I have a friend who is making a rotoscope(ish) film. She shot some videos and filtered it to have pencil effects, and is masking the background around the figures, leaving only the people. The thing is, the only way we know how to do it is in After Effects, frame by frame, in 29.7 FPS. Besides lowering the FPS to 15, we can't do anything short of just manually filling the character's space through a mask (AE doesn't have a fill tool, so you have to physically fill it) with a tablet.
We'd move it to Flash but it compresses the HD video to a really low quality.
There has to be a better, less time-consuming method or program for this "negative rotoscope". The sooner and more detailed, the more appreciated.
-Isai
A good way to have gone about it (probably too late now) is to have shot the people against a something like a green screen (really, almost any seamless flat color background, as long as the color contrasted well enough from the characters.) Then you could chroma-key out the background and apply the pencil effect to the rest.
If your video is people shot against a standard (busy) background, then you're pretty much stuck with tracing them frame-by-frame. The Flash approach could still work. Just consider the imported video as a go-by, but make sure the Flash stage is the same size/proportions as your final video.
Import the video to a Flash layer. Then (frame-by-frame, hate to say it...) trace the outline of the people on another Flash layer, basically creating a moving silhouette. When you're done tracing, delete the video layer (so all you have is a layer containing the traced figures) and export it as a video file with alpha channel. (e.g. if it's an avi, choose 32-bit color w/alpha as the video format.)
You can import this "silhouette movie" into AE (and some other video editors support this) and use it as a matte to mask out your original video. (if you kept the aspect ratio the same, it should line up fairly well, but you might have to tweak the alignment of your matte and the video as you go.)
Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com
Has anyone used a webcam codex to make a mask?
>> we can't do anything short of just manually filling the character's space through a mask (AE doesn't have a fill tool, so you have to physically fill it) with a tablet.
What do you mean by "physically fill it with a tablet."?
In AE you draw a mask and then animate the "Mask Shape" (the points on the mask). Still a slow process but better than redrawing or "filling" things in. Sorry if I misunderstand what you're doing. Be sure to have enough points on the mask shape so you don't have to add or subtract any as it will mess up the animation.
Any chance she can shoot it again with a "green screen"? A painted wall, a solid colored shower curtain, bright, blue sky?
It never occurred to her to use a a green screen. She'll reshoot it.
Thanks, everyone!
http://lilgrim1991.deviantart.com/
Awesome posts .........learning a lot.
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Reshoot everything in 78mm film, develop it and then draw right onto the film itself. I can't think of an easier way than that...
Sorry... I'll leave now...