mamoworld MaskTracker+

Planar tracking inside After Effects

MaskTracker+ turns the Mask Tracker of After Effects into a comprehensive planar tracking station that allows you to do much more with the tracker than just moving masks.

Features

• Move layers Animate position, scale and rotation of layers based on a mask track
• Corner Pin Create a corner pin based on a mask track. Just place the corners on the current frame where they should be and MaskTracker+ adds keyframes to move it with the mask. In addition to the normal corner pin also CC Power Pin and Red Giant Warp corner pin are supported.
• Stabilized Precomps The popular stabilized precomps of MochaImport+ are also available in MaskTracker+. Track an object with the mask tracker and MaskTracker+ creates a precomp for you that shows a stabilized view on the tracked object. In this stabilized setting you can do any kinds of modifications and everything you do is also automatically applied to the original perspective. This is a life saver for retouch, painting and removal jobs.
• Stabilize Footage Stabilize shaky footage based on a mask track. MaskTracker+ can either eliminate the movement completely or create an advanced stabilization rig where you can fine tune the amount of smoothness for position scale and rotation independently.
• Move Masks If you have several masks moving in the same way, you can save time by just tracking one mask and applying the tracking data from it to the other masks.

Easy to Use

• Track your mask with the mask tracker as usual.
• Select the mask and click the load button of MaskTracker+ to load the tracking data from it.
• Choose the function you want to use (move/corner pin/stabilized precomp/…) and click apply.
• If you don’t know how to use a function, MaskTracker+ even has built-in tutorials.

How it works

Works with any masks: Masktracker+ analyzes the movement of a mask and reconstructs the tracking data from it. Therefore, it works with any masks, no matter whether they are…

• tracked with the After Effects mask tracker (which is included in AE CC and newer versions)
• pasted from mocha
• keyframed manually
• or come from any other source

The only limitation is that the number of vertices of the mask may not change over time. If you are using the mask tracker, this can be easily achieved if you either don’t track perspective or use masks with straight edges for tracking.

Load data from several masks simultaneously

You can even load the tracking data from several masks simultaneously. This is useful, if you want to average the movement of several tracks to increase the accuracy. It can also be used to change the tracking region over time: Just start tracking one mask and when you want to change the tracking region, stop tracking this mask and continue with a new mask.

Should I use MaskTracker+ or MochaImport+?

MaskTracker+ has a sister product MochaImport+ which can do similar things, but is based on mocha instead of the MaskTracker.

Our experience is that working with MaskTracker+ is usually a bit quicker on simple tracks, since you can do all work inside After Effects and don’t need to switch to a separate application. On the other hand, the mocha planar tracking technology gives often better results for challenging tracks that have motion blur or reflections, for example. Also, mocha can easily handle foreground elements, can do multiple tracks simultaneously and supports X-Splines which makes it the tool of choice for bigger tracking and roto jobs.

Our tip: Your best choice is the Tracking Bundle which contains both MaskTracker+ and MochaImport+. Then you can do most tracks quick and easy with MaskTracker+ but if the mask tracker gives bad results, you can switch to mocha instead of spending hours to fix your track.

Tutorial