Welcome to Mocha AE 2020!
Mocha AE is a professional motion tracking and masking plug-in that has
been bundled inside Adobe After effects for over 10 years.
In this video, I’ll show you how and why After Effects artists like you rely on Mocha
every day for advanced planar tracking, screen inserts, roto-masking and more.
Mocha AE was updated in Adobe’s October 2019 Creative Cloud release.
Mocha AE is applied as a plug-in and features a user interface designed specifically for
tracking and masking projects.
The Mocha AE plugin interface is where you control the data exchange between Mocha and
After Effects.
You can apply tracked shapes as masks or tracking data with the single click of a button.
And because Mocha AE is a plug-in, your footage is read directly from the After Effects timeline,
so any clip or movie file that AE can read is easily processed into Mocha.
To apply Mocha AE, we can select our layer and either go to the Animation menu>Apply
Boris FX Mocha AE…
or find Boris FX Mocha AE in your effects folder.
Apply Mocha AE onto your layer and then check the LAUNCH MOCHA button in the plugin interface.
Here I am in Essentials Mode, for the simplest view, but more advanced users, might like
to switch to the classic workspace for more options, or even edit and save your own custom
view.
Mocha is a planar tracker, so let’s show you what that means.
Let's track this monitor to start.
You can choose from X-spline, Bezier or geometric shapes.
We will draw a spline around the area that we want to track.
Mocha AE ‘s planar tracker is quite famous for its ability to track.
Understanding “planar tracking” is the key to Mocha…
you want to look for a
texture that moves in a single direction for best results, like a wall or a table or this
screen; do not try to track “multi-planar” textures at once, like using one shape for
multiple objects at the same time.
Use one shape for each moving object you need to track.
The spline is the search area and Mocha will look for this texture pattern on other frames
in the shot.
You can be fairly loose with the spline because the Planar Tracker is intelligent enough to
discard fast or blurred pixels, but look out for shadows, reflections, and other occlusions.
Scrub through the timeline and find the largest, sharpest, most parallel to the camera part
of your shot to begin tracking from.
Mocha can track various motion types: translation, scale, rotation, shear, and perspective, so
select the appropriate tracking setting.
If you are tracking to add titles or motion graphics, you might only need translation…
tracking for masking is typically best with everything up to shear, and screen inserts
or shots that have significant camera or object motion, we want perspective for full 2.5D
match moving.
Turn your surface tool on.
The Surface Tool represents the tracking data.
This could be corner pin data for a screen insert… or translation data for an After
Effects Null.
Generally, it is better to align the surface roughly to the area you are tracking before
you start tracking so you can easily see how your track is doing!
You can track forwards or backwards in the timeline.
You will often get a great result with default settings, but if your surface is drifting
a lot, you could switch to classic workspace and increase the Min % of Pixels Used for
more precision.
When using Mocha for masking and roto, first follow the basic tracking steps.
However, when creating advanced masking for a person, animal, or organic objects, it is
advised to split up layers and track individual planes.
This means that people or animals should be handled in a “paper doll” or marionette
approach.
Split your shapes up at the joints joint for best results and each layer will have their
own tracker for less manual keyframing.
You can track and roto on the same layer OR use Linking to parent any track to any shape
layer.
In layer properties, you can use the dropdown menu called “link to track” to attach
any roto shape to any track layer.
The new shape will now move along with the original tracking layer.
After a shape is tracked, we can go through the timeline to add “in-between” keyframes,
called “tweening,” for more precision.
Look for the arcs of the animation, the areas where the shape is the most offset from its
proper location, and correct the shapes there first.
In this manner, we can use the Mocha tracker to reduce the amount of manual keyframes.
When we are done, we save and close Mocha AE CC.
Let's review the workflow to use our Mocha tracking data:
We select the Chosen Layers
to pick which Mocha layer we want to convert to AE.
To choose a layer to create tracking data from, click the 'Create Track Data' button
in the Tracking Data section of the plugin.Then choose either the name or the cog of the layer
you want to read tracking data from in the dialog that appears.
You can only choose one layer at a time.
You can then see the output of its surface back in the After Effects interface.
Each point in the Tracking Data section is a point from the layer surface that automatically
updates when you modify it inside Mocha.
Create Tracking data.
Once you click 'OK', the plugin will generate keyframes to populate the tracking parameters
in the plugin.
You can then use this data to copy to other layers, or link via expressions, without needing
to export from the Mocha GUI.
In this instance, I'd like to apply the corner pin to a screen.
Apply tracking data to a layer or a Null, use the dropdown menu to select an export
option at the bottom of the Tracking Data section:- You can either use a Corner Pin
to apply onto a any layer, (which is a standard corner pin effect),
a Corner Pin that Supports Motion Blur
(A corner pin distortion with separate scale, rotation and position.), or
a Transform: (Scale, position and rotation like you would use to paste on a null).
Clicking 'Apply Export' then applies the tracking data to the specified layer.
Anytime you are using a corner pin, your target layer must be the same size and the same frame
rate and aspect ratio, as the comp and layer you are tracking in Mocha AE or your data
will be distorted based on the difference.
I am using the Mocha AE interface to a apply corner pin that supports motion blur to my
screen layer.
So I select my export here, corner pin, and I select my target layer, in this case the
layer named screen, and I hit "apply tracking data."
Now my corner pin is applied right to my screen.
So in short: Click create track data, select your desired layer, click OK, use the dropdown
menu to select and export and the target layer, and click apply export.
Really easy.
And applying shapes is just as easy.
To apply the Mocha shape data, we have a few options:
1.
We can convert the Mocha shape to a native AE mask by selecting “Create AE Mask”.
The Layer options will determine which Mocha shape layers will get applied.
I want to mask out the fingers over this screen, so I choose the masks that apply to the finger
roto I have created by making sure the eye icon is on next to those layers.
In this workflow it is quick and easy to have one Mocha AE project and apply various masks
to various AE layers.
Anytime you paste shape data, you must make sure the target layer is the same size as
the original footage, comp, and the same frame rate and aspect ratio or you will not get
good results.
Another option is to use the Mocha AE plug-in to render Mocha shapes as black and white
matte, or as RGBA cutouts back to the composition.
This is especially useful if you are using Mocha’s variable edge feathering
The View Matte button outputs the black and white matte and again, the selected Mocha
layers drives this.
Matte outputs are useful if you want to see any problems with the matte, or you want to
use the output as a AE track matte.
Apply Matte will apply the chosen mattes to cutout the foreground with alpha on this layer.
The Visible Layers button launches the Visible Layers dialog so you can select
the layers you want to render OR convert to shapes.
The Shape drop down lets you switch between All Visible and All mattes.
All Visible mattes are controlled by the Visible Layers
dialog.
The Feather option: Applies a blur to the matte.
This feathering is independent of the edge feathering that can be created inside of Mocha.
Invert Mask: Inverts the currently visible mattes.
And again Create AE Mask will convert the Mocha shapes to native AE splines on this
layer.
As you can see Mocha AE provides After Effects users with many options for tracking and masking.
If you are looking for more tutorials, please visit the training section at BorisFX.com.
You can sort the videos by Mocha AE under the product category, but note that there
are also many Mocha Pro videos that you might find useful for more advanced techniques.
For training and more VFX plug-ins, visit us at BorisFX.com