For those who don’t know the tool, SynthEyes from Boris FX is a standalone 3D camera-tracking and matchmove application used in VFX pipelines. It exports to major DCC and compositing tools and sits upstream of layout, animation, and comp, quietly solving cameras so others can focus on lighting.

Boris FX has announced SynthEyes 2026 with a faster, more responsive camera solve release aimed at reducing iteration cycles and workflow interruptions in feature film and high end streaming projects. The update introduces a Mocha Point Tracker, Live Preview for geometric hierarchy solving, user interface revisions and expanded USD support. According to the company, the release is shaped by user feedback and focuses on daily production tasks rather than broad architectural changes.

Faster supervised tracking

As shots become more complex, trackers require more manual attention. Rapid camera moves, whip pans and motion blur increase the likelihood of drift or failure. But a classical point tracker operates by defining a small target area and a larger search area. On each frame, the tracker searches for the target area’s pixel pattern within the search region by scanning left, right, up, and down. This works reliably when the camera is locked off or moves in a controlled manner on a dolly, gimbal or tripod.

The limitation is that a standard RGB point tracker does not inherently account for rotation or scale changes in the pattern over time. These are affine transformations: translation, rotation, scaling, and shear. If the tracked feature rotates or changes size significantly, the tracker may drift or lose the pattern entirely.

SynthEyes provides options such as updating the reference frame at defined intervals. However, between those reference updates, the tracker still searches primarily by translation, allowing drift to accumulate. In shots with strong rotation or scale change, this can result in unstable supervised tracks and broken solves.

For these scenarios, SynthEyes 2026 introduces the Mocha Point Tracker. The feature leverages Mocha’s planar tracking technology under the hood directly into the supervised tracking workflow. The goal is to combine the robustness of planar tracking with the point data required for camera solving.

Planar brain, point output

Planar trackers are designed to compensate for rotation, scale and other affine transformations across a defined surface patch. Instead of following a single pixel pattern, they analyse the motion of a planar region.

The Mocha Point Tracker tracks a small planar patch and returns the coordinates of the centre of that patch as point tracking data. In practical terms, artists still obtain a single 2D point suitable for solving, but that point is derived from a planar solve rather than an RGB comparison.

In the user interface, switching a tracker from the traditional RGB mode to Mocha Point Tracker updates the tracker controls without launching Mocha. The planar patch can be reshaped freely. Corners can be adjusted individually, and the centre point can be offset by holding Shift while dragging.

The planar patch does not need to remain a strict rectangle. Artists can enlarge it to capture more contrast detail, for example, around the edges of an architectural feature. During tracking, the patch visibly rotates and scales with the image content, while the returned centre point remains tightly locked.

This behaviour addresses a core limitation of classical point trackers: Because the planar patch models translation, rotation, scale and affine deformation, it remains stable under perspective and motion changes that would cause a standard tracker to drift.

Parameters for unruly shots

The Mocha Point Tracker includes adjustable parameters for more demanding material. By default, each tracker automatically determines how much of the initial pattern must be visible in subsequent frames before continuing. This percentage threshold can be manually adjusted.

Users can also select different motion models. The default model is 2D TRSA, which stands for Translation, Rotation, Scale, and Affine. Alternative models constrain the tracked motion to fewer parameters. For heavy perspective change, a 3D Perspective model is available.

All models ultimately return single-point data, but they use different internal motion assumptions to generate that data. In addition, advanced controls allow users to increase the expected per-frame rotation and scale change. By default, SynthEyes expects up to one degree of rotation and half a per cent scale change per frame. These limits can be raised for more aggressive camera movement. These advanced controls are typically unnecessary, as the planar tracking approach is quite forgiving at default values, but who knows what happened on set? Sometimes it is best not to ask.

Mixing tracker types

SynthEyes continues to support mixing different tracker types within a single supervised tracking setup. The Mocha Point Tracker is particularly useful for bridging gaps where feature trackers fail. In such cases, adding larger planar patches can help maintain continuity across problematic frames, enabling a continuous solve where feature tracking alone breaks down.

