Mocha(R) 2025 User Guide

Tracking and rotoscoping are part of almost any visual effects project. For 2D tracking, point trackers are most commonly used, but to get good point tracks requires a mix of experience and luck. You often have to "prime" a clip for optimum tracking using color correctors and other image manipulations. If the point being tracked exits frame, you get into offset tracking, which presents its own set of challenges. If it all fails, you are into hand tracking, which is time consuming and very hard to get accurate.

Mocha is a 2D tracker that requires less experience and luck to be successful with, does not require the image to be primed and is less likely to require a lot of tricks or hand tracking on difficult shots.

In Mocha splines are used for both tracking and rotoscoping. This is a different method from standard 1-point or multi-point tracking tools.

Traditional tracking tools require that you locate "points" that remain consistent throughout the entire shot in order to track movement. This is itself a difficult task, especially when tracking a shot that was not originally designed to be tracked. If you wish to also track rotation, perspective and shear you need even more clear and consistent points to track.

Traditional roto methodology would have you outline a shape with the minimum number of points necessary then either manually move the control points or track the shape with a point tracker to "get it close". Even when using multi-point trackers to impart rotation and scale to the roto spline, the results are often unusable if there is any perspective change during the shot.

Instead, Boris FX’s Planar Tracker tracks an object’s translation, rotation and scaling data based on the movement of a user-defined plane.
A plane is any flat surface having only two dimensions, such as a table top, a wall, or a television screen. Planes provide much more detail to the computer about an object’s translation, rotation and scaling than is possible with point-based tracking tools. Even as an object leaves and enters a frame, there is usually enough information for the Planar Tracker to maintain a solid track of the object.
When you work with the Mocha tools, you will need to look for planes in the clip. More specifically, you will need to look for planes that coincide with movements you want to track. If someone is waving goodbye, you can break their arm into two planes - the upper and lower limbs. Although not all of the points on the arm sections actually lie on the same two-dimensional surface, the apparent parallax will be minimal.

With the addition of PowerMesh in Mocha Pro, subplanar tracking is also possible, tracking warp and bending of objects that standard planar tracking would struggle to do alone.

Mocha layouts are modifiable, allowing you to hide or reveal many parts of the interface.

These layouts are clustered into 4 default types you can build from.

You can add or remove many parts of the Mocha interface, such as:

These can either be access by right clicking the area of the interface and choosing a GUI element to show or hide, or selecting from the View menu.

Any changes you make to a layout will not be saved unless you choose View | Layout | Save Current Layout.

For example if you like the Essentials layout, but would like the Advanced toolbar from the Classic layout:

This will now save the Essentials layout with the new toolbar.

Alternatively, you can save the layout as a new custom layout:

You can add, order or remove layouts from the Manage Custom Layouts dialog in the same sub-menu.
Any new layout will automatically be assigned a Ctrl/CMD + Number shortcut based on the order of the layouts, up to 9.

If you have made changes to a saved layout want to revert back to the saved version, just choose View | Layout | Revert to saved.

If you want to revert back to the original default layout, just choose View | Layout | Revert to default.

At the very top of the interface you have the tools that form the brunt of your time inside Mocha.

In Essentials Mode, only a basic set of these tools is shown, to simplify the interface.

See descriptions in Advanced Toolbar above for the rest of the tools.

These controls cover what can been seen or hidden while working in the Mocha viewer.

The timeline controls cover frame range, playback, tracking controls and key-framing.

The top left hand panel contains the tools to manage layers.

The section under the Layer Controls panel contains the properties for each layer.

In Mocha v5 we introduced manual cache clearing to allow you to clear the Mocha cache at the project, render or global level.

You can access the Clear Cache option from the file menu under File → Clear Cache…​

You can check the following options:

Only clear the Global Cache if you are certain you don’t want any of your existing project caches to remain.

In stereo mode you will see 3 buttons in the View Controls next to the clip view drop down on the left:

You can preview stereo work at any time by turning on the 3D button in the view controls.

Clicking and holding on the 3D button will give you a range of stereo view options.

Two new icons appear in the timeline to assist with tracking and roto in stereo:

Both these buttons and their uses are covered in the Stereo Tracking and Stereo Roto sections of the User Guide.

The Mocha Pro Plugin for Adobe appears in the Effects menu like every other effect.
Simply apply the effect to the layer you want to work with.

The general workflow for the Mocha Adobe Plugin is as follows:

The Mocha Pro Plugin for Adobe appears in the Effects menu like every other effect.
Simply apply the effect to the layer you want to work with.

The general workflow for the Mocha Adobe Plugin is as follows:

The Mocha Pro Plugin for Adobe appears in the Effects menu like every other effect.
Simply apply the effect to the layer you want to work with.

The general workflow for the Mocha Adobe Plugin is as follows:

If you have a license for the OFX version it will work in any of the OFX hosts listed below.
Keep in mind that while the Mocha OFX plugin is designed to be used in multiple applications, it does not support all OFX hosts.

In many cases some functionality may be possible for unsupported hosts, but there is no guarantee of functionality or stability, so please take care when experimenting!

Inside Flame, the Mocha Pro Plugin for OFX appears in the OpenFX Plugin loader panel like every other OFX plugin.

To get full use of the Mocha Pro plugin, we recommend using it as a batch effect.

Inside Fusion Studio, the Mocha Pro Plugin for OFX appears in the Tool menu like every other effect.
Just choose 'Boris FX Mocha' > 'Mocha Pro'.

Mocha Pro node in Fusion (Footage courtesy of Chris Heuer):

Once loaded into the flow graph, simply plug the image node you want to work with into the 'Source' input of the Mocha Pro effect node.

Inside Nuke, the Mocha Pro Plugin for OFX appears in the toolbar menu like every other effect.

You can also call the Mocha Pro effect from the Tab key by searching for 'Mocha Pro' or right-click and choose 'Boris FX Mocha' > 'Mocha Pro'.

Mocha Pro node in Nuke node graph (Footage courtesy of Chris Heuer):

Once loaded into the node graph, simply plug the image node you want to work with into the 'Source' input of the Mocha Pro effect node.

In Silhouette, Mocha Pro Plugin for OFX appears in the nodes menu like every other effect.

Mocha Pro node in Silhouette:

Once loaded into the tree window, simply plug the image node you want to work with into the 'Source' input of the Mocha Pro effect node.

