The Difference Between the “m” Words

As Imagineer is fond of one-word names that all start with “mo…”, it can be hard to know or remember which tool does what. Below is some text I lifted out of an email by Ross Shain (VP of Sales, Eastern Region) to an After Effects list explaining the differences, with links to a comparison chart. It is particularly relevant as Imagineer Systems has been offering some deep discounts on some of their highly-touted tracking and rotoscoping tools; I just posted a News item on them extending some of these discounts until the end of March (click here to view).

In short all our products use a unique 2.5D planar tracking technology that allows you to motion track objects with blur, noise and go offscreen. Simply, the planar tracking technology is hands down more powerful than any point tracking system out there. The technology is then implemented into the products in various ways.

• mokey - removal tool - automates complex compositing techniques to remove unwanted elements from screen. Great for rig, scratch removal, stabilization etc….
• monet - placement station - compositing tool to track and insert elements with luminance passes, mesh warper and lens distortion correction.
• mocha - tracking and roto utility. Motin track and roto. Export the data or mattes to almost any app including AE, Flame, Smoke, DS, Shake, Fusion (adding Nuke soon), etc.
• motor - same as mocha but limited to rotoscoping
• mocha-AE - not a plug-in but a stand alone tracking utility that exports tracking data as AE keyframes. Corner pin with perspective or transform, scale, rotation. Copy and paste to AE layers. Increases AE’s capability as a vfx compositor!

There is some overlap between products but many users have found that with mokey and mocha their bases are very covered. Here is a link to a product comparison chart.

For more questions, please contact us off the list.

US eastern region:  rosss @ imagineersystems.com
US western region: billyw @ imagineersystems.com
Europe/Asia and others: pjc @ imagineersystems.com

If you need more information, here is a link to tutorials on their products.

Final Effects Complete version 5: Why?

Final Effects was pretty much the original third-party plug-in set available for After Effects. It was created by a gang in Sweden now known as Cycore, who passed it on to MetaCreations, who passed it on to ICE, who passed it on to Media 100, who passed it on to Boris, who is now selling it for $895. Meanwhile, the Cycore gang exploited a loophole in their contract, rewrote and re-released it as Cycore FX, licensed it to Adobe to give away free as CC Effects with each copy of After Effects, and sell an upgrade to it for $299 - more on that below. (By the way, we’ve reposted an old column on CC Effects in the archives; read it here for more background.)

So when the press release first came around from Boris FX that they had updated Final Effects Complete, excuse us, but we laughed. However, once we thought about it, there are some reasons why you might consider it. Namely:

After Effects 8.0.2 Interpretation Rules Issue

Normally, when you install a minor update to After Effects, it does a pretty good job at remembering your previously-installed plug-ins and the such. That said, there is an exception in the case of the 8.0.2 updater. This version writes a brand-new interpretation rules file that alters how it handles some YUV color space files. However, it does not merge in any changes you may have made to the previous interpretation rules file. Fortunately, it doesn’t delete your file; it just sets it aside.

Click here for an Adobe Tech Note on what’s going on, and how to work around it.

Motion Graphics concepts demonstrated…on a trampoline.

This isn’t new, but we just stumbled across it, and thought it would provide some comic relief going into the weekend. It’s a live, one-take, in-front-of-an-audience music video (for the song “zZz is playing: Grip”) that is also a demonstration of common motion graphics techniques and video transitions, performed by folks on a trampoline. Ya gotta watch it more than once to pick up all the details, like the musicians on the left and right (the drummer on the left is also the singer), and the person painting the progress bar in real time underneath. Hang around until the end to see that it was indeed in front of an audience.

Motion Blur Musings

A fellow user recently asked about problems he was having with motion stutter when slowing down 24p (24 frame per second, progressive scan) footage. This led to a series of musings about using motion blur - including some new options in After Effects CS3 - that we thought would be good to share.

Adobe/MAXON Power Integration Tour

We have long been fans of Cinema 4D as a 3D package for motion graphics artists, both for its feature set (including the powerful MoGraph module) and its very tight integration with After Effects. We focused on this integration in Chapter 38 of Creating Motion Graphics 4th Edition (an excerpt from that chapter can be downloaded here ).

Last year Adobe and Maxon did a joint tour touting this integration. They had so much fun, they’‘re doing it again this year. The first event was at the January 2008 DMA/LA meeting; the tour proper kicks off February 26 in San Francisco - see the full list of cities and dates below.

After Effects 8.0.2 and gamma issues

Adobe has released an 8.0.2 update for After Effects CS3. Its headline new features are support for Mac OS 10.5, as well as for P2 media. There are also the expected array of bug fixes. What’s been getting less press than it deserves is a change in the way it handles color management with respect to QuickTime files.

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