DaVinci Resolve Fusion Tracking: Point, Planar & 3D

For motion tracking in DaVinci Resolve, pick the tool by what the shot gives you. Tracker handles one or more recognizable 2D features, Planar Tracker handles a rigid surface such as a screen or sign, and Camera Tracker handles a 3D solve that needs real parallax. Conventional point and planar tracking work in Resolve Free; Camera Tracker and AI IntelliTrack require Studio. The controls below follow Blackmagic’s September 2026 Resolve 21.1 manual.

When a track slips, look at the shot before you touch the settings: geometry, texture, mixed depths, reflections, motion blur and anything that crosses the analyzed pixels.

Choose the right Fusion tracker

If all you need is a title that follows a shoulder, solving a 3D camera is wasted effort. For a screen seen at an angle, a position-only point track is usually too weak. Blackmagic’s Fusion overview introduces point, planar and camera tracking, and the current DaVinci Resolve 21.1 Reference Manual is what I follow for the exact steps and interface terms below.

If MediaIn, Merge, masks and node inputs still feel unfamiliar, work through the Fusion tutorial for beginners first. Tracker data makes far more sense once the node tree does.

Prepare the shot before tracking

Open the clip on the Fusion page and look at it at full resolution. Tracking is easier on the clean image than on one where grain, glow, heavy blur or an aggressive grade has changed the texture. In Resolve’s normal image pipeline Fusion comes before the Color page, so the original clip is often already your best starting point.

Choose a reference frame where the target is sharp, large, unobstructed and close to the angle you want for the insert. Frame one is convenient, and that's its only qualification. For a planar track, Blackmagic’s training specifically recommends starting where the surface is large, clear, least distorted and moving slowly enough to avoid motion blur.

If the shot has noticeable lens distortion, correct it before the planar analysis. Otherwise straight graphics tracked into a distorted plate can look attached in the center and slide near the edges. Put the distortion back after the insertion only when the finished graphic has to inherit the original plate’s lens shape; the right node order depends on the composite and the delivery pipeline.

How to use the 2D Tracker node

The Resolve 21.1 manual makes IntelliTrack the Tracker node’s default. It's an AI tracker built on the DaVinci Neural Engine, and it requires Studio. Choose Point for the conventional pattern and search-box controls described below; that's also what you'll use in Resolve Free. This Point option has nothing to do with the Point algorithm inside Planar Tracker.

1. Select MediaIn and press Shift-Spacebar. Search for Tracker and add it after MediaIn.
2. Move to a clear frame and place the tracker on a unique, high-contrast feature that belongs to the motion you need.
3. Size the inner pattern box around the recognizable detail. Make the outer search box just large enough to hold the feature’s movement to the next frame.
4. Track forward or backward and keep your eyes on the viewer. Stop as soon as the marker jumps to a different edge or texture.
5. Open the Operation tab and set Operation to Match Move. With the plate on the orange background input and nothing on the foreground, this stabilizes the plate. To attach a graphic, connect it to the green foreground input and set Merge to FG Over BG. BG Only gives you the stabilized plate.
6. Under Match Move Settings, check Reference Time before you position the graphic. Custom Time lets you pick a specific frame with Set and jump back to it with Go. Place the graphic on that reference frame, then watch the composite at normal speed. A wrong starting offset doesn't necessarily mean the track is bad.

The inner box answers “what should I recognize?” The outer box answers “where should I look for it next?” A huge search area buys you nothing: it slows the analysis and hands the tracker more wrong candidates. Fast motion may need a bigger search area, and slow motion usually doesn't.

One tracked pattern gives you position. Two or more good patterns give Match Move both rotation and scale; add the second one with Add above the Tracker List and enable the Position, Rotation and Scaling components you need. Keep the patterns well apart on the same rigid object. Extra patterns only help when they move consistently.

How to track a screen or sign with Planar Tracker

Planar tracking analyzes many pixels across one rigid surface. For a screen replacement, billboard, book cover, wall graphic or flat vehicle panel, it's usually where I'd start.

1. Add Planar Tracker between MediaIn and MediaOut.
2. Go to a clear reference frame, click Set and draw a polygon around textured pixels on one plane. The shape doesn't have to follow the final graphic’s corners.
3. Leave out the background, rotating wheels, reflections, hands, faces and anything else that moves independently of the plane.
4. Choose Motion Type to match the real motion. There are five models: Translation covers position; Translation, Rotation adds rotation; Translation, Rotation, Scale adds uniform scale; Affine also models skew; Perspective handles corner angles that change. When in doubt, Blackmagic recommends Perspective. A simpler model can rescue a troublesome track, but it will slide if the shot really needs perspective.
5. With the reference set, click Go to return to it, track to the end, click Go again, then track to the start. Changing the Planar Tracker reference after analysis destroys the existing tracking data, so save a copy before you start a new reference-based track.
6. When the analysis finishes, switch Operation Mode to Steady. The tracked plane should look locked in place. Leftover wobble shows drift far more clearly than a polished insert can.
7. Set the mode back to Track. For a simple corner pin in the same node, use the Planar Tracker’s corner-pin workflow. For motion data you can reuse, click Create Planar Transform and run the graphic, matte, or clean plate through that node.