Inside VEGAS Pro, the Mocha OFX Plugin appears under 'Boris FX Mocha' in the Plug-in Chooser dialog for the following effect chains:

Mocha Pro node in VEGAS Plug-in Chooser:

Once loaded, you can begin with the 'Launch Mocha UI' button at the top of the effect panel.

One your source clip is hooked up to you Mocha Pro Effect, the general workflow for the Mocha OFX Plugin is as follows:

Once you have applied the Mocha Pro effect, you can click on the 'Launch Mocha UI' button to launch the main interface.

This then becomes exactly like working in the standalone version of Mocha, with a few exceptions.
Firstly, you will notice you don’t need to set up a project like in the standalone version. The source layer is automatically loaded and ready to track in the view.
Secondly you don’t need to save out a project file (unless you want to export it). You just close and save the Mocha view when done and the project is saved inside the effect.
For further details on how to use anything inside the Mocha GUI, see the rest of the User Guide!

Once you have tracked layers in Mocha, you can then control the mattes for these layers back in the plugin interface.

Once you have set up layers in Mocha, you can then control the renders for each module back in the plugin interface.
Note that you do need to have set up and tracked the correct layers in order for a render to work back in the host.

You have the following options to render a module back in the plugin:

There are also parameters for controlling the view in Lens:Distortion rendering for VR 360 footage.

See Using Mocha for 360 workflow for more on how to use the VR Lens controls.

You can use secondary clips in the host application to render tracked inserts into your shots.
See the User Guide Chapter on the Insert Module for more details on manipulating and warping inserts.

To use the Insert input from your host application in Insert renders:

Your Insert should then appear inside the layer where you have placed your surface.

Alternatively you can import an image or sequence directly to the plugin:

The imported Insert should then appear inside the layer where you have placed your surface.

Once you have set up your render in the Insert Module, you can then render back to the host:

You can also adjust the Insert Blend Mode and the Insert Opacity from the plugin interface without needing to go back into Mocha:

In cases where your input source has an alpha channel, you may wish to change the Alpha view inside the Mocha GUI.

You can either turn Alpha off entirely by toggling off the button, or choose from one of the following options:

Auto alpha may be necessary when working with some source inputs in Nuke.

When rendering back out to the host, there are cases where you may also need to premultiply the alpha using the premultiply options in the plugin interface.

In these cases you can choose an option from the 'Premultiply' dropdown:

You can also choose to premultiply using standard premultiply nodes.

We now include a light version of Mocha, called Mocha Hitfilm, as a plugin in HitFilm Pro 2017 onwards. This includes:

However, you can also use the Mocha Pro OFX plugins in the HitFilm interface.

The Mocha Pro plugin supports different types of 360 and Stereo footage via the "Views" drop down:

The first 4 Views options are for non-360 footage:

Choosing one of the 360 options automatically sets your Mocha project to be Equirectangular 360. This will enable VR features:

You can also choose to Swap the Left and Right eye input by checking the Swap Views checkbox.

Some hosts will require different handling for Stereo sources:

In addition to the controls listed above, VR features also contain a separate area in the Module Renders section to control lens distortions without having to first open the Mocha Pro GUI:

As you go through the user guide, you will see sections on how to apply Mocha techniques to your stereo footage where relevant.

When you load a project that contains the old Mocha VR plugin, you will notice that Mocha VR is labelled as "Legacy".
This is because all Mocha VR features have been rolled into Mocha Pro and a Mocha VR plugin stub is kept to avoid breaking compatibility with your old projects.

When you want to start a new VR project, we highly recommend using the Mocha Pro plugin rather than the legacy Mocha VR plugin, as this compatibility feature may be removed in future versions.

See (360 VR and Stereo Views Workflow ) above for how to set the 360 VR modes in new Mocha Pro projects.

Mocha workflow is designed around a project structure. It is good practice to only work on one shot per project file to minimize layer management and to keep the work streamlined.

When you start the application you are presented with an empty workspace. No footage is loaded and most of the controls are consequently disabled.
To begin working, you must open an existing project or start a new project.

Select the clip to import by clicking on the Choose…​ button to the right of the top line. This will bring up a file browser, where you can select almost any industry standard file formats. Image sequences will show up as individual frames. You can select any one of the frames and the application will automatically sequence the frames as a clip when importing.

Name

A project name will automatically be generated based on the filename of the imported footage, but you can change it by editing the Name field.

Location

Your project file and cache files will output to a directory called "Results" by default. This is created in the same folder your clip is imported from. You can change this using the Change…​ button or using the dropdown box to set a different relative or absolute path.

Frame Range

The range of frames to import. We recommend to only work with the frames you need, rather than importing very large clips or multiple shots edited together.

Frame offset

This is set to the starting frame number or timecode by default. You can also define a fixed frame (You can set a default for the fixed frame in Preferences).
You also have the option to view as Timecode or Frame numbers. If your clip has an embedded timecode offset and you switch to Timecode, the offset will be used in your project.
If you need to adjust this value later, you can open Project Settings from the file menu. See "Project Frame Offsets and Clip Frame Offsets" below for more details.

Frame Rate

Normally this is automatically detected, but you have options to adjust if necessary. You can choose from the dropdown, or click inside the dropdown to set your own frame rate.
Make sure you check the frame rate before you close the New Project dialog.
If you need to adjust this value later, you can open Project Settings from the file menu.

Separate Fields

If you are using interlaced footage, set your field separation here to Upper or Lower. Make sure you check your fields match your footage before you close the New Project dialog. If you don’t set them correctly, you cannot modify them and will have to restart the project.

Remove Pulldown

If your footage has pulldown, set it here.

Mocha Pro supports Equirectangular 360 Footage. To set the project to be in 360 mode, check the '360 VR Footage' checkbox after you import your clip.

When you start a New Project you are also presented with the option of creating a multiview project in the Views tab.

If you check Multiview project you are then presented with the view names and their abbreviated names.
The abbreviated name is used in the interface for the view buttons, but is also used as the suffix for renders.
You can also choose the hero view. By default this is the left. Defining a hero eye determines the tracking and roto order for working in the views.

If you are using Top/Bottom or Left/Right footage combined in a single frame, select an option from the Split Views drop down:

If you want to define separate streams of footage for the stereo views, you can add additional footage streams view the Add button below the initial clip chooser.