This highlights a workflow caveat: When combining two Mocha Point Trackers into a single tracker, SynthEyes first converts them into classical point trackers before merging. This avoids merging two planar patches directly, which would be unstable. After conversion, the resulting track retains point data but no longer allows modification of the original planar patch.

Boris FX positions the Mocha Point Tracker as a complementary tool rather than a replacement. Traditional RGB trackers remain better suited for manual frame by frame adjustments, where artists may need to babysit a track through occlusions. The supervised tracking system is designed to allow mixing and matching tracker types as needed.

In short, when the camera behaves politely, classical point tracking remains efficient. When it does not, the Mocha Point Tracker offers a planar fallback inside the same workflow, without requiring artists to leave SynthEyes. If neither works, demand reshoots.

Real time GeoH feedback

SynthEyes 2026 introduces Live Preview for geometric hierarchy, referred to as “GeoH”. Live Preview is a toggleable checkbox located above the axis lock controls in the GeoH interface. When enabled, the GeoH setup dynamically adjusts while users manipulate trackers and selected parameters.

With Live Preview active, artists can adjust trackers, focal length and distortion parameters and see the hierarchy update instantly in the current frame. The primary use case described by Boris FX is tracker adjustment. Instead of replaying the shot after every modification, the result is visible immediately.

In addition, the feature operates hierarchically. Users could typically enable Live Preview on the object level where downstream elements should animate in real time. For example, activating it on a shoulder joint would allow the arm chain beneath it to update in real time. In practice, it can also be enabled on the topmost root object if required.

In current builds, enabling Live Preview highlights the affected hierarchy in yellow, providing visual feedback about which nodes are active. This is particularly useful in larger hierarchies where dependencies can become difficult to track.

But why?

The system updates without requiring repeated play-stop-check cycles. Users can move trackers, adjust seed positions, tweak pivots, unlock or rebalance axes and modify lens or offset parameters while seeing the result immediately. You can think of GeoH in SynthEyes as a lightweight rigging system inside the tracking environment. Objects are created at mesh pivots and parented hierarchically. Animation channels must be explicitly unlocked before they can be driven by trackers or mesh deformation. Locked parameters remain static.

A typical workflow involves creating a GeoH object from a mesh, branching joints from parent nodes, adjusting pivots in Edit Pivots mode and painting vertex weights to define influence regions. Trackers can then be parented under specific GeoH objects, with seed points projected onto the mesh to drive animation.

With Live Preview enabled on a GeoH object, moving a tracker updates the mesh deformation or joint rotation immediately in the viewport. The effect is comparable to interactive rig manipulation in DCC applications, with the mesh responding as trackers are repositioned.

Before finalising animation for export, users should disable Live Preview on all relevant nodes and then play through the shot so that the animation is fully realised. This step ensures the resulting keyframes are baked from the tracked motion. Or, don’t do that, and we’ll see what happens :) Jokes aside, the feature should cut iteration time by at least one order of magnitude.

SynthEyes Special: The Interface refresh begins

The 2026 release marks the beginning of a “multi-phase user interface modernisation”. The current update focuses on the left panel and room navigation – one thing after the other. Boris states that improved labelling, more consistent layout and interaction behaviour, and a clearer visual structure are intended to enhance discoverability and daily usability. At the same time, existing workflows and muscle memory are said to be preserved.

The changes are positioned as incremental rather than disruptive. Advanced users are expected to retain familiar workflows, while first-time users may find the application more approachable. Because, as good as Syntheyes is, the Interface was always a bit … particular.

USD moves upstream

And another thing: SynthEyes 2026 expands USD support, allowing USD assets and scenes in the application. Users can import individual meshes or full USD scenes while preserving hierarchy, cameras, lights, animation and metadata, including parent-child relationships and transforms. USDZ assets import with embedded textures intact.

Whole scene transforms and STMaps

A new Whole Scene Transform mode allows scale, rotation or translation to be applied to the entire scene, including cameras, objects, trackers and meshes, while preserving relative motion and solve integrity.

