Rotoscoping

[Arnie Schlissel]

Use Silhouette Roto or Shake.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Aaron Zander]

mocha from imagineersystems also works very well (look to the left there should be a discount add for it)

[Brian Pitt]

do you know if there is a way to toggle between images in photoshop? I’m doing the rotoscoping in photoshop. I’d like to be able to jump between frames and make needed adjustments.

[Bill Lee]

I’d have to agree with Arniepix about Shake being a good option. Unless your rotoscoping is very simple, the frame by frame rotoscoping in Photoshop can lead to a flickering effect on the fringes of your rotoscope. This is because you are treating each frame separately, rather that being a series of related frames. A slight difference in the masks you are creating for each frame will cause this effect, where rotoscope shapes created and changing over a number of frames should have better smoothness and fluidity.

Shake is very affordable these days (compared to what it used to be) at US$499 and less if you are a student/academic staff. The question is: is it worth the expenditure of money and is that going to pay off in terms of quality or savings in time. Only you will know that for the project you are working on. The more rotoscope you are doing, the greater the benefits.

When creating rotoscope shapes from curves, a good suggestion is to build your full rotoscope out of the union of a number of simpler shapes, due to the non-independent nature of the curve to each point on that curve. Thus instead of having to tweak, say, a lot of points in a curve outlining a whole body, you just change the points that make up a leg or part of a leg which is easier and gives better results.

Picking the smallest number of good keyframes and curve-defining points is an art in itself: too many points and it’s a nightmare to get the rotoscope smooth, too many keyframes and you risk a flickering effect like you might get from rotoscoping in Photoshop.

Bill Lee

[Dean Sensui]

If you have After Effects you can rotoscope with that, too.

As Bill said, whatever software you choose, it’s still a tricky and time-consuming task. And the results can vary widely, depending on how you break down your image into component pieces, assign points, apply feathering values and so on.

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Alan Lacey]

Depending on what format you’re working on, you may be able to get hold of a cheap copy of Commotion Pro4. I still use this app for what roto I do.

It still runs on the latest intel MPB (just installed it yesterday) although unfortuneately it only uses one core.

Lovley programme for roto and a great motion tracker.

Alan in PALland

[Brian Pitt]

The good thing about this is that it is stop motion. Part of the charm in stop motion is the imperfection… or mark that it is being done “by hand.” So the blend between frames has to look good, but not flawless, or else why even bother with stop motion.

I am working with large tiff files (3504 x 2336). I imported them to photoshop cs3 as an image sequence, and did a few frames in there, and it isn’t bad. I can toggle between frames and clone stamp from the previous frame in most cases. How would I benefit from using Shake? Will it be an easier process?

btw – the final edit will be done in FCP

[Dean Sensui]

I started working with Commotion long before I started working with After Effects and like the way it deals with roto work.

It has some great plug-ins, too!

I wish that it hadn’t been abandoned by Pinnacle!

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Bill Lee]

If you start off with high resolution still images for an animation, then it may be easy enough to use Photoshop to create masks for each frame. The high resolution will help because the later resampling (maybe) to SD will mitigate the effects of differently selected pixels if you were working with SD material with Photoshop. For HD output, the contribution of individual pixels is less obvious for the overall look and so it can be acceptable for doing it this way.

My big concern for you is that what seems easy for a couple of frames can become a nighmare for hundreds of frames if doing each frame manually. The use of shapes and keyframes in rotoscoping is meant to avoid manually working on each frame wherever possible and let the rotoscoping software provide the tweens for the rotoscope shapes between keyframes. Working on curve points every couple of frames instead of every frame dramatically reduces your workload and make the animation smoother.

I’d have to disagree with an acceptance of poor rotoscoping in stop motion photography. There is no need for poor rotoscoping even for this art form, despite the limited number of frames you typically have to work with. In other words, the distinctive animation look of your stop motion should come from the stop motion and not from inadequate rotoscoping. You may want vary the rotoscoping to achieve a certain look which is fine, but is is great to have that option and not be forced to have that look.

Bill Lee

[Suxamethonium]

Hi,

Sorry to post to this thread, but I need to contact Alan Lacey who recently posted. I’d like to discuss something Alan wrote about a few months back. If Alan is interested in helping me, please could he can send a mail to suxameth@hotmail.com and I’ll get back to him. Thanks