Table of content

Introduction

3D drawings are a powerful tool to enhance your presentations and highlight key actions in a video. They bring dynamism and depth in an otherwise flat picture, and help to keep the audience invested and pay attention to your message.


3D drawings are drawing tools that are aligned with the video perspective. They are visual tools and do not allow for any measurement. They also do not offer any tracking. For more advanced tools such as animated drawings, player tracking and distance and speed calculations, see the 3D Analysis module


Requirements

Dartfish software 2024 or later with a myDartfish Pro or myDartfish Pro S license


Add 3D drawings

Once the video is in the montage, open the drawing tools tab and go to the 3D section. Select one of the drawing tools available (highlighted in red in the below screenshot) and its properties such as width and color will be displayed below. Then, click on the video to start drawing.


Similarly to the standard drawing tools, 3D Drawings are by default added on the video. If the drawing needs to be applied only on one specific frame, you will need to add a still shot first.


Adjust calibration

The 3D drawings are aligned with a default calibration to create the right perspective effect. In many cases, this will be enough. However, you may want to adjust the calibration to improve the alignment of the drawings with the video


Right calibration - The rectangle is aligned with the video
Wrong calibration - The rectangle is not correctly aligned


To adjust the calibration, click on the calibration button in the 3D drawing section. This will display the grid the drawings are aligned with

Use one of the 5 calibration presets to change the alignment (left one: camera is looking at the left side of the field/ right one: the camera is looking at the right side of the field)

To finetune the calibration manually, use the anchors in the grid. Start with the yellow anchor and if necessary use the grey and white ones

Move the yellow anchor to rotate and resize the grid
Move the yellow anchor and hold SHIFT to  rotate the grid horizontally
Move the yellow anchor and hold CTRL to rotate the grid vertically
Move the yellow anchor and hold CTRL+SHIFT to zoom the grid

Once the calibration is done, select a drawing tool and the grid will be hidden


The calibration is applied to the whole video. If the camera is fixed, the calibration will remain accurate. If there are pan, tilt and/or zoom movements, the calibration will not be relevant. In this case, you can use still shots to set different calibrations to different video frames

 

Adjust the background color detection

The background color of the video is automatically detected so that 3D drawings only apply on the background and players (or any other item whose color is different than the background color) are displayed on top of the drawings

3D drawings with a correct background color defined
3D drawing without a background color defined
3D drawing with a wrong background color defined

To change the background color, click on Background in the 3D drawing tools section. A purple layer will be overlaid on the video to visualize the background color. Drawings will only be applied on this purple layer. In the below example, the objective is to set a background color so that all the field is covered by the purple layer except the players

To define a background color, click on the video. A marker is added at this position and its color will be used as background color. You can then change the threshold, edge and saturation settings of that color. A high threshold value will be less restrictive (i.e. other colors will be considered as background too), while a low threshold value will be more restrictive. Up to two markers can be added on the video, and each marker will have its own settings


Once the background color is set, click on any drawing tool to hide the purple layer and continue your analysis


Define up to two sets of color-related settings (fill/border color and transparency) that are applied to the 3D drawing tools. Assign a set of color to each team and then switch easily from one set to another to add drawings for one or the other team.


There are sets of colors available:

  • Custom: no set of color is applied, the colors are defined at the drawing tool level
  • Home Team: 1st set of color
  • Away Team: 2nd set of color


To define the Home or Away set, right-click on it. 3 settings can be customized:

  • Fill: the drawing's fill color
  • Line: the drawing's border color
  • Opacity: choose among 5 options that define the drawing's fill and line