That changes with the release of Mocha Pro v3 and Mocha AE v3 in 2012. While all of this was necessary to better support their customers and clean up the product line, there were not many “cutting edge” new features in those releases.
Versions 2 and 2.5 were important releases for interface design, 64 bit support and the merger of all of Imagineer’s technology into one code base with mocha Pro. It quickly became Imagineer’s best selling product. Mocha Pro had a new UI and modules, including Remove, Lens Distortion, Insert Compositing, and Stabilize. Over the years, the array from products (mokey, monet, mocha, etc) from Imagineer could be seen as somewhat confusing, so they decided to combine products and into one: Mocha Pro. In 2010, Imagineer also dramatically simplified their product line. The applications reached 64-bit support in 2010 with the release of v2.5 as well as saw significant improvements in speed, including hardware accelerated rendering. Two years later, mocha and mocha AE v2 were released, featuring an improved UI and stabilization module. With After Effects in the mix, Imagineer now has over 42,000 users worldwide. The following year, the planar tracking tech was introduced to a much wider audience when Imagineer licensed Mocha AE to Adobe and had the product bundled with After Effects CS4. In 2006 mocha was first introduced as an affordable planar tracking and roto utility, designed to export 2D tracking and roto data into apps such as Flame and Smoke, Avid, Final Cut, After Effects, Fusion, NUKE, and others. This R&D development became a product in 2004 when Imagineer introduced monet, a planar tracking and insert compositing station designed to easily insert content into moving shots. Cinesite was looking or an efficient way for inserting the animated paintings into the picture frames on the hallways at Hogwarts. In 2003, Imagineer worked closely on an R&D basis with London-based Cinesite during post for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Using traditional point-based tracking methods, there is generally considerably more artist intervention. Using these methods, mocha’s Planar Tracker is quite robust and easy to use in its ability to track through problematic shots such as tracking obscured objects, motion blurred pixels and objects that go offscreen. With this in mind, mocha’s planar tracking is excellent at tracking faces and objects that are not thought of as “planes.” Comparing all aspects of this “planar pixel pattern” over time is what allows an application such as mocha’s tracker to stay locked on through color shifts, luminance changes and blurs.Īdditionally the shapes can use multi-layer modes to animate, add or subtract to the search area. While some users interpret “planar tracking” as only solving “flat” screens, almost all objects can be analyzed as a flat pixel pattern. The planar tracker then analyzes all the pixels in the shape and determines which are moving on the same relative plane. The artist feeds an application information as to what to track by creating simple spline shapes. With planar tracking, the process is a bit different. If an artist wants to map an object onto a plane, one would generally do a four point track, manually placing tracking points at appropriate places in order to define the rectangular plane.
The software uses various ways of analyzing the pixels on screen from frame to frame in order to track the pixels. Traditionally, most tracking was done by selecting a small region on the screen and having the software track the area from frame to frame. It uses techniques from 3D tracking rather than 2D approaches like optical flow, combining several different algorithms to produce a robust result. Planar tracking tech grew out of computer vision research carried out at Surrey University in the late ’90s.
But before we get to that, a bit of historical perspective is in order.Īt IBC 2001, Imagineer showed their planar tracking technology publicly for the first time, launching mokey, a removal product which allowed artists to get rid of objects in a scene with less manual tracking and painting/clone techniques. Brownlee is teaching a new mocha pro v3 course at fxphd this term, and the new release will also be available on the VPN. In this fxguide exclusive, we’ll take a look at some of the tech behind the new features, a bit of behind the scenes into the development of the software, as well as a written review and hands-on video from fxphd prof Ben Brownlee.
There will be tiered upgrade pricing from all mocha versions, including the bundled Adobe AE version.