Using Mocha Tracking Instead of AE?
by Jason Armstrong
on
Jun 22, 2008 at 5:03:32 pm
OK, the simplest way I can think of to explain my question is to bring to mind Andrew Kramer's "The Healer" Tutorial.
Imagine a half-lit face (come opposite side lighting, but low detail) that requires some ae "make-up" done, but the subject moves a lot, though the camera is still.
Mocha tracks the shot much better than ae (obviously), but I'm at a loss as to how to use that data to track the digital "make-up".
So essentially... could I match a wound to a moving face in ae using data from mocha? I mean, I assume so, but I can't sort out how. My experience with Mocha so far has been corner pinning and I haven't found a tutorial on anything like what I'm asking.
Re: Using Mocha Tracking Instead of AE? by Kevin Snyder on Jun 23, 2008 at 12:41:14 am
Yes! The easiest way to do it is to apply the transform data from Mocha to a null object in AE. Then line up your wound on the face and then parent the wound to the null object. Let me know if you need more info.
Re: Using Mocha Tracking Instead of AE? by Jason Armstrong on Jun 23, 2008 at 1:56:17 am
Alright, I'll give that a shot. Should I be tracking all parameters?
I tried something like this but found the wound movement pretty erratic (I could see the matching to the model, but swinging out a lot harder than it should, etc...
I'd upload the shot for inspection, but as it's not my project, I thought I'd better not.
Here's a still on Deviantart that is similar to the shot I'm working with:
Re: Using Mocha Tracking Instead of AE? by Kevin Snyder on Jun 23, 2008 at 4:18:12 am
Jason,
Does the face stay parallel to the camera the whole time or does head turn through the shot? If the head does not turn, I would track with translation and rotation only in Mocha. If the head is turning, then you would want to track with all the parameters and use the corner pin effect to place the wound on the face.
One thing I forgot the mention, is that when you paste the data to a null, you want to make sure to turn off the keyframes for the anchor point and scale (turn off scale as long as the face stays the same distance from the camera). Also, make sure that you don't change the inpoint of the clip in Mocha AE. I have found that I get strange results in AE if I do.
I posted a file a while back for someone that was having trouble...here it is. The is one of Andrew Kramer's tutorials. It includes the footage, the Mocha AE Project file, and the AE project file. You can take a look at it to see how I used position data from Mocha AE in AE. I think it might help. Please let me know if you need anymore help.