The tracking shape tells the tracker which pixels to analyze. It has nothing to do with the corner pin. Keeping that straight prevents a common mistake: drawing a tight four-corner rectangle around a glossy screen when the border or a textured frame nearby would give a more stable plane.

Steady and Stabilize do different jobs. Steady locks the tracked plane so you can spot residual drift. Stabilize smooths translation, rotation and scale while keeping the intended camera move, and it needs the Compute Stabilization button, which overwrites any earlier stabilization. For a screen insert, switch back to Track or Corner Pin once you've checked the drift, so the background keeps its original motion.

The current Resolve 21.1 Reference Manual documents the sequence: choose a clean reference, click Set, define the track region, analyze the range you need, check the result in Steady and create a Planar Transform when you need reusable motion data. The older Resolve 18 practice guide is still good training, but for current UI details I go by the 21.1 manual.

Keep the original plate on Merge’s background input. Build the graphic on its own branch, position it at the Planar Transform’s Reference Time, then connect the transformed graphic to Merge’s foreground. Apply that motion once. A generated Planar Transform normally shares the Track spline with its source, so edits to that track update it automatically, and you can see the spline in the Spline Editor. After a retrack, check which frames the spline covers and look at the composite. Don't assume a pasted or separately edited node still uses the data you intended.

When to use the 3D Camera Tracker

Use Camera Tracker when the camera moves through a scene and the insert has to live in 3D space: a sign on a wall revealed by parallax, a 3D title behind foreground objects, or an object sitting on a ground plane. The tool analyzes many features, solves a virtual camera and produces a point cloud that represents the structure of the scene.

A useful solve needs parallax: static features at different depths have to shift by different amounts as the camera moves. Locked-off shots and pure zooms give it very little depth information. Heavy rolling-shutter wobble can also corrupt feature paths, so a camera with a good-looking solve number may still fail a simple geometry check.

1. Add Camera Tracker after MediaIn. When moving people, cars, water, reflections or other non-static regions would produce bad tracks, connect a rough matte to the node’s white Occlusion Mask input. Areas where the mask is white aren't tracked, and the fixed scenery outside it stays available for analysis. Preview the generated points before solving and make sure the excluded motion isn't feeding camera tracks.
2. Enter the recorded focal length and film gate or camera model if you know them. If the metadata is missing, give the solver the closest camera information you can justify and let it estimate only what the shot supports.
3. Analyze the clip, look over the generated tracks and solve the camera. Delete obvious outliers a few at a time, run Solve again and compare. Remove too many tracks and the solver may not have enough information left, which makes the error worse.
4. Judge the solve by eye as well as by the number. Average Solve Error is the distance, in pixels, between the original 2D tracks and the solved 3D locators reprojected onto the image. The Resolve 21.1 reference treats anything below 1.0 as a useful HD target, calls 0.6 to 0.8 pixels excellent and asks for lower error at higher resolutions. Even a low number can't prove that ground orientation, scene scale, contact or parallax is right.
5. Choose suitable points to set the ground plane and origin, then export the solved 3D scene.
6. Drop in a simple ImagePlane3D or primitive first. Check contact, perspective and parallax before you build the final asset.

Camera Tracker requires DaVinci Resolve Studio; point and planar tracking stay available in Free. Blackmagic lists that edition boundary in its official Studio feature comparison, and our Resolve Free vs Studio breakdown puts it in context before you build a 3D workflow around a Studio-only solve.

Track through occlusion without poisoning the data

A tracker can't see detail hidden by a hand, a person, a car or the frame edge. Let it keep going blindly through the obstruction and you get keyframes that look confident and are wrong.

For a point track, stop on the last good frame and cut off the bad tail with Trim to End, which deletes the tracker data after the current frame. To hand over to another nearby feature on the same rigid object, set Path Center to Track Center (append) before you move the pattern; the new path is then offset so it continues the old one. Check the join for a jump. If no reliable feature survives, bridge only the short missing stretch by hand and inspect every frame.

For a planar track, keep foreground motion outside the tracking polygon or feed a matte into the white Occlusion Mask input. The white areas of that matte mark the foreground occluder, and the Planar Tracker ignores them. The Tracker setting matters here: with Hybrid, the manual strongly recommends an occlusion mask, while with Point it suggests trying the track without a mask first.

Repair planar drift from the last good tracked frame: trim the failed tail, improve the region or the occlusion mask and analyze again. Moving the polygon only changes which pixels get analyzed. The motion that's already computed stays as it was. The manual also warns that the Planar Tracker doesn't save its temporary tracking information, so after you save and reopen a comp you may be unable to resume an unfinished analysis and will need a fresh track. Keep saving the project anyway; just don't count on reopening it to pick up where the analysis stopped.

