CopyMask2Layer: a new AE script

CopyMask2Layer is a new After Effects script at AE Scripts:

When you copy a mask from one layer to another it often changes its position. With CopyMask2Layer you can copy masks while keeping them perfectly in place - even if the layers are moving and if the mask path is keyframed.

The demo video will immediately answer the questions you have in mind!

Some tutorials for removing logos and objects

A complete outline of the DVD training course Adobe After Effects CS5: Learn by Video can be found with the 20th free video, Removing a Logo from a Moving Image. (Streaming only on Video2Brain). A similar beginners' video is also available, Removing an Object with Clone Stamp (embedded below from a Peachpit podcast series).

For a resources of various difficulty levels, see Leak object removal tutorial and other AEP posts tagged roto like Roto: removing unwanted objects, Basic Footage Coloring And Object Removal, Simple Object Removal in AE, and Stabilization and object removal with AE CS5 +tracking.

Leak object removal tutorial

Mathias Möhl of Mamoworld is full of cheer, seeing a growing market in leak object removal (spurred by Wikileaks) in his Tutorial: WikiLeak Removal, which shows you how to:

• Verify the leak
• Track the leak with Mocha
• Remove the leak with After Effects

Stephen Colbert had a fun comment in December 15 show opening: "TIME's person of the year is Mark Zuckerberg. Sorry Julian Assange, I guess you didn't violate enough peoples' privacy." For some background, see Is What WikiLeaks Does Journalism? Good Question at GigaOM. [update: the NYT added interesting points aside from any politics in Banks and Wikileaks, and CBS News posted How WikiLeaks Enlightened Us in 2010 by Joshua Norman.]

For more info on object removal in AE, see Roto: removing unwanted objects, Rotoscoping tips, and other posts tagged roto. Here's Mathias:

Tutorial: How to remove WikiLeaks from web videos from Mathias Möhl on Vimeo.

Obscuring a face in After Effects

@AdobeAE notes a tutorial from AE CS5: Learn By Video on obscuring a face in After Effects by isolating it with Roto Brush & selectively applying a Mosaic effect (embedded below). There's more on the Roto Brush in AE Help and in posts tagged roto.

For other ways to do the same thing, and with earlier versions of AE, see for example Bob Donlon's The Mask of Shame and Obscure a logo, a face, or a license plate in After Effects at Toolfarm. Another example clip from AE CS5: Learn By Video shows a related technique-- how to combine motion tracking and rotoscoping to isolate and selectively color-correct an actor's face:

Reverse stabilization and 'Roto Assist'

Chris Zwar shared some resources on first stabilizing shots with camera movement, then doing keys or roto in a thread on the AE-List on the Roto Brush tool ("roto assist" when it bogs down) .

For more on the Roto Brush see AE Help (stabilization) and AEP posts with Roto Brush or stabilization resources. In addition to this advice, there's more from Chris on Thoughts on keying - The Myth of the Single-Click:

"Roto Brush will disappoint anyone who HASN'T had to do meticulous frame-by-frame rotoscope work before, and therefore doesn't know how tedious and difficult roto can be. Having a tool that gets you 70% of the way there is still a valuable time saver. But I haven't yet had a shot where it worked perfectly by itself. [snip]

In the same way that keying can be improved by pre-prossessing the footage to remove grain and adjust hue/saturation, images can also be pre-processed to improve rotoscoping too, and to help the roto brush plugin.

When I'm doing roto on any scene with camera movement I use a 3-step inverse camera process- firstly I motion stabilise the shot, then I work on the stabilised shot, then I put the original camera movement back in. I call it 'inverse camera' but it's also called 'reverse stabilisation' and it's demonstrated in a much more interesting way by Andrew Kramer:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/demon_face_warp/

It's also demonstrated on the Creative Cow:
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/oconnell_pete/roto.php

And the technique is then elaborated on by Roland:
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/kahlenberg_roland/reverse_stabilization.php

If I'm working with people who are new to rotoscoping then I get them to watch Andrew's tutorial first, because working on stabilised footage can make the roto process so much easier."

