How To Rotoscope Animation In After Effects

See how CentraleSupélec student Hugo Germain uses rotoscoping furnishings on nature footage in Adobe Later on Effects to reimagine the exotic marine life of Lord Howe Island, Australia, inside this untouched environment.

Open the rotoscoping.aep project file in Adobe Afterward Effects. Double-click the shark.mp4 layer in the Timeline to open it in its own Layer window.

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In guild to separate the shark from the background, you demand to define the edges of the shark in the outset frame of the footage. Click the Roto Brush tool.

With the Roto Brush tool selected, define the areas of the footage that you desire to keep. Change the view level to fit the entire shark's body in the frame. Utilize the brush to paint along the interior of the shark'due south body. A magenta division purlieus appears around the shark, indicating the foreground object to be separated from the background.

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After defining the shark'south body, use the Roto Brush tool to refine whatever edges that are non perfect. Printing the Alt/Option cardinal on your keyboard and notice that the brush tool changes from a green circumvolve to a red one.

Hold Alt/Option while painting to ascertain areas of background that yous want removed. Pay close attending to areas around the shark's fin where the initial choice is not perfect. It is important to spend as much time as needed to brand your beginning selection every bit precise as possible.

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One time you've defined your foreground selection, apply the Effect Controls panel to refine the edge further.

Showtime click the Toggle Blastoff Boundary icon below the footage to preview the shark against a blackness background.

Now open the Result Controls console and find the options listed under Roto Brush Matte. You can go good results by increasing the Feather value, reducing Shift Edge to a negative corporeality, and adjusting the Reduce Churr percentage to help smooth the edges.

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Now that yous've defined the mask for the first frame, you demand to step through the residue of the frames in the sequence to make sure the mask is precise. Later on Furnishings uses a combination of techniques to automatically calculate the edges of the object that is defined in the first frame, and applies information technology to the following frames every bit best as possible. For best results, stride through the frames and make manual corrections when necessary.

First click and elevate the Roto Brush span (the dark grey bar) to increase its length, so information technology takes up the full length of the footage.

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Next, open up the Preview panel and click Next Frame to advance the footage by one frame. If you lot notice whatever areas where the edge of the mask needs to be refined, employ the Roto Brush tool to make the corrections, adding foreground or subtracting background equally necessary. Follow this same step for all the frames in your footage.

When you are satisfied with the option boundaries throughout the entire footage, click Freeze in the lower-right corner of the Layer window to salve the boundary data.

After that process is finished, switch dorsum to the Composition window.

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To create the blended footage, you volition need to add an paradigm behind the shark footage. Drag background.jpg from the Project panel to the Timeline, merely below the shark.mp4 layer.

Select the shark.mp4 layer and use the bounding box handles to resize and rotate the shark and then it fits the scene to your liking.

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To brand a convincing composite, the shark will need some color correction to help match the background. Select the shark.mp4 layer in the Timeline and choose Effect > Colour Correction. For this footage, a number of unlike effect layers are needed to correct the footage.

Add a Curves layer, a Hue/Saturation layer, a Photograph Filter, and a Effulgence & Dissimilarity effect layer. Experiment with the values to help remove some of the dejection and greens from the shark. Removing some saturation and adding some warm tones will assistance information technology match the colour and lighting of the groundwork landscape.

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