3d text in scene

[ZoNE97]

I have seen several youtube videos where people have added 3d text, or just plain text to the video that moves with the items in the scene. Like the effect they used in zombie land? what is this effect called and what software can you use to recreate this easily?

[poisondeathray]

It's called 3d matchmoving , or 3d compositing

It involves motion tracking and "solving a 3d scene" by calculating motion vectors; so you can place objects (e.g. 3d text) into a scene, as if they existed there when you were shooting.

There is no "easy software" for this, at least not if you want semi decent quality

Typical software used for the matchmoving part: PF Track, syntheyes, foundry camera tracker , nuke, boujou, maya etc... Most of them are very expensive

A free one is voodoo, but I don't know how well it works
http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html