Jason Watson
Forum Replies Created
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Here’s what is happening, as far as I can tell: Since the image you are bringing in is larger than the dimensions of the Canvas, Motion is scaling the image to fit inside of it. When you draw the shape, Motion is using the dimensions of the Canvas as the reference for the attributes of that shape. Thus, when you try to drag it onto the image to create a mask, Motion is still using that information to determine where on the image relative to the canvas it should create the mask. Since the image is bigger, the position is going to inevitably be off.
There are a few ways to get around this:
1. Use the Bezier Mask tool directly on the image rather than drawing a shape and then converting (by dragging, as you did). You shouldn’t have any issues doing it that way.
2. Draw the shape like you did and use it as an image mask on the image, rather than a regular mask.
3. In Motion’s Preferences, under Project there is a dropdown at the bottom that will say Large Stills: change it to Do Nothing. When importing your image it will go beyond the bounds of the canvas, but the shape-to-mask will work as you are expecting it to. You can then either scale the image or use a camera to get the layout you want.
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How are the words going to be laid out?
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Looks like a fairly simple combination of masking (for the elements that are drawn on) scaling and position/rotation adjustments.
Specifically for the sequence at :57-
The outer and inner frame (six sides) have some kind of animated mask on them- if you were to do this in Motion you could go about it a number of ways. Assuming you made the artwork in Photoshop, you would mask each element, and given the simplicity of the shape you could draw a Bezier shape to use as an image mask and then use the Write on behavior to get it to draw the mask.
The wavy line background looks like it is just being masked with a rectangle mask of sorts- you could just animate the Y position of the mask for that.
Do the same with the ropes- just animate the X position of the mask.
The flags at the bottom have animated positions, but are being masked so that they are not visible inside of the frame. Same with ‘Director’ and the oars.
The wide arrows that fall down behave in the same way, as do the final up/down arrows.
The name looks like it just scales from the first moment of its visibility down to its ending size.
Hope that’s helpful.
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If you have it to the point where the actor is masked with a transparent background, all you’d really need to do is duplicate that layer, (if you don’t already have a duplicate) place it below the masked layer and get rid of the mask on the bottom layer. Your blood spatter would then be a layer in between.
You’ll probably need to make adjustments to get it looking right, but that’s the basic idea.
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Mark is correct- it sounds like you were using the shape tool instead of the masking tool. If you want to make a mask directly on the layer, use the Mask Tool- you can even use the Bezier Mask option to be as precise as you need.
However, if you already have a shape created and don’t want to redo everything, you can also use that as the mask: on the footage layer you want to mask, simply add a layer mask and then use the shape you drew as the source for that mask. When you do this Motion will default to hiding the source for the mask, so you shouldn’t see the white any more. Make sure the opacity is 100%, since the mask is drawing its opacity from that shape.
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Ah, now I see. 🙂
The most straightforward approach (I think) would be to mask the actor and then place that masked layer on top of the underlying footage layer with blood spatter layer you added in between. Depending on the amount of movement (both from the actor and camera) the masking process could become quite tedious, but it can certainly be done.
If you have After Effects you might try its masking tool since in theory it can extrapolate the mask movement from frame to frame, but it will of course be dependent on the footage itself and how conducive it is to that particular tool.
Update: I just re-read your post and you said that the problem spot is only a couple of frames- if that’s the case, masking just the shoulder shouldn’t be too difficult. Start with the first frame where this occurs and mask as needed, and then animate the mask frame by frame until you get the result you need. Depending on the footage (how crisp the edges of the shoulder, lighting, etc.) you may or may not want to use a small feather on the mask. Once the masking does what you want, just place that masked footage layer on top of the effect and the original footage. You may have to tweak some things to compose it realistically, (assuming that’s what you’re going for) but that’s pretty much the most basic way to get there.
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If I’m understanding you correctly, the track point you are using gets covered up briefly and you want to see if you can cut the actor out so as not to affect the tracking point?
I’m not sure there’s an easy way to get around that, but I’m also not incredibly experienced with tracking. Even if you cut the actor out you’d still lose the tracking point since as far as the pixel information goes, the blood behind her doesn’t exist.
You could try clone stamping as best as you can the blood from each frame of the lost tracking point in Photoshop, eventually bringing it in as an image sequence and tracking that. After the analysis is complete you could apply the tracker to the original footage and adjust as needed.
Of course, if the lost tracking is not that long you could try just manually adjusting the tracking point.
Finally, if neither of those options works, you might look for another place in your footage to track. If the wall has even a little bit of contrast (nicks, splotches, etc.,) you could add a Brightness/Contrast and overdo it so you get a point with lots of contrast. Track a point and then apply the analysis and tracking to the original footage.
There might be other, more efficient ways to deal with this that I am unaware of, but I hope that’s helpful.
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That would be one option, but depending on the complexity of your image it’s going to look really tacked on since the segments aren’t going to follow the shape like a wireframe actually would, especially on the edges. (which will abruptly cut off) It would sort of being like drawing a silhouette on a piece of graph paper and then cutting it out.
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It sort of depends on how you want the transformation to occur, how complex the wireframe is, etc. Something like Cinema 4D would probably be the easiest way to create the wireframe itself, but you could also manually draw out the wireframe in Motion- it would be quite tedious, but possible.
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Brad-
Add the Analyze behavior to your clip as you normally would. Then go to the Track 1 properties and add a keyframe to the Position parameters on the first frame. You can go frame by frame adjusting the position as needed. (Just don’t select ‘Analyze’ to start the analyzing process or else Motion might overwrite what you’ve already done.)
Alternately, you can let Motion do its analysis first and then go into the keyframe editor and manually adjust every position frame, cleaning up as needed. If the drift is on the whole not acceptable, the other method might be preferable.
One final method that might work for your situation- since you are tracking a heart, if it stays relatively the same shape (that is, you see it the same with only X and Y position changes and little to no rotation, you could recreate that heart by drawing it, overlay it on the footage and perhaps more precisely follow the footage without trying to remember where on the edge you had your contrast point. You could then add use the heart you animated as the source for Match Move. Could be even more tedious, but might give better results.