This mode is intended for late-stage adjustments, including multi-camera projects. The company states that relative motion and solve integrity remain intact, though no technical detail is provided on the underlying implementation.

Distortion map export, commonly referred to as STMap export, is now integrated directly into the standard Export menu and the Multi Export system. This enables distortion data to be generated alongside other outputs in a single export pass rather than as a separate step. STMaps are commonly used in compositing to apply or remove lens distortion via UV maps. Integrating STMap export into the main export pipeline reduces the number of discrete export operations required.

Pricing and availability

SynthEyes remains a standalone application. Subscription, perpetual, upgrade and support renewal options are available. Pricing starts at 325 USD per year or 62 USD per month. Customers with an active SynthEyes or Boris FX Suite subscription, or with an upgrade and support plan, receive the 2026 release as a complimentary update.

Further details are available via the SynthEyes product page on the Boris FX website.

As with any update that affects solving, hierarchy behaviour or export fidelity, new tools and innovations should be tested before use in production.

// SynthEyes 2026 What’s New
// https://borisfx.com/products/syntheyes/whats-new/

The post SynthEyes 2026 Speeds Up first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Mocha Pro 2026 is out, and Boris FX’s Emmy and Academy Award-winning planar tracker returns with an update that focuses on refinement rather than reinvention. The 2026 release adds new AI-driven roto and matte tools, smarter 3D-solve cleanup, and a rebuilt Curve Editor, all tuned to make shot-fixing and cleanup faster and more predictable for working compositors.

The update also aligns with VFX Reference Platform 2025, adding support for Qt 6.5.4 with PySide 6, Python 3.11, OpenEXR 3.4.5, Alembic 1.8.8, and FBX 2020.3.7. This ensures fewer pipeline compatibility issues in studio environments.

Matte Refine ML: AI for tricky edges

The new Matte Refine ML system expands Mocha Pro’s machine-learning masking family, which already includes Object Brush ML, Matte Assist ML, and Face ML. It analyses existing masks and automatically refines soft or semi-transparent edges which is useful for hair, fur, motion blur, and defocus.

Two refinement modes are available: one optimised for soft motion or blur, the other for sharper edges. Additional post-processing sliders (Black Clip, White Clip, Edge Grow, Shrink/Grow, and Blur) let artists fine-tune how transparency and detail are blended along the edge.

For multi-layer composites, the new Group Layer Mattes option merges multiple layers into a single matte clip, improving render and playback performance. Combined with Matte Assist ML, this creates an efficient path from object masking to refined alpha without intermediate renders.

Refine Solve: faster, cleaner 3D tracking

The Refine Solve tool targets 3D camera solves that have drifted or accumulated bad data. Using the Clean Up Features dialog, users can delete unstable or short-lived tracking points, then recalibrate the existing solve without starting over.

Because Refine Solve builds on the original solve data, it preserves previous adjustments such as ground-plane alignment or scene scaling. For extended tracking and finishing, the refined data can be exported directly into SynthEyes for further cleanup. The result: faster iterations and fewer re-solves for 3D match-move tasks in complex shots.

Blips and 3D

Technically, Mocha’s camera solver identifies trackable “blips” in the image and converts them into 2D trackers, which are then triangulated into static 3D feature points. The software measures the average deviation between the 2D trackers and 3D points as HPix (horizontal pixel error). A low HPix value signals a stable camera solve, while spikes in the error curve expose moments where the 3D reconstruction drifts. These spikes often correspond to unstable track data caused by motion blur, occlusion, or minor parallax inconsistencies.

The Clean Up Features system provides targeted filters to address these issues. It can automatically disable feature points during high-error frames, discard very short or inconsistent trackers, and remove features that contribute excessive deviation. Once unwanted data is removed, Refine recalibrates the existing camera without re-solving from scratch, updating only the relevant calculations while maintaining previously established orientation and coordinate systems. This allows technical directors to preserve scene alignment and object placement while improving solve precision.

