Believable Hand-Held Motion Tracking with Mocha & After Effects CS4

One of the best additions to After Effects CS4 is the inclusion of a stand-alone application called Mocha for AE from Imagineer Systems. This is a powerful planar motion tracker and stabilizer that does an amazing job of tracking all kinds of elements in motion or to stabilize a character or a scene with shaky footage. Many of the example movies you may have seen demonstrating Mocha with After Effects CS4 (including some of my own) have been inserting something into the screen of a portable device or a TV. But what if the object you are tracking goes off the screen? What if you want to track something in motion but want to retain the realism of the hand-held camera shake? Even though Mocha does a remarkable job of stabilizing footage I thought I’d put Mocha to the test with some hand-held footage from a compact DV cam and track the footage, shaking and all!

Face Replacement Part 2: ADVANCED

Welcome to part two of the Face Replacement tutorial, I highly recommend viewing part one (HERE) if you haven’t done so already, since I will be using a lot of the same techniques and I move though some of the repeat steps a little faster in this tutorial. Hopefully part one got you well on your way to doing your first simple face replacement. In part two I will show you how to track and composite a more advanced moving face, more specifically one that is doing a 180 degree turn.

In part two of this series I will talk about… - Using Mocha to track and stabilize footage that is changing perspective - How to composite the elements in After Effects - Using stock plugins to degrade P2 1080 footage to look VHS like. - Show After Effects shortcut keys - How to find out more about the producer, director and the cast Once again I would like to thank the following people for allowing me to use footage from the Pistol Youth - “In My Eyes” music video for this tutorial. Executive Producer: Steve Buchanan More Fancy Website Director: Isaac Rentz Isaac Rentz Website Cast: Bradley Hanan Carter of Pistol Youth Pistol Youth Website

Face Replacement Part 1: BASIC

In this two part series, I’ll show you how to track and composite a face onto another body using After Effects and Mocha AE. Learn some of the tricks and hurdles you may have to deal with when trying to produce this type of effect.

This tutorial is a special one and a little different in that it doubles as a small behind-the-scenes video as well. Emphasis on small. Most of you may recall the infamous Pistol Youth music video, “In My Eyes” that was storming the web a few months back. You know, the one with the Golden Girls…. AHHHHH! Yes, now you remember…..and if you don’t, or if you missed out on this event…..here is the video that caught a lot of attention.

WARNING FOR GOLDEN GIRL FANS: You may find this unbelievably funny or absolutely disturbing. :D

Pistol Youth - In My Eyes from Pistol Youth on Vimeo.

Extra special thanks to the following extremely talented people for allowing me to use footage from the music video for this tutorial.

Executive Producer: Steve Buchanan More Fancy Website
Director: Isaac Rentz Isaac Rentz Website
Cast: Bradley Hanan Carter of Pistol Youth Pistol Youth Website

Since the release of the Pistol Youth music video back in January 09, I have been getting lots of emails and comments from people, a lot of which have been asking, “how did you do that?”, “Did you use Syntheyes, Mocha, Shake or After Effects?”, How long did that take”, some just commented “Wow, that totally freaked me out, but it was awesome!”, etc… Well, to answer some of the questions…

Tracking: Mocha AE
Compositing: After Effects
Number of shots: 62
Number of heads replaced: 96 (not all of them made the cut)
Total hours for vfx: 65 hours (spread over three weeks)
How many actors: Just one, Brad did all of the faces.

So, on with the show. In part one of this series I talk about…
- The base setup that was used when filming Brad on greenscreen
- Why the audio was recorded at half speed
- Using Mocha to track and stabilize footage
- How to composite the elements in After Effects
- Using stock plugins to degrade P2 1080 footage to look VHS like.
- Show After Effects shortcut keys

Hope you enjoy and find this educational.

Realistic Screen Compositing

The “Realistic Screen Compositing” tutorial shows a simple yet effective way of reintroducing an existing screen reflection back into a composite. This not only adds life to the final piece, but also makes the final composite believable. I take you through step by step showing you how to achieve this effect and what tips to keep in mind if you are actually planning a screen composite shoot. Always good to shoot it correctly before going to post, I always say. Hopefully you’ll find it informative and very useful.

Syntheyes 101

This is an oldie, but a goodie. I’ve received numerous emails about this tutorial from all over the world since I originally released it in early 2008. I’m actually quite shocked as to how well it was received considering it was my first ever attempt at a video tutorial. I’ve been wanting to bring this tutorial over to share with my PVC readers for awhile and have now been able to do so as of today. Please continue to spread the word, I’m glad it has helped so many people already and I hope it continues to to do so here.

I am in the works on an updated version of this tutorial for the current version of Syntheyes 2008, but can’t really say when I plan on having it done. I will say that nearly everything I talk about in this tutorial is still completely valid for Syntheyes 2008.

The “Syntheyes 101” tutorial is a basic start to finish look at how to motion track a video clip and export the track data.

I cover the following topics:
- The UI (user interface)
- Opening a video clip
- Properties panels
- Spotting and adjusting troublesome trackers
- Solving the shot
- Color coding solved trackers for your own sanity
- Using the Coordinate System
- Adding a 3D reference object
- Tips on checking overall track for accuracy
- Exporting the track
- Also various hotkeys are mentioned throughout the video

Enjoy and happy tracking.

Handheld Camera Script

    Introducing a new script that creates an AE camera that not only has handheld motion, but can be easily adjusted to mimic a variety of camera motion effects like running, being on a gravel road or even being intoxicated to name a few.

Distressing Text Edges – Photoshop for Video

Grain Matching

In this tutorial I show a technique on how to add grain to your cg elements and match it to your source footage. I include some hotkeys (my favorite tools) and tips for the process.

UPDATED: 9/23 Fixed low volume on video

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