Never noticed that the transform tools in Mocha could move the surface too.
I have all these years manually moved the edges/corners :-D
i have always used the transform tools only on the shape points, but i guess when you only use the QWE shortcuts to access the transform tools and it only works on the surface when no shape points are selected it can be easy to overlook.
Thanks for the tip.
...to keep this AE related. The AE team should make the mask transform much more like Mocha, its so easy and fast to manipulate the shape, much much faster than the old transform box in AE :-)
Robert, after duplicating a layer in mocha, to reuse the Surface shape for another tracking task, you can use the Translate tool to move the entire Surface as a single unit.
In AE, you may apply Distort>Transform BEFORE the Corner Pin effect, to offset the Corner Pin.
HTH
- Roland Kahlenberg
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Kjettrup" <robert@stvmayday.dk>
To: "After Effects Mail List" <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 1:26:34 AM
Subject: Re: [AE] Mocha question: planar surface coordinates values?
Hi Ross
thanks for he answer.
Yes i could just have dublicated the first track, and it would keep the Surface position. But i had already tracked the other layers and they were already perfect, so just wanted a way to move the surface to the other tracking layers with the same coordinates.
I did it manually by zoming in and lining the surface edge up to the viewer edge, switching between the layers and dragging the surface edge of that layer to the same location. Didn't take long, but a bit surprised that there wasnt a more exact way to do it. :-)
Then consider this a feature request from me for the next version, exposing surface coordinates values in the UI ;-)
If I am understanding your question, you should be able to duplicate your mocha layer, leave the surface in the position that you want, than simply re-track. (duplicate layer icon underneath layer controls OR CNTRL D).
As far as I know, the surface coordinates is not something currently exposed numerically to the user. If you saved the AE corner pin tracking export format and viewed the file, you would find the corner coordinates - but there is nowhere within mocha to enter them. For version 4 of mocha we are working on adding Python support and scripting, so users will be able to do more with the data and exports.
I have a small question about Mocha that i cant figure out reading the help files, and the Mocha Forum seems to be down (for good?) and thought the best place to ask a semi AE related question was on this list.
Is there any way to find the coordinates of the surface of one layer and move/copy them over exact to another tracked layer?
Normally i just use the Align Surface command in tracks like this, but in this case i cant since in some frames the perspective is turned so much that a full frame aligned surface wont transfer over to AE correct, just resetting the cornerpin values for those frames. But if i restrict he Surface to a smaller area around the tracked area it comes over correct, now i just need to use the exact same values for the surface on some other tracking layers, but i cant find any place in Mocha where they are shown. Not even the Dope Sheet or Curve Editor.
Can this be true?
or do i just need to manually try to match up the surface for each tracking layer?
- Robert
--
Ross Shain
Chief Marketing Officer
Imagineer Systems - developers of mocha planar tracking and visual effects tools.