Incorporate MochaAE

Incorporate MochaAE

After Effects CS4 has added a whole separate tracking
application: MochaAE, licensed from Imagineer Systems.
MochaAE is not in any way integrated directly into After
Effects; it was originally sold as stand-alone software
and remains a separate application (now found in the
same folder as After Effects itself), which you can fi re up
as needed.
When is it needed? Mocha is a planar tracker, which means
that it does not analyze individual points or feature regions
like the After Effects tracker (and most other trackers) but
instead looks at entire plane of motion.
Look around the environment where you are right now
and you will see numerous two dimensional planes: walls,
table tops, the backs of chairs, or maybe the trunk of a
tree, or the side, front, top, wheel, hood, window (and on
and on) of a passing truck. If you were sitting
on the moon reading this book, the surface of earth,
though curved, would track as a plane; you wouldn’t track
the tip of Florida or New Zealand, but the whole planet.

Thus Mocha is most plainly useful for Corner Pin tracking:
replacing a surface with four discernable corners with
another such surface. This type of track has long been the
Achilles heel of the After Effects tracker, and Mocha provides
such welcome relief that I’ve omitted coverage of corner
pinning with the After Effects tracker from this book.

Mocha can, in fact, be used for just about any type of 2D
tracking. It’s less convenient to use outside software than to
track directly in After Effects, but once you become comfortable
with Mocha, you may fi nd that the extra precision
is worth the trouble of doing so.