Mask Up in Post: Warped Surface Tracking in After Effects

Learn how to use Mocha Pro's mesh tracking feature to add a mask to a face with realistic warping and tracked motion. PowerMesh is a new addition to Mocha's powerful planar tracking, designed for organic and warped surface tracking. Here, Mocha guru, Mary Polin covers useful mesh tracking tips including vertice editing, pre-comping the source layer in AE, and more.
This tutorial is shown in After Effects, but a similar workflow will work running the Mocha Pro plugin inside Adobe Premiere Pro, Nuke, Vegas Pro, Fusion, and other hosts.
To learn more about Mocha Pro 2021, visit Boris FX:
bit.ly/3mJAQFJ

[@satay71]

Mary is a legend! Thank you!

[@nikolaostsimpetonidis4243]

Many thanks for this, very useful! May I ask please, does it matter which one you will track first? Meaning could I track the face to a point, then do the fingers holdout and then continue tracking the face? My point is that unfortunately sometimes in various shots one can notice small obscuring objects only after he has started tracking the desired area. And a second question, could I have multiple holdout layers if needed (depending of course to the shot) . Many thanks again for the wonderful tutorial!

[@BorisFXco]

You could absolutely do that sort of approach, and we do that all the time. Track an object until it can't be tracked, add a track matte, then get good tracking data for the original layer. You can also use multiple layers as track mattes. Check out Exercise 4b in Mocha Essentials for a more in-depth look at track mattes : borisfx.com/free-training/mocha-essentials/

[@nikolaostsimpetonidis4243]

@@BorisFXco Many thanks for the prompt and very useful reply. Keep up the great work! Best regards! Nick

[@MylonasFilms]

Amazing thank you

[@BorisFXco]

No problem 😊

[@meerata1249]

thank you so much

[@alleyvoid]

I've seen tutorials like this a lot, but whenever I try to do the same. The effect won't track onto my actor. Restarting doesn't work and resetting preferences doesn't work. Anyone got any other ideas?

[@BorisFXco]

If you can, post the shot on the forums : forum.borisfx.com/ It's easier to give you workflow hints from there.

[@alleyvoid]

@@BorisFXco I appreciate it, I've been planning on buying my subscription after I figured out how to use it. So I was unsure if the trial mode purposely doesn't work. I'll be posting it shortly.

[@Abdo.A]

Very complex and very informative. You go into a lot of details when tracking. Would make sense if there is a comprehensive tut covering the tools you are using to adjust the track in Mocha. Nevertheless nice as always.

[@BorisFXco]

I'm glad you found it useful. If you need to know about a particular part of Mocha, the free Mocha Essentials course is always a good place to start : borisfx.com/free-training/mocha-essentials/

[@Tjsampang]

Wow!👍🏻

[@archie_en]

16:33 Кто-нибудь понял зачем мы дублировали слой и делали Uber-key?

[@BorisFXco]

It's so you end up with a tight mask for the fingers for compositing, and a bigger, looser shape to work as a track matte for PowerMesh. The Uberkey lets you change all your keyframes at once without worrying about adding new ones. Does that help?

[@archie_en]

@@BorisFXco благодарю

[@zaloisio5137]

where is the project file