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Rotoscoping techniques in After effects
Hi all,
Sometimes a roto needs to be rotated or scaled in object mode to speed up and get a consistent roto and I can’t figure how to do this in after effects?
The best roto technique is to never (if you can help it) edit the points but rather than the whole shape which scaling and rotating helps to do.
I do not create one path either. if a big mask is needed I will create it by roto’ing numerous smaller masks to make up the whole. so I’m guessing that the only way to do this is to create a solid for every mask I make and scale and rotate them separately?
But is there a simpler way I’m missing?
thanks
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4 Replies
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You can transform (scale, rotate, etc.) an entire mask.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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ahh thank you that is what I was looking for.. Any possiblility of that option being moved into the timeline in the mask options for the layer in future? would be faster to get to and provide all the masking options in the one place?
http://www.cascadepictures.co.uk
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You can submit feature requests here:
https://www.adobe.com/go/wishMore on feedback for After Effects:
https://adobe.ly/93d6NF———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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These three things will vastly improve your rotoscoping in After Effects if you follow them:
1. Break up your masks into smaller, more simple, overlapping shapes. Imaging tracing a hand, complex huh? Break it down into a set of a few oval-like shapes.
2. Reduce the amount of keyframes to reduce mask jitter. Do one keyframe a second, one every half second, one every quarter second. Work your way inward until the mask is acceptably animated. Very rarely will you need to keyframe per-frame.
3. I don’t know if this is true of CS6 because of the new cache features; I haven’t tried a roto project without setting it up in the following way. Each adjustment made to an animated mask redraws the entire frame which can end up wasting a lot of time in small increments. Try setting up your roto like this (From the book After Effects CS5- Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques):
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– Create a comp containing only the source plate.
– Add a solid layer above the plate.
– Turn off the solid layer’s visibility.
– Lock the plate layer.
– Select the solid layer and draw the first mask shape,
then press Alt+Shift+M (Opt+Shift+M) to keyframe it.Now any changes you make to the masked solid have no
effect on the plate layer or the cache; you can RAM preview
the entire section and it is preserved, as is each frame
as you navigate to it and keyframe it. When it
comes time to apply the masks, you can either apply the
solid as a track matte or copy the masks and keyframes to
the plate layer itself.
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