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Traveling Mask or something like that
I have seen somewhere online a Tutorial that shows how to put a Mask around an object in motion and isolate it so that this object can be superimposed onto another piece of footage where both clips are in motion. The same mask can be used to protect the object inside from being processed by a video effect used on the clip as a whole.
For instance, I have a woman walking in a field with a smooth pan that keeps her upper torso and head roughly in the same spot during the whole walk and pan. I want to isolate just her body and head and create a mask that travels with her in each frame and keeps her moving image unaffected by a blownout filter look that affects the grassy field around her for the duration of the clip.
I have the Final Cut Studio Suite with Motion 3 and Somewhere I saw a tutorial showing how to pick out spots on a moving car, then allow time for motion analysis until the mask is computed and moves frame by frame in relation to the race car on a track
But, it was not using the traveling matte garbage tool *if I understand it correctly–the mask this process created seemed to be fairly automatic once the points were picked and the analysis was done. It seemed to allow for my project that I could also extract the woman’s moving image and put it into its own clip with transparency and drop it onto other footage and adjust superimpose factors. It also was done inside a Final Cut project without Shake.
But, looking up the term “traveling mask” makes me think there must be a better industry term in common use for this effect.
At any rate, can anyone point me to a tutorial?
Thanks so much!
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2 Replies
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Those industry terms are “rotoscoping” and “Travel Matte”. What you want to do is rotoscope around an object to create a travel matte. The travel matte is used to isolate one object (or more) from the shot so that you can apply a filter only to what’s been rotoscoped, or hold it out from being filtered.
You can do this in Motion, but Shake and Silhouette Roto have better tools for this.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
David – Arnie is correct that this (rotoscoping)would be tough to pull off in FCP, however it sounds like you’re not looking for a very precise mask; I’d reccomend you try it in motion and keyframe the motion of the mask, feathering the edges and seeing what that gets you. If you can’t go to AE but need more precise motion for the mask/matte, look into motion tracking in Apple Motion (under “behaviors”).
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