If you forget to set up Multiview when you start a new project, you can set it in the new Project Settings Dialog from the File menu.

Once you are in Multiview mode, you will see a colored border around the viewer based on the current view you are in.
This is to help artists to identify which view they are currently in without having to refer to the buttons

You can switch between Views by pressing the corresponding L|R buttons in the view controls, or using the default 1 and 2 keys on the keyboard.

You can swap views or change the Split View mapping from the View Mapping subtab under the Clip module:

The Mocha Pro plugin has a slightly different project workflow to the stand alone Mocha applications.

This action loads the footage from the host clip you applied the effect to. It automatically applies the correct frame rate and other clip settings, so there is no need for the standard new project dialog.

After you have done the usual work inside the Mocha Pro interface, you simply close and save the Mocha Pro GUI and then you can control the output from the effect editor interface.

For general guide to workflow with the Mocha plugin, see Using the Mocha Pro Plugin.

For setting up a new stereo project with the plugin, see Plugin Stereo Workflow.

Boris FX introduced the Mocha PixelChooser in BCC 10. The plugin has a slightly different project workflow to the stand alone Mocha applications.

This action loads the footage from the host clip you applied the effect to. It automatically applies the correct frame rate and other clip settings, so there is no need for the standard new project dialog.

After you have done your tracking and/or roto work, you simply close and save the Mocha PixelChooser and it applies any visible layers as mattes back to the effect.

If you will only be working on a section of the shot you can use the In and Out points to set the range on the timeline. Note that the In and Out points affect the range of the Überkey button. You can zoom the timeline to only show you the part between you In and Out points by clicking the Zoom Timeline button.

Frame offsets are important to get right in Mocha so that they export correctly to your target program.

There are two kinds of frame offsets:

For the vast majority of cases the Project Frame Offset is the value you want to adjust for working with data.
The frame offset is usually already set correctly at the New Project dialog stage, but there may be cases where offsets change, such as adding new clip frames.

Only import as much as you need

Working with very long files can be time consuming for the artist and can slow down the tracking as it searches for more frames. Try to only use what you need, and work on individual shots, rather than multiple shots in one piece of footage.

Frame rate, dimensions and pixel aspect ratio are important

Make sure these values match the settings in your compositor or editor, otherwise tracking and shape data will not match when you export it.

If you are unsure which field your interlaced footage is in, import it and check

If you quickly start your project with a guessed field order, you can check to make sure it is correct by using the right arrow key to step through the footage. If you footage stutters or steps back a frame while you’re stepping through, it is probably in the wrong field order, or you may have to set pulldown.

Try to avoid interlaced footage where possible

Interlaced footage is painful to work with. For your own sanity, try not to use it unless you have to!

If you are working on a large roto project you will sometimes need to have more than one person working on the same shot.

When it comes time to export out mattes or do final tweaks you can use the Merge Project option to combine any files that have been used on the same piece of footage.

Simply select the Merge Project option from the File menu, and select a project you wish to merge. You can only merge projects that are the same dimensions, aspect ratio and frame length as the shot you are merging into.

NOTE: You cannot merge projects from versions of Mocha earlier than 3.0.0.

Mocha can also import Silhouette .sfx project files. To import a project:

The Silhouette project will then convert any Bezier and X-splines to native Mocha splines and appear in the project.
If there are any B-Spline layers in the project, these will not be imported as they are currently not supported.

Boris FX’s Planar Tracker technology provides 2D tracking data by tracking planes rather than points.

The key to getting the most out of the Planar Tracker is to learn to find planes of movement in your shot which coincide with the object that you want to track or roto. Sometimes it will be obvious - other times you may have to break your object into different planes of movement. For instance if you were tracking a tabletop, you would want to draw the spline to avoid the flower arrangement in the center of the table — it is not on the same plane and will make your track less accurate.

To select a plane you simply draw a spline around it. You can be fairly loose with your spline — the Planar Tracker is intelligent enough to discard the pixel movement that doesn’t conform to the movement of the majority of the pixels within the shape.

Mocha features two spline types, X-Splines and Bézier splines:

One of the most important concepts to understand with the Mocha planar tracking system is that the spline movement is not the tracking data.

It’s best to think of the splines you draw around objects as search areas. Here’s a breakdown of how the tracking works:

To see this relationship, turn on your surface and/or grid in the viewer after you have tracked something. Scrub the timeline and you will see that the grid and surface move with the spline.

Now select all the points of your spline and move it around the viewer. You will notice that the surface/grid will stay in the same place.

This is because the spline is linked to the track, but the track is not linked to the spline. The spline is merely a search area to tell the track where to go next. It is a common misconception that moving the spline while tracking is affecting the movement of the tracking data. It is not. Moving the spline is only telling the tracker to look in a different place and will not directly affect the motion of the tracking.

This makes the tracker very powerful, as you can move and manipulate your spline area around while tracking to avoid problem areas or add more detail for the search.

You can even unlink the spline from the track entirely so that any planar surface passing under the stationary spline area is tracked and you don’t have to move the spline if tracking starts to go off screen.

With the Planar Tracker you simply draw a spline around something, as shown with the screen below.

In some cases there are parts of an image that can interfere with the effectiveness of the Planar Tracker. To handle this, you can create an exclusion zone in the area you are tracking.

For instance, in the phone example we are using, there are frames where there are strong reflections on the screen. These reflections can make the track jump. So we need to isolate that area so the tracker ignores it. Here’s how this is done:

You can also add as many entirely new layers on top of your tracking layer to mask out the layers below.

This is quite common when moving people, limbs, cars, badgers etc. get in front of the object you are trying to track.

In the Essentials layout, tracking Motion parameters are listed in the Essentials Panel:

In the Classic layout, detailed tracking parameters can be accessed by selecting the Track tab. On the left hand side of the Track tab, you will see two sections: Motion and Search Area.

Understanding the parameters section of the Track parameters is vitally important for obtaining good tracks. Here we provide a breakdown of each parameter and how to use it effectively.

Before performing the actual track, adjust the settings depending on the movement in the clip.

Track the plane selected by pressing the Track Forwards button on the right-hand side of the transport controls section.

