mocha Tackles Complex Roto and Tracking Jobs for Janimation Artists in Fraction of the Time; Accelerated VFX Workflow Transforms Tedium into Profit
GUILDFORD, UK (8th January, 2008) When the VFX artists of Janimation, Inc. were approached by a client to complete a highly complex television commercial spot, with “Pleasantville-esque” color and visual effects requirements, they turned to their internal IT manager for some suggestions. A recently launched rotoscoping and planar tracking tool from www.imagineersystems.com called mocha was at the top of the list.
The project, a 30-second commercial spot for national distribution, consisted of a 1960’s-style family with all characters and backgrounds in black and white. As the spot progresses, elements of color are slowly and individually added to family members until, at the end of the commercial, the entire family is in color, while the background remains black and white.
Jimmy Gass, creative director at Janimation, and creative leader on the project immediately knew he had a big roto job on his hands. “We were under a lot of pressure for this one. We basically were given three days to complete the entire spot, however, the roto work alone would have taken our team three days to complete with our current tool set. But there’s always a risk trying to introduce a brand new tool into the mix when you’re on a deadline and every sequence has to be perfect. mocha, was so fast, so intuitive, the team settled right in with it. We were blown away.”
mocha is a stand alone 2D tracking tool with features that make the life of the effects compositing artist easier and less stressful. With mocha’s advanced planar tracking technology, compositors can avoid the guesswork and inaccuracies that result from the painstaking and time-consuming process of hand tracking difficult shots. The process of generating solid 4-point tracks, giving position, scale, rotation, shear and perspective matched tracks is significantly accelerated by Imagineer’s next generation tracking. Once the track is complete, mocha is designed to seamlessly export the data to the industry’s most well known compositing and finishing packages such as Inferno, Flame, Flint, Smoke, Combustion, Avid DS, Quantel generationQ, After Effects, Shake and Digital Fusion, providing artists the freedom to finish shots in the compositing application with which they feel most comfortable.
Gass continued, “Before we added mocha to our tool set, we would think twice about big roto jobs; the deadlines are so tight and the work is so consuming of the team’s time and energy that we were forced to consider the bottom line – the jobs simply weren’t profitable. mocha has changed that perspective completely. We now look at roto jobs in an entirely new light, knowing we can crank through them with laser accuracy, very high quality and very quickly. We’re trying to convince everyone we know to get mocha – it’s that good!”
Imagineer Systems’ mocha is available immediately and is priced at $2,995 for single node-locked licenses. For more information, please visit www.imagineersystems.com.
About Imagineer Systems
Imagineer Systems Ltd innovates and markets next-generation visual effects solutions for film, video and broadcast post production and have made their mark on such marquis Hollywood blockbuster productions as Casino Royale, Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter. Imagineer’s product line consist of monet™ - placement station, mokey™ - removal station, motor™ - roto station, mofex™ - plug-in for Shake and moxel™ - standards station. Imagineer Systems was founded in 2000 and its headquarters is located in Guildford, United Kingdom. For more information visit www.imagineersystems.com
