[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Ben, howzabout padding your new clip with additional footage at the head before you relink it in mocha? I’m sorry but I can’t think of anything else.

And YES, the Dope Sheet is easy to use – makes you wonder why folks give it such a happening name. 😉

If the above suggestion fails then I suggest that you visit Imagineer’s online forum to see if they have other options that you can look into.

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Nice new hair Simon 😉

AE CC’s plugin architecture is such that it doesn’t require 3rd party plugins to be updated (except for any bug fixes). As per previous versions of AE, create a shortcut for each of the previous (previous to CC) plugins and copy the shortcuts to AE CC’s plugins folder.

I’m speaking from limited but successful experience from a Windows 7 platform. Mac users may differ – as they are almost always apt do. 😉

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Thanks for reporting back Adam – it’s always appreciated. I am however curious what settings you ended up with, to solve your issue, and if there were other rectifications that were required.

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Set the comp’s Shutter Angle to 90 and Shutter Phase to -180. These settings are ideal start off points when inserting objects with motion tracked data.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You’ve not mentioned details of the new clip’s duration and image rez. These will greatly impact how much work is required. And if the durations of the two clips do not match up, is the padding at the head, tail or both?

mochaAE CS6 lacks the Dope Sheet Module which is available in mochaAE V3. The Dope Sheet allows you to shift keyframes along the Timeline. This is great when you are linking to a new clip with additional frames at the head and you need to move the keyframes down the timeline since mocha’s keyframes stay locked in time when you link to a new clip.

To link to a new clip, while keeping existing splines and keyframes, use the Clip Module’s Import or Relink feature.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Darby’s solution is also viable – actually I’ve used it quite often but forgot to mention it in my earlier post. BTW, Todd mentioned using the Material Options property Accept Lights. You can set the BG ‘s Accept Lights property to Off.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

This is a better reply Simon. Now I can read, in context, what you’re doing in relation to the steps I’ve proposed.

[Simon Faris] “Yet after reading, it seems that is a null point due to the hierarchy of the stacked layers. FG being atop.”

FG must always be at the top of the Layer Controls Panel. To be safe, use the tracked FG layer and not the tighter spline of the FG which I assume you linked to the originally tracked FG.

Selecting Subtract Matte is not required as mocha is programmed to use any layer above the currently tracked layer as a Subtract Matte.

[Simon Faris] “Using Subtract Matte on the foreground even though it is atop the stack? Imagineer videos say NO.”

You must have misunderstood this. What Imagineer meant was what I said in the previous para on the redundancy of explicitly specifying a layer as a Subtract Matte.

Here are a couple more tips –
1) You can view mocha’s Track Matte to see exactly which area(s) mocha tracks. mocha’s nomenclature for a Track Matte is quite different from AE’s or other apps. For mocha, a Track Matte defines the tracking area.

See the top-left of the screen cap below on how to set up the Mattes menu to view the Track Matte of selected layers.

The canvas area clearly shows that the head of the FG has been excluded from the Track Matte. This means that the FG (head) area will not be tracked.

The last tip is to set/resize your insert clip to fit the size of the tracking comp. Then precomp the insert layer PRIOR to applying mocha’s tracking data.

BTW, use the Adjust Track only as and when required, ie when your track is less perfect.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Todd’s got the Lights covered – ie Accept Lights property. For the Camera part of your Q, simply parent the background layer (3D layer) to the camera.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Here’s Mylenium’s take on the error message –
https://myleniumerrors.com/category/by-number/86-90/

There is a strong likelihood that one or more frames that is being assessed is corrupted. Unless your previous renders assessed the same frames from the same movie clip, you can rest assured that there is corruption in your movie.

Use another app to re-render the frames that you require. Then use the ‘new’ clip in AE.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

It’s impossible to tell what you are doing wrong if you do not follow the instructions I have provided in an earlier post. Here is what I posted earlier –

I suggest that you start from scratch then do the following –

1) track the foreground object (man) with a loose tracking spline. Keyframe the tracking spline as often as needed to ensure that the foreground object is always enclosed within the tracking spline.

2) create a new tracking spline for the background. you have lots of co-planar areas to track. therefore, use multiple tracking splines when tracking the background – you should use the Add X-spline (or B-spline) tool to add a second or subsequent tracking spline onto the same layer. Ensure that your tracking splines here are sufficiently close to the area you want to track – this is to ensure that you do not force/ask mocha to track superfluous movement in the background.

3) track the background layer once the tracking splines are in place. it is always a good idea to begin your track at the frame which gives mocha the most pixel information. When tracking the background, ensure that the foreground layer sits at the very top of the Layer Controls Panel – and ensure that it’s Process switch (cog icon) is off, to disable tracking it again.

You shouldn’t require Manual Tracking unless your foreground object fully covers the background tracking area. Even then you will only require a few frames of Manual Tracking when auto tracking is impossible to achieve.

What you should try to do at the end of your tracking procedures is to use mocha’s Adjust Track module/tab/feature to tweak your results – if required.

Follow each step and let me know of the results at the end of each step. You only require two layers, the foreground and the background to get the tracking data into AE.

The roto for the foreground (3rd layer) and come later – once you’ve got a solid track. Let’s concentrate on the track for now.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive mocha & AE Training in Singapore and Other Dangerous Locations

Imagineer Systems (mocha) Certified Instructor
& Adobe After Effects CS6 ACE