Imagineer Systems will showcase its newest versions of mocha Pro and mocha AE at SIGGRAPH 2012 in Los Angeles. The company also announced it will be showing a preview of the upcoming mocha v3.1. This release will add new tools for lens distorted footage, Python scripting, RED support and new features to help roto artists work more efficiently.
Additionally throughout the show, Imagineer Systems will host guest artists from the visual effects industry who will be showing examples of their work. Guests include David Shorey, visual effects artist (Supah Ninjas, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol); David Blum, visual effects artist and trainer (Charlie’s Angeles), and James Chick, lead compositor, Hive FX (NBC‘s Grimm). In addition, representatives from Legend 3D (Spiderman, Hugo) will discuss how mocha Pro fits into their VFX and stereo conversion process.
Since its release at NAB 2012 earlier this year, mocha AE v3 and mocha Pro v3 have quickly become popular among Hollywood’s postproduction houses and VFX artists, and have played key roles in the postproduction of this summer’s hit films, including Prometheus and The Amazing Spiderman.
Ash Beck is the owner and lead visual effects artist of Nerve Films, a full-service creative studio specializing in live-action visual effects, photography and design. Beck recently used mocha Pro v3 on this summer’s blockbuster, The Amazing Spiderman. “The Amazing Spiderman was a perfect fit for our studio,” said Beck. “I designed the New York backgrounds for several key sequences during the pre-vis stage and was hired by the production to work directly with VFX supervisor Jerome Chen, editor Alan Edward Bell, as well as the director Marc Webb.”
“We were able to see the challenges ahead and concentrate our efforts on what tools would be the most proficient for the final composites,” he continued. “Part of the challenge on The Amazing Spiderman was that we had many plates with a shallow depth of field and only one small architectural feature, diagonal in shape and with little contrast to grab on to. We tried other trackers too, but they could not quite make out the detail, nor the continuation of action when elements went off screen during the tilts and pans. We tracked both forward and reverse and mocha’s Planar Tracker always gave us the results we needed.”
