My friend has decided to do some rotoscoping for me, since I am not near as familiar on doing it well. She doesn't know how to use AE though, but knows Photoshop. So I guess I can export all the still frames over, if that's the best way to do it, but is there anything I should do or know, before I do anything wrong? Thanks.
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Anything I know when exporting to Photoshop?
- Thread starter harmonica44
- Start date
I would export as tiff or psd. After effects have some good tools to rotoscope, such as rotobrush. It might be time consuming, but is not that hard to learn how to work with, for a photoshop user.
I'd say it'd be easier for her to learn AE than it would to do the roto in PS... AE is made for images in motion, whereas there is no real good way to deal with "transport controls" in PS... it's not made for working with video at all -- it's not that big a transition though, she should recognize quite a bit of the toolbox from PS (both are Adobe after all)... have her run through the turorials at videocopilot.net
Okay thanks I'll do that. I already showed her some of the videos, but have been running into some problems that I haven't found a way out of. I thought that since she knows photoshop that would work better for her.
Okay it's been quite a while but she hasn't been able to figure a lot out of how to rotoscope in AE, and says she can do it, if it's in photoshop. She can't fine the rotoscoping tools. There is the rotobrush, but that's the program always trying to guess where you want the line to be drawn. Is there any way to rotoscope that is completely manual, without the program trying to guess? If there is no manual method than I have to know how to format the frames to be exportable into photoshop, cause she can't do it otherwise.
I don't know why. I can ask her. What tool do you draw with though, when it comes to rotoscoping? We either cannot find it, or we haven't been using it right. And every online tutorial I can find, only talks about the brush.
In AE:
- select layer you want to make mask.
- press [G] - the pen tool for masks is selected
- everytime you click the mouse you add a point to the mask. If you move the mouse whill doing this the point will have a curve instead of a straight corner.
- the mask is compleet when you click the first point again: everything within the mask is now visible, the rest is not.
- in layer properties a new 'tab' has popped up: Mask
- open it
- you can now set keyframes 'on' in shape. (click the stopwatch-icon)
- now you can move the points, and change the curves in every frame
- once finished you can set the mask feather
Other things to know:
- you can change the color of the mask-line by clicking the yellow box. Can be usefull to make the maskline and points stand out more
- you can use severa masks together to achieve what you want
- you can set mask to :add, subtract,nothing and intersect.
Tips:
- dublicate the layer before you start: this way can always see the complete picture when masking the toplayer
- add a solid to the composition with a very saturated color that stands out against the scene: place it beneath the original layer. When disabling the original layer, you now get to see the masked part against a contrast background.
- when masking movement I useally start with keyframing the mask every 4 or 8 frames (depending on movements and my educated guess). You will see the mask will gradually change in the in between frames. Now I check the frame halfway between the keyframes and change it to fit.
After that I move to the other frames and change the mask when needed.
- to make a mask ineffective while the shot still lasts you can do 2 things:
A) keyframe the mask opactity: from 100% to 0%
B) move it with the shape keyframe out of the frame
Have fun!
This may take you several days to do.
The rotobrush needs clear lines and contrast to make the 'guess', but you also need to point the program where the lines are.
- select layer you want to make mask.
- press [G] - the pen tool for masks is selected
- everytime you click the mouse you add a point to the mask. If you move the mouse whill doing this the point will have a curve instead of a straight corner.
- the mask is compleet when you click the first point again: everything within the mask is now visible, the rest is not.
- in layer properties a new 'tab' has popped up: Mask
- open it
- you can now set keyframes 'on' in shape. (click the stopwatch-icon)
- now you can move the points, and change the curves in every frame
- once finished you can set the mask feather
Other things to know:
- you can change the color of the mask-line by clicking the yellow box. Can be usefull to make the maskline and points stand out more
- you can use severa masks together to achieve what you want
- you can set mask to :add, subtract,nothing and intersect.
Tips:
- dublicate the layer before you start: this way can always see the complete picture when masking the toplayer
- add a solid to the composition with a very saturated color that stands out against the scene: place it beneath the original layer. When disabling the original layer, you now get to see the masked part against a contrast background.
- when masking movement I useally start with keyframing the mask every 4 or 8 frames (depending on movements and my educated guess). You will see the mask will gradually change in the in between frames. Now I check the frame halfway between the keyframes and change it to fit.
After that I move to the other frames and change the mask when needed.
- to make a mask ineffective while the shot still lasts you can do 2 things:
A) keyframe the mask opactity: from 100% to 0%
B) move it with the shape keyframe out of the frame
Have fun!
This may take you several days to do.
The rotobrush needs clear lines and contrast to make the 'guess', but you also need to point the program where the lines are.