Refinement should be applied only when the base camera movement is physically plausible. If the initial camera path is incorrect or erratic, a full re-solve remains necessary. However, for typical production shots where the solve is broadly correct but slightly unstable, this incremental workflow offers a reliable way to tighten accuracy, lower HPix variance, and maintain alignment integrity across multiple refinement passes.

Curve Editor rebuilt for modern pipelines

After a long hiatus, Mocha Pro’s Curve Editor makes a full return. The interface has been rewritten from the ground up, with tighter integration between the Dope Sheet and Graphs panel. Artists can now visualise tracking, roto, and camera-solve data as curves, then smooth, zoom, or isolate problem areas directly. A new offset-curve overlay in the Adjust Track module displays how refinements affect the original track in real time. Filtering options allow users to display only keyframed parameters or selected spline points, helping to pinpoint problematic data without clutter.

Smaller but useful refinements

Beyond the headline features, Boris FX lists numerous “quality-of-life” updates under the hood. Playback of refined mattes no longer requires separate rendering, and composite mattes can now be applied directly in other Mocha render modules, such as Insert or Remove.

Mocha Pro 2026: Pricing and availability

Mocha Pro 2026 is available as a standalone application and as plugins for Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Foundry Nuke, Blackmagic Fusion, Autodesk Flame, and VEGAS Pro. Subscription pricing starts at €42 per month or €290 per year. Perpetual licences (from €675), upgrades, and support plans are also offered. Customers with active Mocha Pro or Boris FX Suite subscriptions receive the 2026 update at no additional cost.

Reality check

While the AI-driven refinements and rebuilt Curve Editor mark significant usability improvements, studios should validate performance and matte accuracy in controlled conditions before integrating Mocha Pro 2026 into production pipelines.

The post Mocha Pro 2026: Refined, re-solved, re-edged first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Boris FX has unveiled Mocha Pro 2025, introducing improved planar tracking tools, USD file support, and enhancements to rotoscoping workflows. The latest version of the popular motion tracking and VFX tool focuses on production-friendly updates for compositors, editors, and VFX artists.

Open USD Integration: File Exchange Simplified

Mocha Pro 2025 now supports the USD file format (Universal Scene Description). This widens compatibility for data exchange across modern pipelines, particularly in VFX and animation. Users can import and export USD files to streamline workflows with other USD-supported applications.

Planar Tracking Gets Faster and Smarter

The core feature, planar tracking, remains a focus with speed and stability improvements. While no groundbreaking changes were listed, refinements ensure smoother motion tracking results in a shorter time—good news for artists on tight schedules. Think of it as a “SynthEyes Light” for quick tracks. For more complex shots, the “Full-Fat” SynthEyes remains one of the best trackers out there, but Mocha Pro 2025 offers a solid option for fast and reliable planar tracking within the Boris FX suite. Building on the recent addition of SynthEyes 3D tracking technology, Mocha Pro 2025 now adds 3D moving object solves, allowing artists to solve for moving objects within 3D scenes. By combining planar and PowerMesh tracking data, users can generate accurate meshes and point clouds for complex 3D tracking shots. Solve data integrates seamlessly with popular VFX applications via USD, Alembic, and FBX exports. After Effects users can export solve data in the Mocha Pro UI or generate it directly inside After Effects with the Mocha Pro plugin.

Rotoscoping: Tweaks to Streamline Precision

Mocha Pro’s rotoscoping tools receive practical upgrades, optimizing the precision of spline-based masking. Enhancements aim to simplify shape management while keeping the interface familiar for existing users.

OpenColorIO for Color Management

With OpenColorIO (OCIO) support, artists can match project color spaces between Mocha Pro and other software like Nuke, Resolve, or Blender. This is particularly useful when working on VFX-heavy projects requiring accurate color consistency across the pipeline.

Streamlined Data Exports

A redesigned export dialogue allows artists to export Mocha Pro tracking data more easily using a sleek interface that combines tracking, shape, and 3D data exports in one place. Users can select data export options by popular host application presets, save favorites, and work faster with an “Export Again” feature. Since the current version only offers a dropdown menu, this is an extremely useful update to the “bread and butter” workflow—a small but appreciated quality-of-life improvement for artists.

