Automatic masking, 2nd time asked… but this time more thoroughly

Adobe After Effects

Automatic masking, 2nd time asked… but this time more thoroughly

Posted by Roy Messinger on March 14, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Hi guys,
I asked this question before, but I want to refine it now, and explain it better…
The bottom line is I want to make an automatic masking, instead of moving frame by frame.

Let’s say I’m making this trick when I have my beatiful baby girl staring at the camera (age of 1 year, for those interested…) and I want to make a

title behind her head and the title is ‘locked’ to the couch (forgot to mention there’s a couch behind her). My daughter is sitting, but her head tilts

left and right (she’s a baby…). the couch behind her is also ‘moving’ a bit, cause I didn’t use a tripod.

So, for this trick I need to do 2 things. The first is to lock the title layer to the couch, the second is to duplicate my daughter’s layer, and mask out

everything except her head, right?

Ok, so the first step was easy, one can use Boujou or Mocha for this matter. Let’s say I used Mocha (both worked fine, btw).
Here comes the second step… I wanted to make the masking automatically, so I would not have to go frame by frame and mask my daughter’s head. Instead I

now copied the Mocha exported tracking and pasted it in my daughter’s layer which is masked. Now, this step is only an idea. The principle here, is I

have the Mocha tracking info, cause I tracked the couch in Mocha, and I want to paste it to AE, so the mask will move exactly as the tracking points of

the couch.
Well, it doesn’t work…
I find it hard to believe that in the commercial industry, where they have alot of these style of commercials (title behind a moving object) they mask it

frame by frame, or am I wrong?
Any ideas???
And if you’ve read this far, Thanks!!!
Roy

Filip Vandueren replied 17 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
2 Replies

Peter O’connell
March 14, 2009 at 11:43 pm

Hi, to make AE masks move with mocha tracker data, export transform data rather than cornerpin data.
Pete

roguekeyframe.com
Filip Vandueren
March 15, 2009 at 4:01 pm

If there’s enough contrast between your childs head and the couch, you might try a difference matte or another keying method.
But don’t be mistaken: these things ARE usually done by hand, frame by frame by dedicated artists.
We all wish we never get jobs that require doing minutes of this stuff though 😉

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