RG Corner Pin plug-in: Setup controls

Let's look at the Setup controls in Corner Pin. There aren't as many as in the Shadow and Reflection plug-ins, but each control has a very important role. This page talks about the controls listed at the top of the Effects menu.

NOTE: You can apply any image to Corner Pin that the host application can support. This includes a QuickTime movie and many still image formats. You can also import pinning data from other applications, like Mocha for After Effects.

View Mode pop-up

The View Mode popup lets you see which pins you are seeing in the interface and what the resulting layer is. The default setting is Both Pins Warp.

You won't change this setting if you are only setting the To Pins. This is because if you are only setting the To Pins, the Corner Pins interface is already set up so you can see what is important. If you need to set From Pins, then you will change the View Mode option. For instance, if the To Pins group is already active and the Overlay Mode is set to Show To Pins by default. Our Coffee Cup and Flower examples below will explain this further.

Original: The default setting, which shows the source image in its 'raw' form. There is no transformation applied to the view. If the graphic that is going to be pinned (From Pins) is larger in physical dimension than the underlying target image (To Pins), then it will will cover the view of the target image. That's okay. This is really just a mode that is used as a checkpoint to see what you're working with. It's not a mode that you'll use for work purposes.

Original view.

From Pins Warp: Displays where the warp is coming from. For this option, it de-wrap the image into a square image, because it has to take the image and remove the pinning perspective, and set it to the size of the layer. In other words, it fits the image to the size it needs but doesn't set the perspective. Note: If the composition size is smaller than the layer size, you will see a cropped image.

From Pins Warp.

To Pins Warp: Takes the warp and fits it to the target pins, but it assumes that the warped layer is square and therefore doesn't recognize the mask. Unless you have fixed the From Pins to recognize the From layer's mask, the result of viewing To Pins Warp It assumes the From Pins warp is not present, and this is the default setting for our plug-in. We assume that the user has a 'one way warp', that the layer is the size it comes in, there's no mask, you're just going to put it into the target layer at whatever settings necessary without worrying about the fancy double warp settings to compensate for something that is already warped.

The To Pins Warp view is exactly like seeing the results of the After Effects Corner Pin plug-in. The AE plug-in can ONLY do To Pins warps, however, because it can't recognized masked input images.

To Pins Warp.

Both Pins Warp: Lets you see both a From Pins and To Pins perspective. At left, since the Coffee Cup input image has a recognized mask, the Both Pins view looks very different than the default To Pins view. At right, since the Flower input image doesn't have a mask, the result of Both Pins looks the same as the To Pins view.

Both Pins Warp.

Overlay Mode pop-up

This popup controls what you see as an overlay for the controls, gives identifying marks in the form of labels. This sets your view so it is easier for you to accomplish the mapping. The default setting is Show To Pins.

Show To Pins: The default setting, which lets you work with the To image source. Only To Pins controls are selectable. The From Pins group is grayed out. This is so you don't accidentally move a From point when you meant to move a To point.

Show From Pins: Lets you work with the From image source. Only From Pins controls are selectable. The To Pins group is grayed out so you don't move a To point when you meant to move a From point.

Show Both Pins: If you're an advanced user and comfortable with the plug-in, then use Show To Pins. The From Pins and To Pins controls are all viewable and selectable.

Show To Pins.

Show From Pins

Show Both Pins.

There's another view which isn't really a mode. It is 'show no pins'. To do this, just click in the After Effects project window outside of the image area. The Pin labels will disappear from view until you click on a related control to reactivate them.

No pin tags are viewable in the interface.

Crop To Pins checkbox

You can also define a crop based on the destination warping. Turning on Crop to Pins means your From image is constrained to the bounding box of the rectangle formed by the four To points. Turning off Crop To Pins says ignore the mask created by the To pins and use the mask (or no mask) that the source layer already has. So Crop to Pins out-crops to the To Pins. In our Coffee Cup example, the rounded top of the cup gets cut off because it sits outside the Crop to Pin's bounding box.

Note: Crop To Pins won't work until both your To Pins and From Pins are set. This is because you need to define an output before you can edit that output. Also, the checkbox doesn't affect the Reposition controls because the output is defined by the From/To points.

At left, Crop to Pins is turned off (default). This displays the portion of the input image that extends past the bounding box of the From Pins.
At right, Crop to Pins is turned on, cutting off the area of the input image that extends beyond the Pins.

Be careful of the Crop to Pins setting. If you don't realize it is turned on and you transform the input source image, with Rotate or Scale for example, then you will get a cropped image unexpectedly.

At left, unexpected result when Crop To Pins is turned on and From Pins> Rotate is 5.
At right, the desired result with Crop To Pins turned off.

Mocha Import pop-up

This import function works with Mocha for After Effects CS4 and higher. It lets you load Mocha data directly into our Corner Pin plug-in by selecting the text document that Mocha for After Effects has generated. This pop-up is not present for other host applications like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro.

What is Mocha for After Effects? Mocha is a software package released by Imagineer Systems in August 2008. It is designed to work with the corner pin tool found in After Effects and other compositing/effects programs that use corner pin technology. Mocha for After Effects is bundled with After Effects CS4 and higher. The product is similar to Mocha, which is Imagineer's more expensive planar tracking system for 2.5D planes. Mocha for After Effects offers more accurate tracking than what is natively available in After Effects. Mocha for After Effects is a stand-alone program, not a plug-in. It exports all tracking information out as a text document, which can be pasted directly into After Effects and converted into Corner Pin data.

You can use two kinds of tracking data in our Corner Pin plug-in:

Load To Pins: If you want to bring in the data of that map's destination (or where it is being applied), you would use the To Pins pop-up. Most often, you will use the Load To Pins command and this will generate the same result that you would get using After Effects' native but more limited Corner Pin tool.

Load From Pins: If you point to the data from the layer that is being mapped from, you would load the data into the From Pins popup.

Recognizing Masks & Alpha

Corner Pin will recognize any kind of mask that After Effects does. You can create your own Bezier mask with After Effects' tools. You can import a Photoshop file that has an alpha channel saved. You can import a Photoshop file with a path if the Photoshop file is brought in as a composition (not as footage).

Import a Photoshop file with an alpha channel.

Import a Photoshop file with a vector mask.

Import a Photoshop file, then draw a mask in After Effects with the Path tools.