Compatible and Ready

As always, Mocha Pro integrates seamlessly with leading compositing and editing software, including Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Nuke, and Avid. Licensing options remain flexible, with Mocha Pro available as a standalone application or as a plug-in for host software.

For pricing, head directly to the Boris FX website. (They have a free trial, if you want to see and test it for yourself) As always, test new features thoroughly before deploying them in live projects.

The post Mocha Pro 2025: Planar Tracking, USD, and Roto first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The programme was developed largely single-handedly by Dr Russell Andersson over more than 20 years and has long been established not only in the film industry, but also in architecture and forensics.

It has now been incorporated into the BorisFX portfolio. As with Mocha Pro – originally from Imagineer – you can expect this programme to be maintained and developed further. Compared to the remaining competitors 3DEqualiser and PFTrack, the price is quite attractive (Boujou disappeared a few years ago). A good reason for a more comprehensive test!

Interface and operation

At first glance, the GUI looks a little old-fashioned, but don’t let that fool you. The fact that the drop-down menus are usually not sticky and you have to hold the mouse button down until you select the desired function can also be a little irritating. You should forget about the option to switch to languages other than English. It is based on an AI that sometimes makes you go “Huh, what’s that, please?” and where German text often doesn’t fit into the field. The assistant called “Synthia” is also not very helpful at first glance and initially responds stubbornly with “Sorry, I don’t understand.” This is not Siri or Alexa, but rather an assistant for comprehensive automation through scripts in SynthEyes with defined commands. Russ shows how this works here: is.gd/automationsyntheyes.

But that’s it for the criticism, because there is not only a manual with over 800 pages in English, but also various video tutorials that Russ himself has published over the years. A few of the most important ones have already been published on his own YT channel “Boris FX Learn”, even if Russ’s are a little older. This one on masking moving objects using rotoscoping should be very useful for many: is.gd/rotomasking, or this one on mesh building: is.gd/meshbuilding. New additions are is.gd/solving_AE and is.gd/lens_AE, which help with getting started and transferring to After Effects.

In addition to the actual manual, there are nine further PDFs on specific topics such as Planar Tracking or Camera Calibration under “Help”. Comprehensive tool tips and warnings if you make mistakes complete the whole thing. Otherwise, the wealth of functions with 13 tabs and many hidden, additional windows may seem overwhelming at first glance, but right under the first tab “Summary” there is a large, green button called “Auto” at the top left. You can try it out at the beginning, even if experienced professionals turn up their noses at it. Nothing prevents you from refining the results yourself. We also unleashed this function on our more than 20 test clips to see how difficult they were for the programme. There was only one that was not successfully calculated, even if the automatic function sometimes failed to achieve the magic value for precision below 1.0 pixels straight away.

Performance

Precision and speed are of course the most important criteria in everyday production. There are three steps in the process: The identification of suitable image points for tracking, here called “blips”, their tracking over a number of frames as 2D tracking and finally the “solver”, which is the calculation of the spatial relationships for the camera and the scene. Anyone who has ever worked with a point tracker will know what suitable shots should look like: lots of depth of field, little motion blur and good contrasts. For 3D, the parallax of a freely moving camera must also be taken into account.

SynthEyes can also process panning shots from a tripod, but then you only get a circular horizon. We used shots from a drone with a relatively small sensor, hand-held shots with an iPhone 15 and some from a Sony A7IV with a wide-angle lens, also hand-held. As experience has shown that even simple trackers can cope well with shots from an urban environment, we didn’t want to make it so easy for the professional software. We mainly flew over cultivated fields with repetitive structures and natural shapes such as trees, bushes and water, with a few houses thrown in for good measure. Simple trackers usually have difficulties with such motifs.

