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Bezier mask – what did I do wrong?
Guys, please help me figure out what the hell I did!
I’m working in AE 7 Pro on a Mac (but this is more likely my fault not the app) doing a short animated HD film (1980×1080, 23.976). I’m busy rotoscoping a very complex piece and just had an entire days work change in front of my eyes, and I don’t know why.
The shot I’m working on involves stop-motion shot outdoors using natural light. The only character in the clip is an orange garden hose that climbs on top of a roof. I set up a Bezier mask, outlined the shape of the hose in the first frame, set a hold key frame, advanced two frames (animated on 2s) and redrew the mask. This involved adding vectors (points) on the mask. AE gave me a warning that I needed to disable ‘Keep vectors constant’ in prefs, which I did. I then worked through many more frames and everything seemed fine. At one point I had to add two extra layers to the shot which were ‘subtractive layers’ – basically the hose coils and I needed to cut out the inside section. Everything still seemed fine. By the end of the day I had advanced a massive one and a half seconds (these are very complex masks) when I decided to go back and check on my progress. What I discovered was that for some reason the masks had changed. Only the last mask retained all the positions and curves I had set.
Why? What did I do? I noticed that there are keyboard short cuts I never use (but hit accidentally) that have strange effects (‘J’ for instance.) Could I have inadvertently triggered something? I also have learnt that clicking on points changes their mode from Bezier to straight etc. But usually its instantly noticeable. At one point I adjusted one of the curves in the Comp viewer window, as opposed to the Layer window – would this have effected it? I must also stress that I did not set up the mask as Roto Bezier…
I have done many of these masks (in AE 6.5) and not had any problems to date. This is probably more a factor of luck than anything else…I do have about 60 more shots to get through, so I’m hoping not to waste any more days, hence my post.
Thanks in advance.
Kevin Watkins.
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5 Replies
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As an 6.5 user (not for long, I hope) I think I won’t much of a help, but these are the things that come to my mind:
If you are animating on 2s, perhaps it is just interpolation what you saw and you just have to change the keyframing mode.
Usually new points don’t change the shape unless you are working with rotobezier curves. BUT deleting the does change the shape, of course.
If your mask is so extremely complex, my hint is to make simpler smaller masks for that task. If one goes wrong, it’s just part of the work what you lose. OR perhaps you just could draw a NEW mask for each frame.
Last but not least, and sorry for repeating myself, folks, perhaps a script I wrote for a rototracking palette in AE can helo you in your project: https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=329
Good luck!
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Did the mask ever interpolate? It sounds like you never turned on keyframing on the ‘mask shape’ parameter.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Chris,
I certainly did turn on the mask shape parameter (as I was working I was constantly checking back to monitor my progress.) I am re-doing the key right now and so far no problem…about to add intersecting masks, so perhaps that was the problem…I just wish I knew what I did wrong yesterday (I know it was something stupid that was my own fault!)
Kevin.
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hey thehardmenpath, i’ve been trying to use your script that you wrote (i’m pretty excited about it). but i keep getting this error “incorrect mask index specified”. i’m not quite sure what i am doing wrong here. i make a mask with the pen tool. select it by clicking “mask 1” in the timeline and then hit apply tracker. that’s when i get the error. please let me know what i am doing wrong as this script could be quite useful.
oh and i am using ae 6.5 pro on a dual 1.8 g5 mac if that helps.
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Hi Jeremy, thanks for your interest. I think it’s not your fault, but ours. The script is quite imperfect and I am no scripting guru. We had some trouble making the layer and mask selections correctly. I think your problem can be because of a failure that happens sometimes when the layer is not on the top of the timeline. Put it in position 1 there and it’ll probably work.
Good luck and enjoy.
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