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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Is there such a thing as auto-rotoscope?

  • Is there such a thing as auto-rotoscope?

    Posted by John Brookhouse on January 5, 2017 at 8:04 pm

    I have a client that has asked me to make some changes to existing videos that are absolutely awful. The client filmed himself on a green screen and then layered that over a still background in Camtasia.

    Unfortunately, they deleted their project files as well as their raw footage, so the only way I can figure to make the changes is to find the existing background image, layer it over the original video, and then try to mask out everything except the talking head. This is not preferred as their hands go flying around from time to time and the background is different in every video and is often distorted (compressed either vertically or horizontally) so it’s hard to match up the new mask layer.

    This got me to thinking: Is there any kind of an “auto-rotoscope” function in After Effects? The only thing that moves in the video is the talking head, so I’m wondering if AE can identify the moving object in the video and automatically rotoscope it so I can completely remove the background.

    I don’t think this exists, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

    Thanks,

    John

    John Brookhouse replied 9 years, 5 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Tero Ahlfors

    January 5, 2017 at 8:40 pm

    It’s called “outsourcing to India”. If you’d have a clean plate of the background (I guess not) you could try a difference key.

  • Roei Tzoref

    January 5, 2017 at 9:37 pm

    show us the video. also, the closest thing to a semi-automatic rotoscoping tool in Ae is called rotobrush.

    Roei Tzoref
    After Effects Artist & Instructor
    ♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

  • Steven Perry

    January 5, 2017 at 9:44 pm
  • John Brookhouse

    January 6, 2017 at 1:02 am

    Thanks everyone for your help. I’ve tried some of the various solutions and I’m not quite getting the “set it and forget it” kind of a workflow I wanted, so I think I will just put a copy of the background image over the original footage and mask it all so I only see the talking head.

    Thanks again! I really appreciate it!

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