Stop the track and adjust the shape if it doesn’t seem to be tracking properly. You may keyframe the spline shape so that it tracks only the planar region of a shape by adjusting the shape and hitting Add Key in the keyframe controls menu. Keep in mind that no initial keyframe is set until you first hit Add Key or move a point with Auto-Key turned on.

The spline should be tracked in addition to the clip being cached to RAM. You can play it back and get an idea as to how the track went. F
eel free to change the playback mode in the transport controls to loop or ping-pong your track.

Another trick you can do to check your track is hit the Stabilize button in the View Controls.

Turning on Stabilize will lock the tracked item in place, moving the image to compensate. In the track module, stabilize view is a preview mode to check your track. Actual stabilization output is handled by the Stabilize Module, explained in the Stabilize Overview chapter.

If you want to start a section of tracking from scratch, you can just re-track the area without clearing keyframes.

However if you’d prefer to delete keyframes you have multiple methods.

There may be instances where you have already created mattes for one or more objects in the shot, for example using a keyer or another roto tool that would help you isolate areas to track.

You can import such mattes by creating a new layer and then using the Matte Clip setting under Layer Properties to assign it to the layer.

Sometimes when you’re dealing with a difficult shot it’s easier to break the tracking into multiple layers.
If you want to combine these tracks together you can do so with the Merge Layer Tracks option.

Merge Layer Tracks appears as a button under the layer controls, but is also available as a menu option under the Edit menu and the Actions menu.

Track merging creates a new layer with the merged keys.
This happens in a top-to-bottom priority, meaning that tracking keys in the topmost layer of the selection will always be copied,
then the next layer will merge any keys that should fill gaps missing from the previous layer and so on until all layers are merged.

To use Merge tracks:

A new layer will then be created with the combined layers.

If you want to change the way keyframing is handled in the project, you need to adjust the keyframe controls.

Scrub your timeline

When starting a new project, go through your footage a few times to see what your best options are for tracking. You will save yourself a lot of time by making note of obstructions and possible problem areas in advance.

Use edges

When tracking surfaces you will usually get a much better track if you include the edges and not just the interior of an object. This is because Mocha can define the difference between the background and the foreground and lock on better.

For example, if you are tracking a greenscreen, it is better to draw your shape around the entire screen rather than just the internal tracking markers. In some cases this means you can avoid tracking markers altogether and save time on cleanup later.

When in doubt, ramp up your pixels

You can quite often get a great result with default settings, but if you’re getting a lot of drift, try setting the Min % Pixels Used value higher. The processing can be slower, but you will usually get a much more solid track.

Draw more shapes

Remember you are not limited to one shape in a layer. Use a combination of shapes to add further areas or cut holes in existing areas to maximize your search. If necessary, make an additional layer to track and mask out foreground obstructions before tracking the object you need.

Use the grid while tracking

It’s common to use the surface and the grid to line up your corners after you track, but it can be much more advantageous to set up your surface before you track and leave the grid on to watch for any subtle drift while you are tracking. This way you can stop your track early to fix any issues and spend less time trying to find them later.

Track from the largest, clearest point

In order for Mocha to keep the best possible track, it is usually best to scrub through the timeline and find the largest and clearest area to begin tracking from, draw your shape there, then use backwards and forward tracking from that point.

For example, if you have a shot of sign coming toward you down a freeway, it is usually better to start at the end of the clip where the sign is largest, draw your shape and track backwards, rather than start from the beginning of the clip.

A planar surface does not necessarily have to be flat

We have a Planar Tracker which specifically tracks planes of motion, but this is not limited to tables, walls and other flat objects.

Distant background is considered flat by the camera where there is no parallax. Faces can be tracked very successfully around the eyes and bridge of the nose. Rocky ground, rumpled cushions, clumps of bushes, human torsos and curved car bodies are all good candidates. The key is low parallax or no obvious moving depth.

When in doubt, try quickly tracking an area to see if it will work, as you can quite often trick the planar tracker into thinking something is planar.

In the end, there is no magic bullet

Mocha is a very flexible tracker and will save a lot of time, but you will eventually run into a piece of footage that just will not track. Large or continuous obstructions, extreme blur, low contrast details and sudden flashes can all cause drift or untrackable situations.

If something just isn’t tracking no matter what you try, consider using Mocha to track as much as possible then move to manual work. You can often get a lot more done fixing shots by hand or using AdjustTrack in Mocha rather than trying to tweak your shapes and parameters over and over again to get everything done automatically.

To track a mesh, you first need to generate one.

The initial process is as follows:

An initial Mesh is generated.

Then you can refine your PowerMesh with the following parameters.

Generation Mode

This dropdown contains two options:

Mesh Size

Mesh Size is the distance between vertices in pixels.

This means that the smaller the Mesh Size, the more potential mesh faces you will have. The larger the Mesh Size, the larger the faces and the less faces you will have.

A good starting point for Mesh Size is 32 for a HD or 4K image.

Vertices on Spline

This option makes sure the PowerMesh is generated to the boundaries of your layer spline, rather than just over the most interesting detail within it.

For uniform meshes, this option makes sure at least part of the mesh is overlapping the spline.

Adaptive Contrast

Adaptive Contrast boosts details in the underlying image to help the Automatic mesh generate the most useful vertices. Use with care! Sometimes you don’t want too much mesh detail.

Generate Mesh

This button generates the Mesh. Click it every time you change a Mesh generation parameter.

Clear Mesh

This button clears the Mesh from the layer.

Once you have generated your mesh and you’re happy with it, you can move on to tracking.

The Mesh tracker first uses the standard planar tracking per frame and then applies the sub-planar track with the mesh.

Any mesh faces that fall outside of the spline or the image boundary are ignored. Those mesh faces become rigid and try to follow along with the existing mesh.

To perform a Mesh track:

Note that choosing the Planar motion parameters is important. For example:

The Mesh Tracking parameters help control how Mocha approaches the organic surface.

Auto Smoothness

Turning this on tells Mocha to guess the amount of smoothness to apply to the Mesh track. See “Smoothness” below.

Smoothness

Also referred to as “Rigidity”, this value determines the amount of smoothness to apply to the Mesh when tracking.

As a general guideline, we recommend setting a lower smoothness for very warped or wobbly movement and a higher smoothness for more rigid objects that still have some distortion.

For example:

Warp Spline

This option deforms the spline shape to match the movement of the Mesh while tracking. This is useful so that you don’t have to worry about animating the shape to keep the mesh inside the bounds of the spline.

As an added bonus, this also means it greatly reduces the keyframes needed to rotoscope an organic object.

The Edit Track Mesh button is in the Toolbar at the top of the Mocha interface.

Selecting this turns on subselection in your mesh and you can move or delete vertices either before or after you have tracked the mesh.

To get out of Edit mode, click the normal selection tool.

After Tracking, You can animate the tracked mesh manually to fix points or make your preferred adjustments.
Animated meshes are keyframed for the whole set of vertices, rather than individual points. This makes it easier to keyframe states over time, similar to the spline default animation mode.

Add Vertex

This tool appears when in Edit Mesh mode. When Add Vertex is on, click any Mesh edge to add a new vertex. A new edge will appear joining the created vertex and the vertex opposite.

Normally adjusting Mesh points is done by moving selections of vertices or carefully moving individual ones.
An alternative approach is to use the falloff tool to move areas of vertices in a Mesh all at once with a gradient of strength.

With the Edit Track Mesh tool active, you can click the falloff icon to activate the Mesh selection radius.

Mesh falloff is adjustable via a field in the Falloff panel:

You can use Ctrl/CMD and Left-Dragging to adjust the size of the Radius. Similarly, you can adjust the strength by holding Ctrl/CMD+Shift and Left-Dragging.

Adjustments are visualised by a red gradient, but this turns off while using the tool on Mesh points.

Any points under the circle will be affected.

Using PowerMesh, you can export:

Blue mesh faces

When tracking, if one of your mesh faces turns blue, this means the face has become flipped, normally because the area you are tracking has turned away from the camera.

Use more than one contour

You can use more than one contour to cut holes in the mesh generation. This is helpful if you want to ignore details in a surface, such as teeth in a mouth region or a tattoo that is taking up too much of the mesh detail.

If you would prefer to only track and work with the Hero view initially then offset your data manually, you can also do this using the Stereo Offset tab in Track.

This will only track the current view you are on. If you switch to the other view you will see the layer still moves with the track, but is not offset like when you do an all-views track.

You can then use the Stereo Offset parameters in the Track module to offset your view.

If you decide later that you want to track the non-hero view, you can do so by selecting the non-tracked view then track as normal.

You have the following options in the Stereo Offset tab (see above) when tracking another view based on the hero view:

Note that by default these are both selected to give best results. If you only use Track this view and not Track from other views, the current view will be tracked independently of the hero view and will not offset.

You can also open existing mono projects that have additional views and track them without having to manually offset. Just set the mono project to Multiview in the Project Settings and add the additional footage streams to the clip.

For simpler tracks, you can also do a technique called "Offset Frame Tracking" which is a combined stereo track and hero track.

If your initial stereo track was offset correctly, that offset will then carry onwards through the rest of the track.
Keep in mind that things like convergence and disparity in the moving stereo image may not work accurately in this scenario,
but it will increase performance of the process because you only have to track one eye.

You can also then apply additional manual stereo offsets as described in the manual offset section above.

There will be times when tracks can drift due to lack of detail or introduction of small obstructions.  When this occurs, manual refinements can be made by using the AdjustTrack tool.

AdjustTrack is primarily used for eradicating drift by adjusting reference points to generate keyframable data to compensate.  It is generally not practical to use it to remove jitter.

To achieve an adjusted track you would ideally line up the surface area where you want to place your insert or lock down your roto.

In situations where you don’t require an insertion you could place the corners of the surface area in distinctive locations.

The Transform AdjustTrack is designed to be an easier user experience from the Classic AdjustTrack (see below) by removing the need to use the surface as your alignment tool.

In Transform AdjustTrack you can adjust based on specific transforms with as many reference points as you require over time.

You can set reference points either as a template for the kind of adjustment you want, or add them yourself as needed.

Once you are happy with the points positions and have set a reference frame, you can start moving back and forth on the timeline adjusting the points for drift.

Right-clicking a point selects all points or you can shift-click individual points and can move them as one.

Take note of the Transform type when moving points, as the Transform type affects how points adjust the track.

By default, for your initial set of points, each point adjustment sets a key frame for every other point in the shot to avoid unwanted distortions.

You can see the original reference frame for the selected point in the zoom window in the upper left of the viewer and the current frame in the window below that.

You can then keep adjusting the points over the timeline until all drift is corrected.

It’s quite common that one of your AdjustTrack points is going to get obscured, go out of frame or no longer have a usable visual reference in the scene.
This is when you may want to add new points to the adjustment.

You can add as many points as you like to an adjustment over time. Each keyframed point contributes to the adjustment on that frame.

In order to do this effectively however, you need to understand AdjustTrack Transform keyframe ranges.

You can export adjusted tracks as normal via the file menu or via the Track module just like any regular track.

When you have the Surface where you want it to stay locked and are ready to refine the track, flip over into the AdjustTrack module by hitting the AdjustTrack tab.

Then switch to the Classic tab.

Once you select the Classic AdjustTrack tab, a key frame with four reference points is created.

As you play though the sequence you will be able to manually adjust the position of each point as drift occurs.

If your track is spot on, these reference points should line up properly throughout the shot. If you see a Reference Point drifting, that will indicate the track is drifting. Find the frame where the drift is worst and move the Reference Point back to the position it had in the Primary Frame and the track will automatically be adjusted based on your correction.

When you perform an adjust track and you begin to move a newly created reference point, you will notice the dashed lines which connect all of the reference points. These lines change in color to represent the quality of positioning of any given reference point. For best results keep reference points away from one another.

When adjusting the track try to always get at least yellow but shoot for green for a more solid adjust track.

The red lines indicate that this reference point position is a poor choice.

The green lines indicate that this reference point position is a good choice.

Often there are times where your reference points are either obscured or exit frame. In AdjustTrack you have the ability to create multiple reference points per surface corner that can be positioned in alternate locations to handle these situations. Simply click the New Ref button to create a new reference point for the selected corner.

You cannot keyframe the Surface — only the Reference Points. The original track and any refinements you make in AdjustTrack cause the Surface to move however.

Every so often a shot will come along that is easier to track backwards than forwards. This is fairly simple when running the tracker backwards, but introduces some rather obtuse concepts when keyframing is involved. This is why there are two "New Ref" buttons provided. If you are working backwards and wish to set a new reference point, you will probably want to use the "<- New Ref" button instead of the forward-thinking "New Ref ->" button.

Because keyframing "thinks" forward, hitting "<-New Ref" will not create new Primary Reference points on the current frame, but will go backwards in time, looking for any existing keyframes and set new Primary Reference points on the frame directly after. For example, if you decide to create a new backwards reference point at frame 20, a new primary reference will be created at frame 21.

Some people may be more comfortable doing this manually by moving the playhead themselves and using the traditional "New Ref ->" button. Others who do a lot of tracking and find themselves working backwards often may find the backwards-thinking New Ref button helpful.

Every Reference Point has one frame in which its initial placement is determined without causing any adjustment to the track. This is called the Primary Reference Point; if you step forward or backward in time you will notice the red X change to a red dot.

The red X indicates that this particular frame is the starting point for calculating adjustments. Moving a Primary Reference Point will NOT change the tracking data.

Go ahead and experiment - move the Reference Point when it is a red X (a Primary Reference Point). You will notice the Surface isn’t adjusted at all. Step forward a frame and move the same point - this time the surface will move because you are now adjusting the track.

By default, the frame in which you create a Reference Point is its Primary Reference frame. This Primary Reference can occur on a different frame for each reference point. You can change the Primary Reference frame by selecting a Reference Point, going to the appropriate frame and hitting the "Set Primary" button.

You may set a new Primary Reference Frame for all active points by hitting the Set Primary All button.

One method for selecting different reference points is to hit the "Next" button.

The next button simply cycles through the active reference points for that frame. More fine-grained control of reference points can be obtained through the Nudge control panel, described below.

Deleting Reference Points is done by selecting the point you wish to remove and hitting the delete key. If there are multiple Reference points on a particular corner, the preceding Reference Point will be extended through your time line until a new Reference point is encountered.

The Nudge section allows you to move Reference points in 0.1 pixel increments, much more fine grained than would be possible by dragging the points manually. You can easily select any active Reference Point by selecting one of the corner buttons in the Nudge section.

If you hit the Auto button, a tracker will attempt to line up the selected Reference Point based on its position in the Primary Reference frame. The Search Region Size and Maximum Motion parameters can be set in pixels in the Auto Nudge section.

You can quickly select any corner by using the Corner selector buttons in the Nudge control panel. In the image below, the user is selecting the upper right corner in preparation for nudging operations.

The Classic AdjustTrack tab has a View section for cleaning up your AdjustTrack workspace. Deselecting the Inactive Traces button will cause the display to hide the traces of the inactive Reference Points. This is helpful if you have a corner with numerous Reference Points offsetting it.

Deselecting the Unselected Traces button will hide any Reference Point that is not selected.

Finally, deselecting the Search Area button will hide the Search Region Size (in Yellow) and the Maximum Motion search area (in Pink).

Adjust frames at the peak of drift

When you see a drift, carefully cycle through the timeline and look for where the motion starts to change direction. A frame before this, adjust your drift, then go halfway between your primary frame and the adjusted frame to check for any further drift.  If you keep working by checking halfway between each keyframe you set, you will reduce the amount of keyframes required.

A huge amount of keyframes is not a good sign

If you end up with adjustment keyframes on a large amount of frames it may be better retry the track.  AdjustTrack is aimed to help reduce small anomalies and fix drift when a tracked corner has become obscured.  If you are fixing every second keyframe it means you have more than a simple drift.

Most often a good matte requires a combination of both keying and rotoscoping techniques.

Good rotoscoping artists often think like animators, reverse engineering the movements, the easing in and outs, the holds and overshoots of objects, and set their keyframes accordingly.

In general, the fewer the keyframes, the better your mattes will look. Too many keyframes will cause the edges to 'chatter' and move unnaturally. Too few keyframes will cause the shapes to drift and lose definition. Finding the right number and placement of keyframes often comes with experience but there are a few things to keep in mind when rotoscoping.

While you can refine a shape you have tracked to do your rotoscoping, the recommended way is to do a rough shape to track something and then link your roto to that track. This reduces the amount of work required when you are dealing with complex shapes, as you will not have to track and refine each shape as you go. It also means that if you have to retrack something you won’t have to redo a lot of layers. Another reason is reducing the amount of data needed in your project file.

It also helps to remember that your spline shape is linked to your tracking data and not the other way around.

For the following examples you can try out the tools using the BMW tutorial files
available from https://cdn.borisfx.com/borisfx/store/mocha-clips/rotoscoping.zip

You can add more points to your shape either using the Point Insertion tool next to the main Pick/Selection tool, or hold down CMD/Ctrl while using the selection tool itself.

To remove points, simply select a point or series of points and press the delete key.

You can also hover over an existing point and hold down the CMD/Ctrl key to click-delete existing points in the spline.

The Überkey is a powerful tool that allows you to offset the positions of control points without destroying their keyframe data.

Use this tool with care, as it is not setting any keyframes per se, it is offsetting any and all keyframe data on the points you move while it is on. Überkey is very useful, but remember to turn it off again when you don’t need it. Use with care.

Überkey affects only those frames between the timeline’s In and Out point. If you wish to make adjustments to a particular range, set the In and Out points to that range.

You can translate, rotate and scale selected points as a group by using the corresponding tools listed in the toolbar.

Or alternatively, use the transform tool to perform all of the above functions in the same tool:

You can turn on and off individual points in a spline. When they are off, you can still see the points, they can still be animated, but they are not contributing mathematically to the spline. This allows you to have a complex spline only when you need it, rather than having to deal with superfluous points in parts of the shot when they are not needed.

To turn off points, select the points on the spline and hit Shift+Delete. You will see the curve change shapes, but the points will remain.

To turn a point back on, right-click on it and select Point | Activate.

If the Autokey button is enabled, a keyframe will be created when you change a point’s active status.

You can use the movement of the individual spline points to determine motion blur.
Any movement in the spline, whether through simple X/Y translation or by shape deformation will cause motion blur.

You can control the amount of blur by changing the motion blur value in the Edge Properties panel.

Angle
This essentially controls the amount of motion blur for the layer.

Angle simulates how long the shutter is open for if we were viewing through a real camera, so the range is between:

The reason we refer to angle as opposed to "amount" is that camera shutters used to open with a rotary action, so a smaller angle would let in less light, and thus reduce motion blur.

Phase

This controls the offset of the motion blur from the current frame.

Changing Phase from zero shifts the position of the motion blur to either be more ahead or behind the currently calculated frame and is useful for tweaking motion blur that isn’t quite sitting right.

Because Phase is based on the shutter angle you can adjust between the range -180 and 180 (i.e a range of 360 like the shutter angle).

Quality

The steps of motion blur you want to render. The lower the quality, the faster the render speed. The default is 0.25 but can go as high as 5.0.

Although not necessary in this example, note that you can change how mattes are blended in the Layer Properties panel. You may make each layer’s matte Add or Subtract and you can also invert the matte.

Note that this can’t be keyframed and that these settings apply to the entire layer, not to individual splines of the same layer.

In the View Controls, several options are offered for viewing your mattes. The Matte drop down is has options to view all mattes, just the mattes you have selected or no mattes.

Select the Matte button and you will see your rotoscoped object against a flat background.

You may wish to rotoscope against a particular color. Select View → Canvas Color…​ and a color picker will allow you to choose a particular background color

When you have your Mattes turned on, you may choose for the matte to be filled with a color instead of cutting out the object, using Colorize.

You can adjust the opacity of the color fill by changing the blend value to the right of the Colorize button.

The color used by Colorize is derived from the Selected and Unselected properties of the Overlay Colors panel, which can be changed per layer.

This is only a preview and will not affect how your mattes are rendered when exporting.

If you want to get a better view of your roto, you can get a better view by turning off some overlays.

For layer spines:

For points:

Hiding points will still allow you to adjust the layer with the transform tool.

In the View Controls panel, you will find a drop-down menu for selecting the clip to view.

This allows you to view the actual rendered mattes, which can be especially useful when tweaking motion blur. The motion blur you normally see in your canvas is an OpenGL preview and can differ slightly from the actual render.

If you’d like to see what the actual motion blur render looks like, switch to viewing the layer whose matte you wish to see.

Because you can choose specific layers for export when you render, a render pass is created for each layer.

Switch the View Clip drop-down back to your source clip to continue working with that clip.

If you want to draw open splines, you can simply hold shift when you right-click to finish the spline. This will open the shape up.

You can also right-click a spline and choose: Spline | Open/Close Spline

Normally adjusting points is done by moving selections of points or carefully moving individual ones.
An alternative approach is to use the falloff tool to move contiguous points in a spline all at once with a gradient of strength.

With the selection tool active, you can click the falloff icon to activate the selection radius.

This is adjustable via a field in the Falloff panel:

You can use Ctrl/CMD and Left-Dragging to adjust the size of the Radius. Similarly, you can adjust the strength by holding Ctrl/CMD+Shift and Left-Dragging.

Adjustments are visualised by a red gradient, but this turns off while using the tool on points.

Any point on the line of control points near your selection that fall under the circle will be affected.

Sometimes when you’re working on a complicated roto, you realise you really needed a few smaller shapes rather than one big one.

To remedy this, you can split any selected points into a new layer and they will retain the existing keyframes and tracking data.

To split a contour:

The shape should now be split at the point you selected.

A few caveats:

Some roto requires making copies of existing splines to continue a different part of the work.

To make this easier, you can use Snapshot Duplicate to make an exact in-place copy, which compiles both the keyframed position and tracked position into a new untracked layer.
This will also keep the surface in the exact same spot for that frame to make it easier to match corner pins or inserts.

To snapshot a layer:

A new layer will be created that exactly matches the position of the original layer without any of the animation or tracking keys.

You can of course just copy splines or duplicate layers normally, but with these methods you’re often left with more work to do to remove keyframes or readjust splines into position.

Sometimes you may only need a contour in your layer for a single frame.

This very useful for example in Matte Assist ML, but it also has other uses for dealing with single-frame roto problems.

To turn on single-frame splines for a contour:

This will reactivate the spline contour for the rest of the frames in the timeline.

To switch it back off, simply repeat the same process, but this time select Single frame Off.

Name your layers

Naming layers is very important to save yourself time later, especially if you are doing a heavy rotoscoping job. Get into the habit of labeling each layer with specific names.

Turn off the splines and just work with points and the matte

If you are working on a tight roto it can sometimes be easier to turn the spline off and just see the matte with the control points. To do this:

If your other view options are at default settings you should now see the matte in the viewer with only the tangents and control points visible.

The Magnetic Tool draws a pixel line that snaps to the nearest edge to where the cursor lies, tracing the shortest path from any previous click.

To use the Magnetic Tool:

(Image courtesy of LateNite Films)

Similarly, if you go off the edge of the frame, the magnetic tool will also switch to Freehand mode,
so you can freely continue the shape.

The Freehand pen tool is exactly like the Magnetic tool, minus the magnetic properties.

This gives you the freedom to quickly draw any line.

You can access the Freehand tool in the same tool drop down as the Magnetic tool, but also any time you
press and hold the mouse/pen down in the Magnetic tool, or go off the image frame.

One you have completed a drawn line, you can either click back on the original point, or right-click.

This will generate an X-Spline that follows the originally drawn line.

(Image courtesy of LateNite Films)

X-Splines generated by the Magnetic and Freehand tools have a fairly high point count to match the subtle changes in the line.

If you want to increase or reduce this detail:

You can snap the control points of any spline to edges of an object by using the Edge Snapping tool.
By default, this is the 'Alt+S' keys.

To snap to an edge:

Alternatively hold the 'S' key and drag the points.

The selected points should then move to snap to the nearest detectable edge.

Keep in mind this will naturally try to find the most visible edge, so in some cases snap may not find the edge you want.
In these cases it may need to be adjusted manually.

You can select the Area brush from the toolbar:

Selecting the area brush reveals the Area brush settings further down the toolbar:

You can now paint on the canvas and a red paint area will appear.

Once done, you can turn off Quick Mask if it is on or just release the mouse button and a spline will be generated.

You can adjust the brush size using either:

For finer control, the brush size will also change according to the set pressure sensitivity from a drawing tablet.

You can turn off pressure sensitivity from Preferences.

By default, Quick Mask is turned on.