A community planar-tracking case shows the same symptom and the same repair pattern: check the grid, mask the hand that crosses the surface and go back to the last reliable frame. For the technical details, the Resolve 21.1 manual is still the reference I follow.

If the obstruction has to pass in front of the insert, tracking only gets you halfway. Build a holdout mask or roto layer for the foreground object. The Fusion rotoscoping guide explains manual edge work, and the Magic Mask guide covers the Studio-assisted option.

The Color page’s Tracker palette is a different tool. It's mostly used to move Power Windows for local corrections or blur, and it's separate from this Fusion Tracker node. For a face that just needs obscuring, start with that simpler Color workflow, and move to Fusion when the composite needs node-based motion transfer or holdout layers. The face and background blur guide covers Power Window tracking, first-bad-frame repair, mosaic and the final privacy review without turning a simple anonymization job into a bigger composite.

How to diagnose and fix tracking drift

The track slides gradually

Go back to the first frame where it's visibly wrong. Choose texture that changes less, enlarge the useful planar region, remove pixels that sit at another depth or reduce the motion model. Blurring or smoothing a path that follows the wrong surface won't save it.

The tracker jumps during motion blur

Use a broader recognizable pattern or a nearby feature on the same rigid object. A bigger search region helps only when the displacement is the problem. If the pixels themselves become unreadable, bridge those frames by hand and reconnect to valid analysis.

The plane flips or bends

The shape probably includes detail that moves on its own, a reflection, two depths or too little stable texture. Go back to the reference frame, redraw the region, retrack the failed range and check the result in Steady mode before you use the transform data.

The insert moves twice

The tracking data has probably been applied twice, for example through a Planar Transform and again through a tracked Transform or corner pin. Follow the node chain from the graphic to Merge and keep one intentional motion transfer.

The object disappears near the frame edge

Check Domain of Definition and frame bounds at each node, then look at Global In/Out, mask bounds, timing and Merge order. A Transform or crop can clip the insert even when the tracking data is fine. The Resolve Inspector guide helps when Edit-page transforms or clip timing are involved too.

Make the tracked insert look attached

A perfect path can still give you a fake composite. Match the insert’s perspective, brightness, contrast, black level, sharpness, grain and motion blur to the plate. If the sign sits behind a foreground object, restore that occlusion. If it belongs on a glossy screen, keep some reflections and glare on top of it; a perfectly clean rectangle gives the trick away.

If the insert also depends on a keyed foreground, the Delta Keyer workflow covers matte cleanup before that foreground goes back over the tracked composite.

Place the graphic at the reference frame before you judge the track. A Planar Transform moves it relative to that reference, so a poorly chosen starting position can look like drift even when the data is solid.

Finish the artwork before the tracked transform when you want all its elements to move as one. Put view-dependent finishing after the transform when that effect belongs to the final composite.

For styled cards or labels, build the design first, then send the combined result through the tracking transform. The rounded-corner workflow shows a reusable graphic treatment you can attach this way.

Final tracking QA

• Watch the raw tracker or the Steady view before you judge the finished graphic.
• Inspect the first frame, the reference frame, the last frame, every occlusion, blur and frame exit.
• Check the insert’s corners and edges at full resolution.
• Make sure only one node applies the tracking transform.
• Play it at normal speed, then render a short test and watch it outside Fusion.

Once the short test render passes, the DaVinci Resolve Fusion hub leads on to node fundamentals, keying, rotoscoping, masks and motion graphics without repeating the tracking steps covered here.

Fusion tracking FAQ

Which Fusion tracker should I use for text?

Use the 2D Tracker when the text follows a distinct feature without much change in perspective. Use Planar Tracker when the text sits on a flat surface. Use Camera Tracker when it has to exist in solved 3D space with camera parallax.

Is Planar Tracker available in DaVinci Resolve Free?

Yes. The classic 2D Tracker and Planar Tracker work in both Resolve Free and Studio. Fusion Camera Tracker requires Studio, and so does the AI IntelliTrack mode in the Tracker node.

What is the best frame to start a planar track?

Choose a frame where the plane is large, sharp, unobstructed, fairly undistorted and free of motion smear. Set that frame as the reference and track in both directions.

How can I check whether a planar track is good?

After tracking, switch Operation Mode to Steady and watch the tracked surface. It should stay locked without sliding or bumps. A temporary grid or high-contrast insert also makes drift at the edges easy to see.

Why does my tracked graphic slide?

The tracker may be following weak texture, several depths, reflections or an object that crosses the surface. The motion type may also be too simple for the shot, or more complex than the shot supports. Fix the first bad frame and check the raw data again.

Should I use Planar Transform or corner pin?

Use the direct corner-pin workflow for a straightforward screen or sign replacement. Create a Planar Transform when you want reusable planar motion on a graphic, mask, clean plate or irregular element elsewhere in the node tree.

Jason Miller I run DaVinci Resolve Club, an independent publication. My guides explain editing, color, Fairlight, Fusion and delivery, with clear Free vs Studio limits.