Unlogo: computer vision to erase logos [x2]

Peter Kirn posted on a new service in Unlogo Uses Computer Vision to Erase Logos from Your World at Create Digital Motion. Here the intro from Unlogo by Jeff Crouse:

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Update: PopSci discusses something similar from Germany (“Diminished Reality”) in Voodoo Software Removes Objects From Video In Real Time,

Update: see also Brad Larson on object tracking on the iPhone in GPU-accelerated video processing on Mac and iOS.

Rotoscoping Hair: basic options

Scott Squires has some tips on Rotoscoping Hair at a new Focal Press website, Postopolis. By the way, if you roto and key hair, sometimes it's faster to duplicate the keyed hair to make it more distinct rather than brutishly mess with controls.

So far there's no overall review of roto in CS5 (with significant additions of the Rotobrush and Mocha Shape), but Mark Christiansen's new AE book on VFX & CS5 is out on Monday. For now you can find more on the basics of rotoscoping in the roundup Rotoscoping tips and other AEP posts tagged roto, in Rotoscoping introduction and resources in AE Help, and at Scott's blog Effects Corner. See also Scott Stewart on cutting the perfect matte and Stu Mashwitz on the basic of procedural matte extraction, both from the out-of-print Masters of Visual Effects:

Masters of Visual Effects 2.6 - Rotoscoping from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.3 - Keying from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Content-Aware Fill for clean plates + extending edges

Karl Soule provides some examples of generating clean plates in Premiere Pro with Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop (more on AEP):

And via Lester Banks, Use Content Aware Fill for extending transparent object boundaries (demo and Photoshop CS5 action) from Dave Girard:

Content Aware Fill for extending transparent object boundaries from Dave Girard on Vimeo.

Stabilization and object removal with AE CS5 +tracking

Vfx Haiku explores Stabilization and Object Removal with After Effects CS5 in a new tutorial, stabilizing a piece of footage, “painting” out two unwanted objects, and ending with some quick color correction.

Stabilization and Object Removal with After Effects CS5 from Kert Gartner on Vimeo.

Update: Premiumbeat has something similar, taking "a look at the process of stabilizing footage using Adobe After Effects built in Stabilization feature. We will also look at how to apply a graphical element to the stabilized footage and then how to reverse the stabilization, to give a motion tracked effect to the graphics."

After Effects Quick Tip - How to Stabilize footage from Premiumbeat on Vimeo.

Christiansen's top 5 features of AE CS5

Mark Christiansen shares some of the ins and outs of his Top Five Features in Adobe After Effects CS5 at Peachpit. Here's a taste of the 6-page article:

'Even better, you can simply copy that shape from Mocha AE and paste it into After Effects as a mask. Read that again, because this may be the biggest feature in After Effects CS5 that almost no one has discovered: Mocha AE can track a shape around an object over time, and you can copy that shape and paste it into a layer's Mask Shape, with keyframe data, right in the Timeline.

I know what you're thinking: "Weren't you just telling me about this other great automated roto tool?" The point is that no tool does everything. Roto Brush data cannot be converted to Mask Shape keyframes, and masks are embedded into so many operations in After Effects and its plug-ins that you could find yourself using Mocha AE as much as Roto Brush to create roto masks.'

Chris & Trish Meyer + AE's Dave Simons on CS5

Chris & Trish Meyer are hosting a webinar on After Effects CS5 next Tuesday July 20th, demonstrating the new Roto Brush tool, mocha shape, Adobe Repoussé, Digieffects FreeForm, Color Look-up Tables, RED R3D settings, the new Per-Character 3D align option, Divide and Subtract modes, and more.

They "will also be joined by Dave Simons - one of the original creators of After Effects, as well as one of the architects behind Roto Brush - to answer your questions about this important new tool."

Find out more at PVC...

By the way, the After Effects team seeks users of Roto Brush to help them improve the tool.

Some rotoscoping techniques in CS5

Motionworks posted After Effects CS5: Rotoscoping techniques, an E-seminar for Adobe (direct link):

"I demonstrate some techniques for removing footage from a background. We look at luma mattes, masking and the Roto Brush tool. If you’ve watched the Roto Brush tutorial, this time I demonstrate how to make better corrective strokes."

For more on rotoscoping in After Effects & beyond, click on the tag

Layers videos on CS5 roto, mocha, and Color Finesse

Layers Magazine has a CS5 Learning Center with a few intro tutorials for each main app in the Creative Suites, including After Effects tutorial videos by Rod Harlan on Interface Enhancements, Mocha AE Version 2, Roto Brush, and Color Finesse.