Quick Mask stops the Area Brush tool from generating a spline as soon as you release the mouse or lift the tablet pen
Once you have painted what you need, you can turn Quick Mask off by pressing the button and the spline will be generated.

If you want to quickly fill smaller gaps, you can adjust the "Fill Gaps" field.

The number in the field is a pixel diameter. Any gap in a closed painted area that is smaller than the number in the field will be filled.
For example:

A large fill gap setting is useful for quickly circling an object with paint to make a filled spline.

The Add Area Brush will add new paint-generated splines to the selected layer.

The tool is under the main Area Brush icon. Just press and hold the toolbar icon to select the brush from the list:

Then you can paint on the existing spline:

Once done, you can turn off Quick Mask if it is on or just release the mouse button and the resulting spline intersect with the existing layer splines:

In both Quick Mask mode and normal painting mode, you can hold down the alt/option key to switch to erase mode.

In Quick Mask mode, this will erase existing paint:

If Quick Mask mode is off, this will erase the existing spline if you are using the Add Area Brush tool. Just paint as normal holding down the modifier key:

When you release, the erase will eat into the existing spline:

The Object Brush is used to select objects in the shot using the Boris FX Mask ML process.

The resulting matte is similar to the Area Brush in that it creates a painted matte area which is then converted into a spline.

Selected objects that cross over an existing layer spline will intersect with that spline.

You can automate the generation of animated garbage mattes using Matte Assist ML.

To start using Matte Assist ML, first switch to the Matte module:

If you need to offset your tracking or roto manually (see below), you can use the Difference 3D view to help align the layer.

Data in the 2D category covers tracking data, Shape (Roto) data and some special types such as 2D alembic data.

All data in the 3D category covers export formats for the 3D Camera Solver.

For more information on exporting 3D data, go to the Exporting Camera Solves section of the User Guide.

Mocha Pro supports many different VFX applications, including ones that are less used or have become obsolete.
This means over time, a lot more formats are shown in the exports than most users need.

By default we now filter out those formats in the Legacy category.

If you are still using some of these formats, just turn the checkbox on.

You can tag any export type as one of your favorites so it appears at the top of the export format tree.

To favorite an export format:

To remove an export format from the favorite list:

If you are mostly using one format type in your Mocha work, we also offer the option to simply export that type again.
You can choose the Export Again option from the file menu or use the default shortcut CMD/Ctrl + R.

To export tracking data to After Effects, press the Export Tracking Data button.

Then from the After Effects (Adobe) section of the export dialog choose either:

After Effects CC Power Pin:

The Power pin data is very much like corner pin, but the exported effect gives you more control over the results in After Effects.
See the After Effects help for more information on how to use CC Power Pin.

After Effects Corner Pin:

The corner pin data records and exports the 4 point x, y information from either the adjusted track or the raw track.
There are three different types of corner pin exports – two for recent After Effects versions and one for CS3 and older versions of After Effects.

Some will be hidden in the Legacy section of the export dialog which you can reveal by turning on the Legacy checkbox.

After Effects Transform Data:

The transform data exports x and x positions as well as the scale and rotation for the whole surface.

If you click Save, this will display a file browser for saving the tracking data for use later. By default, the files will take the name of the layer, so for a layer name Track_Layer the export will create a file named "Track_Layer.txt".

If you don’t need to save the export, you can press Copy to Clipboard, and then go straight to After Effects and paste the data. If you are saving to file you will need to open the text file you saved with the data, select the entire body of text and copy it.

In After Effects, load the footage you tracked and the footage/image/composition you wish to apply the transform or corner pin data to.

Select the item on the timeline that is the insert object. Paste the data to the selected layer. You can do this by selecting the ‘paste' option in the edit menu or by typing 'command- v' (Mac) or 'ctrl-v' (Windows).

With the layer’s information expanded you can see either the 4-point tracking data for the corner pin, or the position, rotation and scale information from the tracking is now applied to the insert layer.

If you are pasting transform data rather than corner pin data then you will need to delete the anchor point keyframes to see a result. We export both position and anchor point keyframes so that stabilization or tracking can be achieved. See below.

This section explains how to export tracking data in a format readable to Silhouette Tracker nodes, how to import the data into Silhouette and how to use it for match move tasks.

To apply an insert using the data:

The image should now follow the background source as expected.

You export Mocha planar tracking data to Mistika as a set of corner pin tracks by choosing Mistika Point Tracker (*.trk) from the Export Tracking Data dialog.

You can import your saved Mistika Point track data from the File menu.

This section explains how to export tracking data in a format readable by Nuke, how to import the data into Nuke and how to use it for match move, corner pinning and stabilization tasks.

In Nuke, append a tracker to the background clip, e.g. by selecting the node and pressing tab, then typing 'tracker' and finally selecting the 'Tracker' node in the list of nodes.

In the tracker properties window, select the animation submenu button for Tracker 1, then choose File | Import Ascii…​ in the menu.

On the import Ascii dialog, press the folder button next to the file name, browse to the file you exported, select it, click 'Open' and then click 'OK'.

Repeat these steps for tracker 2, 3 and 4.

This section explains how to export tracking data in a format readable by Fusion, how to import the data into Fusion and how to use it for match move, corner pinning and stabilization tasks.

In Fusion, open the .comp file or paste from the clipbaord then drag the tracker node into the right view.

Now import the clip that you want composited onto the background and tie the output of the clip to the input of the tracker node.

In the settings of the tracker node, select the 'Operation' tab and select either 'Corner Positioning' or 'Match Move' to composite the insert clip on top of the background. Notice that you can switch 'Position', 'Rotation' and 'Scaling' on and off for different effects.

This section explains how to export tracking data in a format readable by Autodesk Inferno, Flame, Flint, Smoke and Combustion.

To import data into SCRATCH requires SCRATCH v7 or later.

To import the data into Assimilate, do the following:

The Mistika export format provides 4 corner pin track points.

To export tracking data to the Mistika:

Mistika at this time does not support clipboard pasting of the track data.

There are two ways to import the data to Mistika:

You can export HitFilm transform and corner pin data directly to a HitFilm Composite Shot file.

Exporting tracks to HitFilm is very similar to exporting HitFilm Camera solves or Shapes:

Importing is done via the Compositing section in HitFilm: