Tone's Step-by-Step DS to Mocha to DS Tutorial

Here's a quick step-by-step tutorial to get you started using Imagineer System's Mocha Tracking Station with the DS. (Revised: Nov 13, 2007 10:26 am)

USING MOCHA WITH DS:
1. Export the clip-to-be-tracked as a QuickTime or AVI, full size. Currently none of the Imagineer products can read a Ref movie from DS, but they're working on it so this may change.
2. Start a new project on Mocha. Ensure the Mocha project is the correct frame rate for your clip - it does NOT auto-detect this.
3. Track in Mocha.
4. Export DS FRAW curves from Mocha of the final track. I'd suggest saving to a folder within your project.
5. In DS make a simple tree with your background (the thing that's just been tracked in Mocha), the foreground (the image that's going to be composited onto your background), a Composite node, and a Tracker.
6. (Optional per Tone) Feed the background into Input 1 of the Composite node.
7. Feed the foreground into the Tracker "Layer" input.
8. Feed the Tracker output to Input 2 of the Composite node.
9. Open the Tracker and open the Animation Editor for it.
10. For each curve in turn (L1y, L1x, L2y, L2x etc), select the curve in the left-hand column and select File-->Import Fraw. Navigate to where you saved the curves, and load the appropriate one. Note that because you'll see the curves in alphabetical order when navigating to them, it's not the same order as DS lists them.

The above is actually much easier than it looks, and takes only a few minutes.













































Revised: Nov 13, 2007 10:26 am