After Effects skin smoothing – best way to do it…

[Michael Szalapski]

There are some beauty things in Red Giant’s Magic Bullet suite.
There’s also Beauty Box.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[John Cuevas]

In cases like this, I wouldn’t take the image out to photoshop because unless you plan to clean up every frame that the subject is in, if he moves or talks it will be pretty apparent the skin isn’t matching right. Also, even if you do clean up every frame in photoshop, they need to look 100% identical or it will be spotted pretty quickly.

What I’ve done in the past is to use an adjustment layer in AE, add a gaussian blur to it , mask the adjustment layer and then add feathering to the mask. From there you can keyframe & adjust the mask shape as needed, do some motion tracking, apply the result to a null and then parent the adjustment layer to the null. Or most likely a combination of the two.

Here’s my result just applying a mask and blur to your image.

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.

[Spencer Tweed]

There’s a tutorial on Imagineer’s website to use Mocha. If I remember correctly it is for the short film “UF Oh Yeah”. She touches up some prosthetics, but it’s the exact same technique.

[Spencer Tweed]

If you do the gaussian blur technique make sure to add some grain back in or else it looks totally fake.

– Spencer

[Harry Snell]

Thanks, that helps a lot!

So far, I’ve got the adjustment layer + the blur.

The next bits I didn’t understand so well…

I want to be able to track the footage and apply the effect so it moves with the video motion.

Is that possible?
When I click the adjustment layer, there isn’t an option to track…

A couple of questions also:

– Why would I need to apply the effect to a null?
– How would I do that?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/58873f8tn88idue/AE.jpg?dl=0

[Harry Snell]

Thanks! Noted, and done 🙂

[Harry Snell]

I found it, but it wasn’t in AE, unfortunately. :s

[Harry Snell]

Actually, I think I may have worked it out…

– I tracked the main footage.
– I copied the tracked bit and pasted it onto a null.
– I then attached the adjustment layer to the null.

Does that sound right?

[Harry Snell]

…but actually the tracking data doesn’t seem to be doing anything.

So the bit I’m stuck on now is getting the adjustment layer masked blur to track…

[Spencer Tweed]

Guess it was a while ago that I watched that… Anyway the technique is the same.
1) grab a still frame in photoshop and paint it up!
2) save it out without the background (You just want the paint strokes)
3) import this into AE and put it over your footage.
4) track with mocha. It’s great at faces and skin!
5) apply the “corner pin” data to your paintstrokes layer from PS.

Look up basic Mocha tutorials if you don’t know how to use it. It’s the best tracker out there, and I’ve used a ton of them. And it comes free with AE!

As a suggestion – if you use this technique break your track/paint layers up into as many patches as you need. You’re definitely not going to get it in one layer, particularly if the face is moving. And Mocha works on FLAT PLANES. Unfortunately faces are not generally flat, but if the motion isn’t too great it should still work – just break it down as much as you have to (right cheek, left cheek, nose, forehead, chin, upper lip, etc.)

– Spencer