Blackmagic Forum

Anyone using Mocha 5 OFX plugin in production?
Would like to hear some opinions.

Umberto Uderzo wrote:Anyone using Mocha 5 OFX plugin in production?
Would like to hear some opinions.

I've used Mocha Pro in the past and currently use the OFX plugin (mainly in Nuke and only occasionally in Fusion). It's not too different (Standalone vs OFX), so if you're familiar with the Mocha flow, it's more of the same (which is great). If you're not familiar, then I would highly suggest it - it's a wonderful tracker and some prefer to roto in Mocha, as well. I use it all the time for my tracking needs. It's bailed me out of a lot of sticky situations.

I only had one issue with Fusion + Mocha OFX. When I would start the plugin, it would give me some kind of out-of-ram error and crash. I fixed it by deleting the Fusion home folder, opened fusion again to let it recreate the directories, then put my macros, settings, back in, and then it worked fine. Kind of a random, one-off error but that's it.

I'm currently on a standalone Mocha Pro 4 license and i'm evaluating a switch to the OFX version, because v4 workflow is not so smooth when exporting shapes to Fusion. What is scarying me is the need to access Mocha through Fusion, and i'm wondering if it's possible to export/render out of Mocha as in standalone version.
While the integration with Fusion is appealing, being the trackings locked into a Fusion composition (if this is the case) without possibility to export when necessary is puzzling me.
In your experience, did you feel "locked" by the OFX thing?

Thank you!

I use the Mocha OFX plug in but haven't used a standalone version.

The OFX version still allows direct export of various assets such as shape data to Nuke, HitFilm, Flame etc. Also to render mattes as image sequences directly from Mocha.

The plug in also works with Resolve (and of course any other suitable OFX host).

DC

Umberto Uderzo wrote:I'm currently on a standalone Mocha Pro 4 license and i'm evaluating a switch to the OFX version, because v4 workflow is not so smooth when exporting shapes to Fusion. What is scarying me is the need to access Mocha through Fusion, and i'm wondering if it's possible to export/render out of Mocha as in standalone version.
While the integration with Fusion is appealing, being the trackings locked into a Fusion composition (if this is the case) without possibility to export when necessary is puzzling me.
In your experience, did you feel "locked" by the OFX thing?

Thank you!

I hear your feeling of being locked but fear not! I'll echo what David said, you still have the option to export your track/shape data to different formats (Nuke/Fusion/AE,etc) in the plugin. Also, you can actually save a *.mocha project file from the OFX version and open it in another plugin program and probably even the standalone version (I've gone plugin to plugin but don't have the standalone version currently to test this).

I had an artist do roto in the Mocha AE plugin (NOT the 'Mocha for AE' version) and I was able to import their project into my OFX Mocha plugin inside NUKE. So, I wouldn't feel locked by it, you can apparently open it in other flavors of Mocha but I think it gets dicey if you're all not on the same version of the plugin.

There's not an option to "open" a project in the Mocha plugin but if you choose "Merge Project", it does import it.

Hope that makes you feel a little better about it

Andy, David, this wipes all my fears. Now i'm willing to go the OFX way. Just lurking for some Black Friday discount at BorisFX and i'm set.

Thank you!

Umberto, I'm not sure you will find it better than a standalone version (I have both Stand. and ofx v5) in every situations...

It is true you can export from the ofx to a standalone project, export shapes etc and it is very cool, but honestly, if you consider an ofx version, you probably schedule to mostly remain inside Fusion, by adding a Mocha node which simply opens the Mocha interface .
Therefore you should first think about how are most of you projects requesting Mocha and the general workflow you choose. Maybe focusing on all the Mocha work first and then going to Fusion or else can be enough... Just to say that though it works good, the performance inside Fusion is way lower than in the standalone.

BTW, David wrote : "The plug in also works with Resolve".
While I didn't try again these days, it didn't a few months ago : I can see the OFX appear in the effects panel, I can even add it on a node but no mocha window would launch in Resolve. Tried within R 12.5, I will again now on v14 studio.
Edit : glad to see it's working now in Resolve, thx to this thread which made me try again

An other thing to consider is, that Mocha OFX "breaks" the ability of Network rendering in a way...

i.e you have to buy in my opinion quite expansive render licenses for mocha.

Thanks for pointing out possible issues in using OFX only license.

I found myself a little bit constrained with OFX (PLE) a couple times:
1) When i just need to rotoscope in mocha, i noticed that running from Fusion the whole system stability is driven by Fusion stability and it happened me that Fusion crashed when just working on the Mocha plugin.
2) When i just need to rotoscope in mocha and forgot the Fusion dongle right at home

Anyway I think i addressed all my concerns, as with Black Friday 30% discount i felt confortable with a Standalone+All Hosts plugin upgrade.
So far, so good.