Why PFTrack for Forensics
Built on proven visual effects technology, PFTrack provides forensic professionals with the tools to reconstruct scenes in 3D, analyse camera perspectives and extract meaningful spatial information from visual evidence.
Precision developed in VFX
Multi-camera expertise
Enterprise deployment
Node-based audit trail
Developed for demanding feature-film visual effects, PFTrack delivers precise camera tracking and 3D reconstruction. These capabilities help forensic specialists analyse scene geometry, establish camera positions and derive measurements from imagery with greater confidence.
PFTrack can solve multiple cameras capturing the same scene from different viewpoints. By combining visual information across camera angles, forensic specialists can reconstruct scene geometry, compare perspectives and better understand spatial relationships between people, vehicles and objects.
PFTrack Enterprise supports fully air-gapped operation using the PFBucket licence server, helping organisations work within strict security environments. Sensitive imagery and casework can be processed on isolated networks, supporting workflows where external connectivity is restricted or prohibited.
PFTrack’s node-based workflow makes the processing steps and parameters behind a reconstruction visible and reviewable. Investigators can revisit decisions, reproduce processing steps and document how results were obtained, helping technical findings remain transparent and easier to explain during expert review or court proceedings.
Metadata handling
PFTrack’s metadata support helps preserve important information associated with source imagery throughout the processing workflow. Retaining relevant camera and image data can support traceability, reduce unnecessary information loss and help forensic teams document how visual evidence was processed and interpreted.
Hero Cloud
Scene reconstruction from the footage you already have.
Crime scenes are cleared. Suspects move on. The footage, CCTV, body-cam, dash-cam, witness video, is often all that survives. Hero Cloud reconstructs a measured 3D point cloud from a single tracked shot, providing court-admissible spatial measurement generated from existing evidence rather than a return visit. Available to Solo users as well as Studio and Enterprise.
Forensic Use Cases
From incident reconstruction to surveillance analysis, PFTrack helps forensic professionals turn video footage and photographic evidence into 3D reconstructions that support spatial analysis, investigative review and clear visual communication.
Crime scene reconstruction
Reconstruct crime scenes in 3D using available video footage and photographs. Analyse the relative positions of individuals and objects, examine sightlines and explore spatial relationships to help investigators assess possible sequences of events and present their findings clearly.
Traffic accident analysis
Combine footage from dashcams, CCTV and other camera sources to reconstruct road layouts, vehicle positions and movement paths in 3D. Analyse distances, trajectories and collision geometry to support accident investigations, compare evidence sources and assess competing accounts of an incident.
Evidence visualisation
Transform reconstructed scenes into clear 3D visualisations that help judges, juries, legal teams and expert witnesses understand complex spatial evidence. Exporting to supported 3D formats enables reconstructed scenes to be incorporated into wider visualisation workflows and compatible presentation or VR systems.
Surveillance analysis
Analyse footage from multiple CCTV cameras to establish camera positions and relate different viewpoints within a shared 3D environment. Reconstruct movement paths and examine the spatial relationships between individuals, objects and locations to help investigators interpret surveillance footage in the context of an investigation.
Key Capabilities for Forensic Analysts
PFTrack provides forensic analysts with tools to reconstruct incident scenes, analyse multiple camera viewpoints and derive spatial information from video and photographic evidence, supporting a more detailed understanding of events.
Multi-camera solving
3D scene reconstruction
Photogrammetry from evidence photography
Precise spatial measurement
Combine CCTV, bodycam, dashcam and witness smartphone footage to solve camera positions within a shared 3D space. This helps investigators compare viewpoints, establish spatial relationships and analyse how an incident unfolded across multiple recordings.
Reconstruct incident scenes in three dimensions using video evidence, without necessarily requiring an on-site scan. By recovering scene geometry from visual information, analysts can build measurable 3D representations to support spatial analysis and investigative review.
Turn still photographs into detailed 3D reconstructions of objects, vehicles and environments. PFTrack’s photogrammetry capabilities help analysts derive spatial context from scene photography, supporting closer examination of physical relationships and relevant features.
Use reconstructed 3D scenes to investigate distances, sightlines, trajectories and relative positions. PFTrack’s camera tracking and reconstruction tools support sub-pixel image analysis, helping analysts derive spatial measurements while accounting for camera perspective and scene geometry.
LiDAR-aided camera solving
Integrate LiDAR scans into camera-solving workflows using PFTrack’s Survey Solver. By aligning tracked footage with scanned scene geometry, forensic analysts can use spatial reference data to constrain camera solutions and relate video evidence to the physical environment.
