Hands On with Imagineer Systems Mocha v2
Making its debut at NAB 2010, Imagineer Systems is announcing the release of version 2.0 of mocha, their flagship planar tracking and roto station, on April 12th. Although I wasn’t lucky enough to be at NAB, I was lucky enough to get a hands on test of this reengineered system, and I can tell you, with all honesty, that I am very impressed.
Since its initial release in 2007, mocha quickly earned a reputation in Hollywood and the VFX industry as a must-have solution for complex and difficult tracking and roto shots with over 20,000 registered users worldwide, and v2 builds upon that system with a slew of new enhancements including 64-bit support, a streamlined user interface, improved liscensing activation and support for Nuke 6.0, Nuke X and Apple Motion.
What’s New in mocha v2
- 64 bit Architecture: Re-engineered for 64-bit operating system support
- Improved User Interface: New icons and streamlined interface make mocha even easier to learn and master
- Improved Licensing Activation: mocha users can now easily activate and deactivate licenses for use on multiple systems
- Stabilize and Smooth Module: Smooth jittery camera footage or lock down shots for effects plates
- OpenGL Acceleration: Hardware rendering of mattes with motion blur
- Nuke 6.0 & Nuke X support: Copy and paste RotoPaint and CornerPin nodes from mocha directly into Nuke
- Apple Motion support
The streamlined mocha v2 user interface
I can tell you that with the new 64-bit integration that software moves along at blazing speed. I tested it out with various footage shot in different conditions–low light, camera shake, motion blur, etc.–and not only did it track and stabilize each shot with ease, but it was extremely accurate and required a lot less input from me even when the object i was tracking went off screen. This software is as intelligent as it ever was, and now that they have streamlined the interface, it is even easier to navigate which frees up a lot more of my time to worry about other things. Time is money, after all. As in the original, exporting to your preferred file format is a breeze, and paired with one of the Mocha Shape plugins you can export it directly into After Effects or Final Cut. It doesn’t get much easier than this.
In fact, it’s this ease of use that has garnered the attention of many major vfx studios in Hollywood. In-Three, the company behind the 2D to 3D conversion of the Lionsgate and Universal logos and the G-Force and Space Command movies, went straight to mocha when working on the conversion of their latest project, Alice in Wonderland. Mocha’s advanced roto and tracking capabilities enabled them to tackle even the most difficult 3D conversion they came across with ease.
John-Paul Smith, chief executive officer of Imagineer Systems:
mocha v2 is the culmination of tremendous effort from our development team and was completed in lock step with our customers and beta users. As mocha has grown significantly in popularity over the past year, it’s given us a unique and valuable opportunity to hear from a wider swath of users and learn what’s most important to them. That’s exactly what went into mocha v2. We’re also pleased with the support we’ve received from our valued partners at Adobe Systems. In working closely together, we’ve been able to re-engineer mocha for After Effects as a 64-bit solution, just in time for the release of Adobe CS5. That’s another big win for users.
Probably one of the biggest wins every user has is the price. If you are attending NAB 201o you can take advantage of a special promotion available to attendees that will knock the price of mocha v2 down to $399 to current customers of any Imagineer Systems product. For the rest of us, a nodelocked license for Mocha v2 will be priced at a mere $499 for existing users who are upgrading, and $1095 for a new nodelocked license. It’s available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems.
Delivering feature film quality results at this low of a price is a welcome gift to anybody in the industry, and Imagineer Systems keeps on giving with mocha v2.
John Kostrzewski is the Editor of Fuel Your Motionography and a freelance motion graphics and visual effects artist, videographer and writer living in Minnesota. He is awesome. Follow him on Twitter at and .
Thanks for the review!
You’re welcome!
always heard about it…. but hardly any decent tuts, but good post thanks
I agree about their not being any decent tutorials out their for mocha! Although their site goes into detail on how to use their software (http://www.imagineersystems.com/support/tutorials), it’s really just the basics. I’m trying to get a hold of somebody at Lynda.com to put up some tutorials on this software so that the world can see what this software can do and so there will be easy way to learn it.