Original article published by Animation Magazine (see original)
By Todd Sheridan Perry
mocha Pro has made itself the go-to tool for tracking, track-assisted rotoscoping and object removal. So much so, that its team was awarded a Science and Technology Award from the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Not too shabby. And their latest version makes the tools even easier to incorporate as well as expanding into new technological fields.
The biggest announcement for mocha Pro 5 is that there are plugins that open a pipe directly from After Effects, PremierePro, Avid or HitFilm into mocha Pro. What does this do? First, because the tools are sharing data there is no need for additional file sequences for mocha to track — it can use what is available within After Effects (for example), including compositions. Not only can the footage be used for the track source, it could be the element that is tracked into the plate. And in turn, tracks and masks can be sent directly back to the host software.
Additionally, other procedures can be pulled from mocha, and then rendered directly in After Effects. Object removal for instance, would be processed in the comp, rather than being required to render out an entirely new sequence.
And don’t worry — the plugin for Nuke is on its way.
Because of the open pipe between packages, this means that mocha Pro can be used with other plugins in the mix. For instance, a problem that is becoming more and more prominent as virtual reality becomes a thing is incorporating VFX into VR, or repairing it — like … where does the film crew hide? VR tools such as Mettle allow for reconfiguring and processing of VR data. The VR footage can be flattened and manipulated, and then fed into Mocha where objects can be tracked in, or objects removed. Then the footage is restored to it original format for use in the target VR system.
If you are in VFX, mocha Pro should already be in your arsenal. If you are starting to look into virtual reality, you are walking into a minefield of post-production unknowns, and the mocha team is one group that is looking forward into the problems of a nascent industry.