It’s been around since August of 2009, but this little beauty is still worth mentioning. It contains all the shortcuts you will need to know for the entire Adobe Creative Suite from After Effects to SoundBooth, even Acrobat. All the shortcuts are updated to the latest release (CS5), and it contains shortcuts for both the PC and Mac versions. If you feel the need, there are links to download the PDF versions so you can take them with you where ever you go. Save yourself the headaches and download this app. It’s free, saves you time searching the help menus or Google and couldn’t be easier!

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Since its initial release in 2007, mocha quickly earned a reputation in Hollywood and the VFX industry as a must-have solution for complex and difficult tracking and roto shots with over 20,000 registered users worldwide, and v2 builds upon that system with a slew of new enhancements including 64-bit support, a streamlined user interface, improved liscensing activation and support for Nuke 6.0, Nuke X and Apple Motion.

What’s New in mocha v2

• 64 bit Architecture: Re-engineered for 64-bit operating system support

• Improved User Interface: New icons and streamlined interface make mocha even easier to learn and master

• Improved Licensing Activation: mocha users can now easily activate and deactivate licenses for use on multiple systems

• Stabilize and Smooth Module: Smooth jittery camera footage or lock down shots for effects plates

• OpenGL Acceleration: Hardware rendering of mattes with motion blur

• Nuke 6.0 & Nuke X support: Copy and paste RotoPaint and CornerPin nodes from mocha directly into Nuke

• Apple Motion support

The streamlined mocha v2 user interface

I can tell you that with the new 64-bit integration that software moves along at blazing speed. I tested it out with various footage shot in different conditions–low light, camera shake, motion blur, etc.–and not only did it track and stabilize each shot with ease, but it was extremely accurate and required a lot less input from me even when the object i was tracking went off screen. This software is as intelligent as it ever was, and now that they have streamlined the interface, it is even easier to navigate which frees up a lot more of my time to worry about other things. Time is money, after all. As in the original, exporting to your preferred file format is a breeze, and paired with one of the Mocha Shape plugins you can export it directly into After Effects or Final Cut. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

In fact, it’s this ease of use that has garnered the attention of many major vfx studios in Hollywood. In-Three, the company behind the 2D to 3D conversion of the Lionsgate and Universal logos and the G-Force and Space Command movies, went straight to mocha when working on the conversion of their latest project, Alice in Wonderland. Mocha’s advanced roto and tracking capabilities enabled them to tackle even the most difficult 3D conversion they came across with ease.

John-Paul Smith, chief 
executive officer of Imagineer Systems:

mocha v2 is the culmination of tremendous effort from our development 
team and was completed in lock step with our customers and beta 
users. As mocha has grown significantly in popularity over the past 
year, it’s given us a unique and valuable opportunity to hear from a 
wider swath of users and learn what’s most important to them. That’s 
exactly what went into mocha v2. We’re also pleased with the 
support we’ve received from our valued partners at Adobe Systems. In 
working closely together, we’ve been able to re-engineer mocha for 
After Effects as a 64-bit solution, just in time for the release of 
Adobe CS5. That’s another big win for users.

Probably one of the biggest wins every user has is the price. If you are attending NAB 201o you can take advantage of a special promotion available to attendees that will knock the price of mocha v2 down to $399 to current customers of any Imagineer Systems product. For the rest of us, a nodelocked license for Mocha v2 will be priced at a mere $499 for existing users who are upgrading, and $1095 for a new nodelocked license. It’s available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems.

Delivering feature film quality results at this low of a price is a welcome gift to anybody in the industry, and Imagineer Systems keeps on giving with mocha v2.

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

I met Jonathan Houser, founder of Cinemek, when I was in Seattle for a meeting of the Northwest Audiovisualists (NWAV). He showed me the G35, an aftermarket 35mm lens adaptor for Digital Video cameras. Little did I know he would soon be releasing Hitchcock, the first Storyboarding app for the iPhone.

Hitchcock is an amazing application – you can take photos on-location, add stand-in actors, camera directions like zoom, pan and dolly, record notes or temp voice, write in descriptions, and more. Once done, you can view the result, with a timer running at the bottom – change shot timing, view again, swap shots, and then export as a PDF (video export is coming in an update).

I bought and installed the app and had some fun shooting locations around my house and putting together short animatics. This exploration got me wondering about how it could be useful from an animator’s perspective. Hitchcock’s focus is on Filmmakers – what would a similar application built for animators look like? I set off to discover what animation tools existed on the iPhone.

DIGGING INTO iPHONE ANIMATION UTILITIES

I found that there are mainly two types of Animation apps currently available for the iPhone – Character Animation apps, which tended to be very specific and limited in their scope, and Flipbook apps, which are mostly the same, with a few features setting similar apps apart.

Character Animation Apps

Puppet Animation allows you to add deformers to pictures and move, swing, scale and bounce distinct areas in realtime, or set loops. It’s something like a simplified version of the Puppet tool in After Effects. You can export an animated GIF when you’re all done, as seen above.