Not so SynthEyes: With the exception of one, all clips were successfully calculated with “Auto” and could then be brought to values below 1.0 with just a few interventions, in the majority we even came close to 0.5 without much “manual work”. The duration of the clips was between just under one and five minutes, the resolution was UHD. All clips took less than their own runtime on a modest MacBook M1 Pro. The longest, which primarily contained trees, flowing water and sky, was calculated in 3:45, with around 7,500 images. The precision was 0.75 at the first attempt without any intervention. That is clearly professional level!

The 10 CPU cores were fully occupied, on a computer with more “steam” the programme would hardly leave time for a sip of coffee. For comparison: The camera tracker in Fusion took over 13 minutes with the standard setting for a clip of 1:30, but achieved a very good precision of 0.23. After Effects took over 20 minutes for the same clip and achieved 0.47 pixels. These are good values, but with these times you wouldn’t want to do much fine-tuning if a scene is more difficult. In this case, SynthEyes took a good minute and achieved 0.84, but offers plenty of potential for fine-tuning.

Lens data

With early 3D trackers, it was a common recommendation to enter the exact size of the chip and the focal length of the lens. Unfortunately, however, lens manufacturers are not always very precise with the focal length. It is even more difficult today with the chip size. The absolute size can usually be found out, but it is much more difficult with the actual area used. With CMOS sensors, a smaller section is often used, either for higher image frequencies or for internal lens correction. It is usually not possible to find precise information on this.

For our drone, for example, DJI specifies a field of view of 84 degrees diagonally and gives a full-frame equivalent for the focal length of 24mm. However, this applies to photos on the full chip area with an aspect ratio of 4:3. The chip area used for video in UHD is almost impossible to determine, as the small lens is certainly also used for calculations – in any case, the image hardly shows any distortion. With the iPhone, it is generally the case that lens errors are factored out so that the real values are also largely unknown here. It is therefore very helpful that SynthEyes can calculate the necessary distortion correction itself. In the case of the drone, it arrives at just under 70 degrees, which is not unrealistic.

In order not to disturb this calculation, you should never activate internal stabilisation. Both the shifting of the image on the chip and the optical stabilisation, where the entire sensor is moved, would constantly shift the centre of the lens. Mechanical means, such as a gimbal or Easyrig, are of course permitted because the camera itself moves. Blurring, be it a shallow depth of field or too much motion blur, is also not a good starting point for match moving. It is better to add both based on the tracking information in post-production, and SynthEyes can also take care of the stabilisation.

Equalisation of lenses

SynthEyes offers highly complex algorithms for rectification, Standard Radial 4th-order is recommended for spherical lenses, but there are also algorithms for anamorphic lenses. “Read or Cry” should be taken seriously, because if you use this feature incorrectly, the results will tend to be worse. It is an iterative process in which the parameters should be worked through from top to bottom. To do this, you have to switch from “Automatic” to “Refine” in the “Solver” window at the top left after the first tracking and click “Go!” once after each step. In our 90-second clip, one step took less than a second, and this alone almost halved the deviation to 0.48.

Even a rolling shutter is corrected reasonably well, but is generally not a good prerequisite for camera tracking. With the drone or the iPhone 15, this value was low, but with the full-frame camera, this adjustment still brought quite a lot of improvement. In a further step, you could increase the number of trackers and remove the less good ones, but this was not necessary here. We had no difficulty getting below the magic 1 in any of the test clips.

With anamorphic lenses in particular, the question then arises as to whether we should keep the clip in its corrected form after compositing or undo the correction. As a rule, the distortions are not removed in the final result, but are added again after compositing. SynthEyes also has a solution for this, which can be found under “Lens Workflow”. This means that both options are available, and it is particularly easy to use scripts for After Effects, as shown in the second clip for beginners (see above). In this case, SynthEyes even warns you if you have not taken this aspect into account.

Input and output

In addition to precision and speed, a solution for professionals must of course be very versatile in order to fit into any workflow. Right from the start, we were pleased to see how many video formats are accepted. This even includes material in HEVC 10-bit 4:2:2 from hybrid cameras with up to 8K, which is something that the standalone version of Fusion does not recognise. Of course, ProRes is also no problem, but DNxHR only works in a MOV, not in MXF. Image sequences commonly used in animation and VFX, e.g. EXR, are read without any problems, as are DNG, JPEG or PNG series.

