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  General Purpose: This is the default preset and is intended to be used in most scenarios such as handheld footage with mixed textures. This is a balance between speed and performance.
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  Repetitive textures: Good for scenes with repetitive textures such as grids, bricks, architecture, floors, and more.
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  Forward motion: Use when walking straight, car dash, head-mounted, and so on.
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  Orbit / Turntable: Use when rotating around an object, tripod pan, or turntable.
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  Extreme robust: Good for more challenging scenarios that require extreme reliability.
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  Moving subjects: Use for dynamic scenes with people or objects moving in frame.
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  Sparse features: Good for deserts, walls, uniform surfaces, and low-texture scenes.
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  Last Resort: Use when all other presets fail; this is a last attempt.

(If you notice that any specific configuration works great in any particular situation and you would like to share it with the community, feel free to contact me and I might add it as a preset available for everyone in the next update.)

Options

Here you have the option to turn on or off two features: Variable Focal Length [2] and Angled/Rotated Camera [3]. The first option should be enabled if your footage includes a zoom, meaning that your focal length changes throughout the sequence. The next option, Angled/Rotated Camera [3], should be enabled if you rotate your camera a lot in the sequence you are trying to track.

Essential Settings

In this box, you have three settings to decide. The first one is CUDA (GPU) [4], and when this is enabled, parts of the processing will happen on the GPU. Note that you need to have an NVIDIA GPU for this to work. Next is the Undistort [5] setting, and when this is enabled, it will undistort your footage and try to find the distortion intrinsics of your footage. Lastly is the High Quality Dense [6] setting, which requires the Undistort [5] option to be enabled for it to work (therefore it is greyed out in the right image). When the High Quality Dense [6] setting is enabled, it also makes the heavy tracker produce a dense point cloud of the scene. Each point in the point cloud will receive its own color from the footage, making it accurately replicate the captured scene. Note that the High Quality Dense [6] feature needs to be enabled in order for you to later be able to generate a mesh of the tracked scene.

Next, just press the Autotrack (Heavy) [7] button and the heavy autotracker will begin using the settings you have chosen. Note that you can see the progress of the operator live in the progress panel at the top or inside Blender's system console. You can also cancel/stop the current process by going into the system console and pressing Ctrl+C.

Mesh Generation

If Undistort (C[3]/S[5]) and High Quality Dense (C[6]/S[6]) are enabled, you can also generate a mesh. The Mesh Quality setting (C[27]/S[8]) offers four presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Higher settings produce finer meshes but require longer processing times. Then you can press Generate Mesh (C[28]/S[9]) and it will use the current dense point cloud and the mesh quality setting to generate a mesh.

Conclusion

The Heavy panel gives you complete control over the tracking and reconstruction process. In most cases, using Simple mode with the General Purpose preset provides a good balance between speed and quality. From here, the next step in the workflow is the Point Cloud Cleanup panel, which helps clean up your newly created point cloud.

Point Cloud Cleanup Panel

The Point Cloud Cleanup panel is a relatively simple panel. It is only meant to provide a simple way for you to filter out unwanted vertices in your point cloud. It uses a Statistical Outlier Removal (SOR) method, which generally works well.

Selecting Your Point Cloud

The first thing you do is reference your point cloud in the Target object box [1].

Cleanup Parameters

Next is for you to decide the Cleanup parameters. These two settings control how aggressively the algorithm removes outlier points from your point cloud.

Running the Cleanup

After you have played around with the settings, press the Cleanup Point Cloud [4] button, which will perform the filtration on your point cloud. Note that if you are not happy with the result, you can always press Ctrl+Z to revert your result and try different settings until you are satisfied.

Aligner Panel

The Aligner panel is much simpler than the previous panels. It provides two main tools to quickly orient your tracked solution.

Floor Tool

The Floor [1] feature allows you to select a set of vertices and align them with the XY plane. When you click Floor, the parent object of the result is adjusted so that the selected points lie flat, effectively snapping your ground plane into place.

Flip Tool

If the orientation is inverted after applying Floor (for example, the ground points end up facing the wrong way), you can use the Flip [2] button. This flips the Z axis of the parent object, switching the orientation from -Z up to +Z up.

Reset Panel

The Reset panel helps you clear out old tracking data from a specific folder while keeping your image sequence intact. Every time you use Quick or Heavy Autotrack in MotionMaster 3D, files containing 3D data from previous runs are generated. Over time, these can clutter your project folder and make it harder to iterate with new settings. The Reset panel makes it easy to remove this data so you can quickly start fresh.

Also Delete Subfolders

The first option is Also delete subfolders [1]. When enabled, the reset operation will not only remove files but also delete any subfolders within the current working folder.

Reset Button

The second option is the Reset [2] button. Clicking this will remove all files in the current working folder except for your image sequence. If Also delete subfolders [1] is enabled, subfolders will be removed as well, effectively erasing everything in the folder except your source images. If the Batch Mode [8] is enabled in the Select Footage panel, the reset button will perform the reset operation for all the folders currently active in the Select Footage panel.

Confirmation Dialog

Before completing the reset, a confirmation dialog will appear listing all files scheduled for deletion. This gives you the chance to double-check and either proceed or cancel the operation, preventing accidental loss of files you may want to keep.