ZEISS CinCraft Scenario Camera Tracking Now Compatible with Most Popular Lens Brands

ZEISS CinCraft Scenario Camera Tracking Now Compatible with Most Popular Lens Brands

Scenario 2.0 introduces pre-calibrated lens templates and the Lens Template Finetuner, increasing flexibility and compability while also saving a great amount of time. CinCraft Export 1.0, released at the same time, makes recorded tracking data ready for post-production software. 

Oberkochen/Germany, May 22, 2024

Overview of the lens templates available in ZEISS CinCraft Scenario 2.0 (as of May 2024)

ZEISS announces a major advancement of the ZEISS CinCraft Scenario camera tracking system. With software release 2.0, the powerful and flexible solution can now also be used for tracking with selected lenses from most popular cinema and broadcast lens brands. “Up to this point, CinCraft Scenario had only been usable by productions working with ZEISS and ARRI/ZEISS lenses”, says Christophe Casenave, responsible for Cinematography Products at ZEISS. “With this release, we make our camera tracking system available to many more users including broadcasters.”

Users can now utilize templates for over 90 lenses from more than 10 lens series that allow for skipping the recording of lens distortion by offering pre-calibrated lens characteristics. With the new Lens Template Finetuner, users only need to match generic lens templates to specific real characteristics of the lenses used in the respective project. The user-friendly software wizard guides users through the finetuning process step-by-step. This eliminates the complexity often associated with lens calibration and cuts lens preparation time in half. Finetuned templates can then be saved. In addition, CinCraft Scenario 2.0 allows users to load and finetune lens calibrations previously created with Ncam Reality, further enhancing their production flexibility.

ZEISS also releases CinCraft Export 1.0, a standalone software for Windows PCs, that enables users to export the recorded tracking data to industry standard file format FBX, as well as OpenEXR lens distortion STMaps. This makes it easy for a user to re-apply their live tracking data for post-production applications such as post-vis.

“We’re happy to make CinCraft Scenario available to more projects – not only through extending support to more lens brands – but also by providing the recorded tracking data for post-production. We will expand the number of supported lenses gradually over the months to come and look forward to offering full manual lens calibration later this year, making CinCraft Scenario usable with every cine and broadcast lens available,” Casenave concludes.

Availability

The ZEISS CinCraft Scenario release 2.0 with templates for select cinema lenses from ARRI, Cooke, Angenieux, Leitz and Fujinon, and broadcast lenses from Canon and Fujinon, plus the Lens Template Finetuner, is now available as an update directly in CinCraft Scenario. All available lens templates are selectable in the software at no charge, with more added gradually over the next months. The full release notes for CinCraft Scenario 2.0 can be found here: zeiss.ly/scenario2-0

Overview of supported lenses in ZEISS CinCraft Scenario 2.0: zeiss.ly/scenario-lenses

A tutorial about using the Lens Template Finetuner can be watched here: zeiss.ly/finetuner-tutorial

CinCraft Export 1.0 can be downloaded here: zeiss.ly/export-download

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ZEISS CinCraft Export 1.0 makes it easy for a user to re-apply their live tracking data for post-production applications such as post-vis.

ZEISS CinCraft Scenario 2.0 offers a variety of pre-calibrated lens templates for most popular cinema and broadcast lens brands

ZEISS Cinematography

ZEISS high-end cinematography lenses have been advancing the film industry for more than 80 years and have received numerous honors, including three Scientific and Engineering Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Today, around the world, filmmakers choose ZEISS lenses for their productions.

The ZEISS cine lens portfolio now includes the Nano Prime family of six high-speed (T1.5 throughout) cine lenses made specifically for mirrorless full frame cameras in addition to the Lightweight Zoom LWZ.3 for Super 35 as well as the Compact Prime CP.3 and CP.3 XD, and Cinema Zoom CZ.2. The Supreme Prime and Supreme Prime Radiance lens families combine a generous range of focal lengths with unsurpassed quality for all types of cameras.

The ZEISS CinCraft ecosystem offers lens data-related services and products for visual effects and virtual production. CinCraft Scenario is a flexible real-time camera tracking system for use in various environments indoors and outdoors, both for live and post application and incorporating lens data for streamlined calibration. CinCraft Mapper provides frame-accurate lens distortion and shading data for compositing and matchmoving.

Headquartered in Oberkochen, Germany, ZEISS Cinematography is represented in: Los Angeles, California and White Plains, New York, USA; Mexico City, Mexico; Cambridge and London, UK; New Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, India; Beijing and Shanghai, China; Taipei, Taiwan; Singapore; and Tokyo, Japan.

 

Press contact
ZEISS Cinematography
Benjamin Hagen
Phone: +49 7364 20-3979
Email: benjamin.hagen@zeiss.com