Stick It Action is all about making stick figures fight. It’s another interesting example of what could be done with skeleton rigs and purpose-driven animation – there’s an assortment of guns to fire, and tools set up to aim them, start and stop firing, etc.

Tappy Typing puts you in control of an interactive character. It’s not a utility, per se, but a set of animations for a character. It’s an example of an engine that could be a great tool in a larger program, with the addition of some skinning and keyframing abilities.

FlipBook Apps

By far, this was the most populated category of animation apps that I found in the App Store. Most of the applications look very similar, with only small feature differences. One particular application stood out from the pack in terms of its feature set:

Flickmation – I almost wrote it off due to a clunky-looking interface and lack of video examples on the website, but its feature set was intriguing. Besides painting and drawing, Flickmation offers fill tools, layers, onion skinning, stamps (reusable objects), copy/paste and a Java app to transfer files to and from the application. You can create PNG files on your computer, including an 8-bit alpha channel, and load them into Flickmation for animating. You can also export video to your local machine via the included Java application, as an AVI video or a PNG sequence.

After playing with it for an hour, it shows real promise as a start. The interface could benefit from a full facelift – it makes sense but it’s all over the place, visually, especially compared with the refined graphics of Hitchcock. I also found a pretty bad bug that repeatedly caused crashing when turning on onion skin options.

More flipbook apps for further investigation:

• Kineo
• Flip It
• FlipBook
• Animation Creator
• Cartoon Creator
• LED Animator
• Anime Maker
• RanRan Draw

CONCLUSION

It turns out that there’s really nothing like Hitchcock aimed more squarely at animators. Reading the Cinemek forums, I found that there are two animator-friendly features that will be included soon – additional angles for actor stand-ins, and importing external images. They may well add enough features to allow for real animation and editing, only time will tell.

Investigating all of these applications has at least given me a better idea of what would be useful for me in a Mobile Animation application:

• Reuseable Items – like Library items in Flash
• Keyframes – the ability to set start and stop points for the above items
• Onion Skinning – great for frame-by-frame animation
• Lip Sync – a couple of apps I saw had some interesting solutions for faking mouth movements based on audio
• Puppet Deformation/Animation – the ability to bring life to characters and sketches

If I’ve missed something that you would love to see in a mobile animation app, tell me about it in the comments.

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

If you’re familiar with the Adobe MAX conferences, you probably know what they are all about. However, if you’re like me, and you only think you know what the Adobe MAX conference is, it’s time to make plans for your next chance to attend.

This year, I talked quite a bit about the Adobe MAX conferences. Sure, they were coming to Los Angeles Convention Center. Sure, Adobe is a sponsor of my user group in Hollywood. Sure, I’ve been in a couple of Adobe groups myself. But when the opportunity to go to the Adobe MAX conference session came up, I thought that it wouldn’t really be for me. After all, I’m really good at all of that, so it’s not for me, right? Wrong.

Adobe MAX is not just a chance to sit in sessions and learn about a specific application of a tool or scripting device, it’s a chance to meet the masterminds behind the Adobe product you are particularly fond of. It’s an opportunity to listen to some advanced users talk about what new ideas and new resources are out there which you may have overlooked. And, perhaps more importantly, you’ll have a chance to sit with people who — like you — use and have a specific affinity for Adobe software.

Flash, Javascript, and AJAX

The heart of the conferences at Adobe MAX this year are dominated by Flash, JavaScript and AJAX. There is no doubt that more designers will be looking to coders to deliver our content to the world on mobile devices. While as designers, animators and compositors, we will need to consider the possibility of content that is accessible by Flash, and those Flash developers will have to start considering us non-coders.

Introduction of Adobe Flash Catalyst

Adobe has already started to consider us code-newbies. Today, Adobe announced the launch of Adobe Flash Catalyst. In this morning’s session, we discussed the ever changing definitions of participation and collaboration. And, while some of us are designers at the core, we need to consider the potential of a wider audience and how we can ensure our designs flow from our desks to the code writers’ labs.

Flash Catalyst allows Photoshop or Illustrator work to move directly into interactive prototypes without having to write any “real” code.  It can be published as is, or move into the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing with Flash to build simple interactive content or huge RIAs. If you can use Photoshop, chances are you’ll have no problem with Flash Catalyst.

Beta Release of Flash CS5

Also announced today were beta release news clips (and videos) of Flash CS5. Of course, once Adobe says “CS5″, it doesn’t matter if you are using Flash or any other product in the store, you know that the community goes crazy. Tomorrow, Adobe has more in store for their community of MAX’ers and the rest of you who couldn’t make it.

MAX is about community

Adobe is there for us, talking about work, talking about fun, talking about what’s ready to show, and; Adobe is listening to what their community of users is saying.

Forget about what you thought Adobe MAX was. It’s difficult to understand without being there. You still have 2 more days to grab a session pass and come to a panel discussion. After that, you’ll have to wait until 2010 for your next chance. This is more than connecting with the applications, it’s meeting people from South Africa, Korea, and Kansas City who all like to do the same stuff you like to do — and are really, really good at it.

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)