Borix FX’s Mocha Pro
Boris FX launched a brand new model of Mocha Pro again in July. The 2024.5 model has some more-than-bite-sized enhancements, which is shocking for a .5 improve. So, we needed to dig into the brand new options of this award-winning monitoring system.
Mocha Pro was born from a strong planar-tracking system, however due to the Boris FX acquisition — which additionally has SynthEyes in its quiver — Mocha Pro has inherited a few of the code and talents from its 3D sibling. So, there’s a brand new 3D module with a 3D viewport, import/export options for 3D meshes and scenes, together with texture previews for projections. But the 3D digital camera solver doesn’t work solely by itself: Solves might be refined with supervised monitoring utilizing planar and energy mesh tracks to get exact options for the 3D placement of these meshes. Further, after you have a resolve (automated or supervised), you’ll be able to add extra factors into the scene (one other function pulled from SynthEyes) to make your level cloud denser. All that information can then be exported in varied codecs, together with a current addition of Alembic information. This is a symbiotic relationship: You can ship Mocha Pro’s 2D trackers again to SynthEyes to help digital camera and object monitoring.
For 2D monitoring and roto, there may be an extrapolate observe perform that makes use of the movement of earlier frames to glean a resolve the place objects turn out to be occluded or transfer off-screen. Also, within the preprocessing module, which may have an effect on the photographs to carry out element to help in monitoring, a high-pass filter has been added. This helps intensify the sting particulars within the shot. In the earlier model, for rotoscoping movement blur, you needed to swap your view of the alpha. But in Mocha Pro 2024.5, you’ll be able to see the movement blur over your footage, and even higher, take a look at the movement blur on the roto’d object.
Under the hood, enhancements to the code present elevated render speeds, GPU monitoring accuracy and enhanced Python efficiency. I’ve not seen this in earlier variations, however Python assist can also be a factor (talking of Python efficiency), and PowerMesh properties and level choice have been added as objects that may be accessed by way of Python for customized processes.
The integration between Mocha Pro has been actually clean in all of the hosts that assist the plug-ins. But 2024.5 particularly exhibits enhancements in its integration with After Effects. The new model permits for straight transferring information from Mocha Pro into your After Effects atmosphere, versus having to export the information after which import it again into AE. They additionally made the fascinating determination to permit customers to decide on whether or not to export function factors as Null Objects or Point Lights, as a result of evidently Point Lights are extra environment friendly (who would’ve thunk?).
There are a slew of effectivity instruments within the splice and 2D monitoring instruments as effectively. I consider I’ve supplied you the greatest-hits record of the larger advances.
Website: borisfx.com
Price: $295
Puget Systems Workstations
This is a reasonably uncommon evaluation, since I shall be specializing in a service as a substitute of a software program or {hardware}. That service, supplied by Puget Systems, is constructing personalized workstations designed for very particular duties within the inventive fields.
I’ve been chatting with Puget Systems for at the least 4 years, making an attempt to determine the best way to body a evaluation of a product that modifications given the circumstances during which you’ll use it. I lastly determined that the service is the product. So, the blokes up in Auburn, Wash., labored with me to place collectively a system that was at the start geared towards upcoming critiques of Houdini and Lightcraft built-in with Unreal. So the system was going to want numerous RAM and storage for Houdini simulations, in addition to a strong GPU for Unreal actions.
The workstation ended up together with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7975WX 4.0GHz 32 core processor with 128GB of Kingston DDR5-5600 RAM. The GPU is an Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Gen with 48GB of RAM. Of course, with all that warmth we would have liked a liquid cooling system.
Now, you may assume, “Dang! That’s one thick machine! That is really going to be expensive!” And you’d be proper. However, these specs have been tailor-made for my functions to drive sure software program, check out computational- and memory-hungry processes and try to push them to their breaking factors.
So, can this workstation additionally run Word or After Effects or Nuke or Resolve, or no matter else I wish to run? The reply is a powerful sure! And it will run these very effectively. But therein lies the great thing about Puget Systems’ service. If you don’t need to run water simulations with billions of particles or a full Unreal atmosphere with atmospherics in actual time, and as a substitute you’ll be colour grading your quick movie in Resolve, then you’ll be able to ratchet down the expenditure and tailor the system to your wants. The technicians at Puget Systems will work with you to decide on the precise {hardware} to your duties, however they’ll additionally stability that along with your funds.
They ran me by way of the identical course of any buyer would undergo — speaking about my wants and discussing the professionals and cons of the totally different parts. Soon after, I acquired e mail updates on the place within the course of the construct was, an itemized record of the {hardware} parts, verification of the {hardware} testing after which delivery estimates and standing.
Of course, it’s good to go for one of many huge firms, click on a button and have a pc delivered to your house. That out-of-the-box system could also be rather less costly, however the personalised consideration that you simply obtain at a smaller firm like Puget Systems outweighs all of that since you develop a private relationship with them, and if one thing goes unsuitable, you’ll speak to an individual, not an AI chatbot.
Website: pugetsystems.com
Todd Sheridan Perry is an award-winning VFX supervisor and digital artist. You can attain him at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.
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