Lens distortion correction
Account for lens distortion across footage captured using different cameras and lens types, including wide-angle CCTV, dashcams and bodycams. PFTrack helps analysts correct image distortion to support more reliable camera tracking, scene reconstruction and spatial analysis.
Choose the Deployment Appropriate to the Evidence
Evaluate PFTrack with a Solo download, or explore Studio and Enterprise for professional forensic environments. All offer the same powerful toolset for transforming multi-camera evidence into precision spatial data, with Studio and Enterprise designed for professional licensing, pipeline integration and secure workflows.
PFTrack Solo
For an individual
One artist on one computer at a time, licensed online directly in application. Buy a week, a month, or own it outright.
Common Forensics Questions
Forensic analysts use PFTrack to convert 2D video evidence, such as CCTV, bodycam, dashcam, and witness mobile footage, into measurable, sub-pixel accurate 3D scene models. By analyzing pixel data using advanced photogrammetry algorithms, the software calculates precise spatial dimensions without requiring physical, on-site scanning equipment.
This image-based reconstruction workflow enables legal teams to extract highly precise, objective metrics:
Precise Spatial Measurements: Determines exact distances, object scaling, and position coordinates directly from individual video frames.
Sightline & Visibility Verification: Establishes line-of-sight perspectives to confirm or challenge witness and suspect testimonies.
Trajectory Mapping: Reconstructs bullet vectors, falling objects, or pedestrian paths through physical 3D space.
The Hero Cloud node is a specialized spatial tracking tool within PFTrack that retrospectively generates a measured 3D point cloud from a single tracked video clip. This tool is designed for situations where a crime scene or traffic accident has been cleared, altered, or is no longer accessible to investigation teams.
[Available Evidence (CCTV/Bodycam)] ──► [Hero Cloud Node Processing] ──► [Measured 3D Point Cloud] ──► [Courtroom Presentation/VR]
By extracting geometric structural depth from existing evidence plates, Hero Cloud eliminates the need for a physical return visit to the scene. The resulting 3D point cloud functions as a court-admissible spatial asset, which can be easily integrated into presentation software, accident analysis modules, or virtual reality (VR) walkthroughs.
PFTrack solves multi-camera alignment challenges by processing video feeds from differing angles, frame rates, and lens distortions into a single, cohesive 3D spatial ecosystem.
When a single incident is captured across disparate sources (e.g., a combination of high-angle security cameras, moving vehicle dashcams, and mobile devices), PFTrack tracks common spatial features across all plates simultaneously. The software's unified camera solver calculates the relative position and lens characteristics of every sensor. This enables investigators to trace the exact 3D movement paths of individuals or vehicles seamlessly across multiple surveillance boundaries.
A node-based pipeline architecture is mandatory for forensic validation because it creates a permanent, unalterable digital audit trail of the entire evidence processing history. Every adjustment, filtering step, camera tracking parameter, and mathematical solve is recorded as a discrete node within PFTrack's Tracking Tree.
This structural design ensures that data handling adheres strictly to legal standards:
Repeatable Workflows: Allows independent analysts, opposing legal counsel, or peer reviewers to execute the exact same sequence to reproduce identical, verifiable results.
Chain-of-Evidence Integrity: Preserves original file metadata throughout the computational pipeline, preventing any covert modifications or data corruption.
Defensible Court Testimony: Provides an explicit, transparent visual blueprint of the technical process, allowing expert witnesses to confidently explain the underlying data processing logic to judges and juries.
Forensic teams utilize the Survey Solver node inside PFTrack to fuse physical, millimeter-accurate LiDAR laser scans with moving video evidence.
In high-stakes casework where a physical scan of an environment exists, the LiDAR dataset serves as the absolute "ground-truth" geometric reference.
The Survey Solver aligns the tracked camera positions from footage, such as a dynamic witness video or moving vehicle camera, directly to the stationary LiDAR point cloud. This hybrid process guarantees that the video-tracked camera path matches the exact dimensions of the real-world environment, removing any margin of error regarding lens distortions or tracking drift during critical accident and collision analysis.
For highly confidential casework and sensitive criminal investigations, PFTrack Enterprise supports completely air-gapped operation. Local workstations communicate locally via the proprietary PFBucket license server, removing the need for an active external internet connection. This architecture ensures that sensitive source footage, proprietary tracking assets, and critical case metadata remain completely enclosed within secure, localized agency networks, preventing external data breaches and strictly preserving chain-of-custody compliance.