VC tutorial integrates 3D with live action footage

Andrew Kramer and Video Copilot are back with a new After Effects tutorial video tutorial, 105. 3D Ledge, which integrates 3D with live action footage using 2D tracking:

"...we will be keying, tracking, roto-scoping, exporting, integrating, color correcting and a lot more. This 47-minute tutorial starts out in After Effects and covers generating the 3D building in 3D Max & Cinema 4D. No match-moving or 3D tracking required everything is done with the 2D tracker in AE. I’ve even included the 3D building for everyone to use.

You can even skip the 3D programs and build a sweet building in After Effects alone with the 3D City Tutorial."

CS5 roto for dimensional workflow + new tutorials

Roto tools in After Effects CS5 could help speed "dimensional workflow" for 3D stereosopic projects with faster ways to change depth of field. Ok, that's not just for 3D.

Nor is it as realistic as methods taught in fxphd's April term course Nuke 2D to 3D Stereo Conversion. For related developments on the higher end, see fxguidetv: Flame/Smoke 2011 Releases or fxguidetv #079.

Anyway, RealVision.ae has ideas on how CS5’s Rotobrush and Nuke Ocula tools assist in 2D to 3D conversions. And Imagineer Systems profiled the use of mocha as a VFX tool in the "Dimensionalization workflow" of In-Three; see In-Three: 2D-3D workflows. George Lucas called some of their work "shockingly good," so check out In-Three's basic technical docs for ideas, and In-Three on the Workflow Behind 3D Conversions on Studio Daily.

Other discussions of 3D in CS5 and in AE were noted previously in 3D, Cineform, and CS5. And here's some fun via Tim Sassoon from a recent thread on the AE-List on 3D and its hype, 2D Theatre by Hungry Beast -- and something more like the future via the Twittersphere:





Update: Andrew Murchie has launched a four-part series of After Effects tutorials showing how to convert 2D footage to 3D. Each one focuses on a different technique with an increasing level of complexity. 2d to 3d After Effects tutorial, the first tutorial, covers a simple channel offset technique that will get you converting 2d to 3d.

Update 2: fxphd has an April term class, Nuke 2D to 3D Stereo Conversion.

AE CS5 intro tutorials at Creative Cow

Richard Harrington has several quick CS5 video tutorials on Creative Cow (iTunes podcast also). Here's what's up now:

• After Effects CS5: Rotobrush
• After Effects CS5: Color Finesse
• After Effects CS5: Black and White Adjustment
• After Effects CS5: Working with 64-Bit

Lynda.com After Effects CS5 classes are up

Lynda.com classes After Effects CS5 New Features by Mark Christiansen and After Effects CS5 New Creative Techniques by Chris Meyer are completely up now.

These overviews are worth looking at for many observations, on mocha and RotoBrush for example where "divide & conquer" (or "Combining") is recommended. Here are some samples on the Roto Brush and on Mocha 2:

AETuts intros the Roto Brush

Adam Everett Miller explores the Roto Brush Tool at AETuts in Welcome CS5! An Intro To The New “Roto Brush”. More coverage was noted in Roto Brush explained.



Update: RealVision.ae has ideas on how CS5’s Rotobrush and Nuke Ocula tools assist in 2D to 3D conversions.

SIGGRAPH videos on the Roto Brush

Chris Prosser of the After Effects team noted the SIGGRAPH paper on the Roto Brush feature, Video SnapCut: Robust Video Object Cutout Using Localized Classifiers. See also Interactive Video Cutout.

Other recent coverage was noted in Roto Brush explained. Here are source videos of the papers (PDFs are available too):

Video SnapCut from Jue Wang on Vimeo.

Meyer & Christiansen: CS5 new features previews

Lynda.com has several Youtube CS5 teasers for (so far) free CS5 training. Chris Meyer has some free now on Lynda.com: Working with mocha, Repoussé in Photoshop CS5, Repoussé in After Effects CS5.

Mark Christiansen also has some AE CS5 training up on Lynda.com (Roto Brush, Refine Matte, color/modes), with more promised.

Here's the Chris Meyer overview: