• Adobe After Effects

  Need to remove Very Thin Tracing Guide Lines on Whiteboard Video Animation

  Posted by Richard Farhat on August 6, 2015 at 1:26 am

  Hi,

  I used a Cannon 5D Mark iii to shoot footage of an artist drawing on a white piece of paper with a thick black sharpie. After multiple attempts by the artists at getting the proportions right during live drawing, I found that printing the actual illustrations on the sheets of paper the artist will be drawing on, and in very light grey and a 0.1 stroke, he was able to trace out the drawings and everything looks great.

  I added a camera layer over the footage (camera was stationary during filming) and pan according to the movements of the artists hand… but you can very faintly see the printed guidelines on the sheet of paper especially when his hand casts a light shadow.

  Color is not my strong point and I wouldn’t know how to go about doing this with any plugins. Masking is out of the question because the artist’s hand moves quite a bit over a couple of hours of footage.

  Your advice would be highly appreciated.

  Thanks

  Richard

  Richard Farhat replied 11 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  John Cuevas

  August 6, 2015 at 12:51 pm

  It would be easier for people to make suggestions, if you could post a screen grab(3rd icon above replay box from right).

  Without seeing it, I would probably layer your video over a freeze frame of blank screen, then add the effectg Key > Extract and see if I could isolate the guide lines. You probably would need multiple keys to pull it off.

  Johnny Cuevas, Editor
  ThinkCK

  “I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
  —THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.
• 

  Kalleheikki Kannisto

  August 7, 2015 at 8:58 am

  A possible approach is to blow out the whites so that the tracing disappears, then add a fake board/paper texture in the white areas (luma key) to compensate.

  Not the best of approaches, but works if your paper and faint tracing is close enough to white so as not to destroy the quality of the video when you lower the white point.
• 

  Richard Farhat

  August 9, 2015 at 7:36 pm

  Thank you for both replies.

  Both worked great! It’s a couple days of rendering but I’ll post a before and after screenshot.

  Thanks again,
  Rich

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