-
Help learning the basics of rotoscoping in Aftereffects
Hi, I’m new to both Aftereffects and Rotoscoping, and was wondering if anyone would be able to help with some very basic things.
So far, I have added my moving image file to the timeline. I then tried going into ‘transform’, creating a keyframe, and drawing a mask at that keyframe. Then, I made another keyframe and moved the mask accordingly. The thing that hasn’t worked as I blindly expected it to, was the motion tweening between each key frame.
Instead, when I return to the previous keyframe, the mask has just moved to the place I moved it to in the second keyframe. What am I doing wrong, or not doing? Is it necessary to use a specific layer, or to add the motion tween afterwards? Any advice would be much appreciated
-
4 Replies
-
Also, if you have any serious rotoscoping work to do use another product. Either a roto plugin for AE or things such as Mocha V2 in conjunction with mocha shape, or motor. The problem with AE is that the splines are slow to interact with, don’t support variable edge smoothness and can’t be easily tracked. If you are doing anything more than the basics get a real roto tool. Adobe needs to fix it’s splines in an upcoming release.
-
I second Dave’s recommendation of Pete O’Connell’s rotoscoping DVD provided by the fine folks of Creative COW. In fact, just yesterday I wrote a blog post about rotoscoping in After Effects that reviews and praises this DVD. That post also gives some tips and links for rotoscoping.
———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
——————————————————————————————————— -
Thanks so much for all the detailed help. That’s helped a great deal… I’m now struggling away getting to know all the functions! Another point that I am now stuck on is how to add an effect to a mask once you have created it? I would like to apply an effect only to the area I have masked. Any ideas?
Thanks again…
-
Another point that I am now stuck on is how to add an effect to a mask once you have created it? I would like to apply an effect only to the area I have masked.
There are multiple ways to accomplish this, depending on the details of what you’re trying to do.
The first thing to know is that you apply effects to layers, not to masks.
One way is to apply the effect to an adjustment layer and also apply the mask to the same adjustment layer. This works well when you want to have the effect affect all of the layers underneath, but only in the area specified by the mask.
Alternatively, you can duplicate the layer, mask out the background on one layer, and apply the effect just to the layer with the foreground object showing.
You get the idea. There are a lot of relatively simple building blocks to learn, but you can put them together in a lot of different ways once you learn the basics.
———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up