Of course, RAW from Arri, Red or Blackmagic is accepted, but currently no MXF clips from the Arri Alexa S-35 or Sony’s Venice and FX9. If necessary, you can switch the preprocessor in front of it, which is almost like a small grading app, but can also read in and memorise LUTs for adjustment. We used this with the iPhone material for Apple Log. With the D-Cinelike from the drone, which is not a real log, we also tested whether a contrast enhancement would produce better results. Here, however, the low-contrast original immediately delivered slightly better precision.

The list of 25 output formats is really impressive. This ranges from long-lost software such as Shake to practically every important compositing and 3D software today. For After Effects there is a Javascript, for Blender, Cinema4D and some other Python scripts that start the respective software and transfer the entire model including camera and video clip – it couldn’t be more convenient. Meshes that you have created and textured in SynthEyes on the basis of trackers can also be transferred. Not only for a moving camera, but also for moving objects. It is even possible to transfer them to photogrammetry software such as Metashape.

Features

The support does not end with conventional video, SynthEyes can also handle 360-degree VR or stereo 3D, the latter in particular is explained in detail in the manual. It can limit the search area for trackers with a simple chromakeyer, but can also use imported alpha masks for this purpose. Even zoom shots can be used, but are more critical in terms of tracking precision. If data is available for this, you can enter keyframes in the lens equalisation, e.g. for zooms.

Integration?

At this point, it will be exciting to see how the company will deal with the new acquisition. It was already announced in the interview (see DP 23:06) that SynthEyes will also be available as a plug-in, although no time horizon has yet been set. With Mocha Pro, BorisFX has shown that it is not simply expanding its portfolio, but that the strengths of the new software are being utilised in other products. This has also started here, as the superior lens correction can already be found in Mocha 2024. Currently, “Camera Solve” in Mocha is still a little slower, even considerably so for very long scenes.

You can define a ground plane, a coordinate origin and scaling based on a known distance between two tracker points. This already works very well for static scenes with a moving camera; moving or deformable objects are in the works. For problematic scenes, the correction options in SynthEyes are much more comprehensive. In Mocha, you are still dealing with a largely automated process in which you can only change the number of trackers and the blip size.

If a “Power Mesh” was defined before camera tracking, this automatically becomes a 3D mesh. You can export this when set to “Single Mesh”, but so far it is still untextured. The export is not as versatile as in SynthEyes, but in addition to some popular target programmes, the increasingly popular USD format is supported and others are in the works.

More can certainly be expected in this area, as Mocha could teach SynthEyes a thing or two in the creation of tracked patches if the products do not completely merge. For example, masks created directly in SynthEyes are less useful elsewhere as they show hard contours. Their creation is also less elegantly solved than working with Mocha 2024, which has been improved again with “Extrapolate Track”. This means that Mocha tracking no longer stops if a few images need to be skipped. SynthEyes can already deliver trackers to Particle Illusion, but with the new “Inherit Velocity” function in version 2024, it could even add the initial movement to the particles.

In our extensive tests, we didn’t find a single scene that couldn’t be tracked with a little fine-tuning, and there weren’t even any crashes. The annual licence now costs 295 US dollars, for shorter projects the programme is available for 49 US dollars per month, and there is also a permanent licence for 595 US dollars. For comparison: PFTrack costs 1,125.00 per year, 3DEqualiser 65.00 for one week. In addition to the tutorials already mentioned at Boris FX Learn, to which more will surely be added, we can warmly recommend Matt Merkovich at Track VFX.

Comment

With SynthEyes, Boris FX has once again acquired a little piece of cream that may eventually merge with Mocha Pro. It comes with the usual exemplary product documentation including bug tracking and workarounds. Experienced SynthEyes artists would certainly be happy if a “Classic” version were to be retained in the event of any further development of the GUI, as is the case with Mocha.

The post SynthEyes at BorisFX first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.