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PROCESS OF ROTOSCOPY

BY DIPJOY ROUTH

Rotoscoping is a vital process within the visual effects pipeline. Whether you
need to take out elements from live-action footage or bring elements in, you
need to have a strong understanding of this very important technique. This
article will give you an understanding of roto scoping and its use, as well as
some helpful tips when roto scoping for your next piece of footage.
In its more traditional use, roto scoping meant tracing over live action footage
frame by frame for use in animated films. That way the animator could get very
realistic movements by tracing over the actor in the scene. You can kind of think
of it as todays motion capture.
In visual effects, however, the process, although similar, has a different purpose.
Rotoscoping for VFX is used to create a matte or mask for an element so it can
be extracted out to place on a different background, masked out so colors can
be changed or any other set of reasons. The roto scoping artist (or roto artist for
short) will trace an object using a set of tools within the compositing software to
create a new alpha channel for a specific part of an image sequence or video

PROCESS OF ROTOSCOPY
Unlike computer generated imagery that can easily add an alpha channel to its images, footage
taken directly from a camera has no alpha data so the roto artist will need to manually create that
alpha by tracing over the elements within the video. A rotoscoping artist will need to create
different shapes around an object and animate those shapes to match the movement on each
frame.
Depending on the complexity of the shot, the process of rotoscoping can take hours or even days
to complete. The use of blue and green screens can make the process of compositing different
elements into a scene much easier, but not every shot can take advantage of blue or green
screens, so rotoscoping still plays a large role in the production of visual effects. Because you
can find rotoscoping used in just about every movie and television show that utilizes visual
effects, its no surprise that roto artists are a vital role within the VFX pipeline.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Keep Control Points to a Minimum
When youre first beginning to learn rotoscoping, your first instinct might be to create as many points as
possible in order to properly outline the element within the footage. However, it is better to use a minimal
amount of points and only what is needed to trace the subject. If a mattes outline changes over several
frames, it can give it a jittery look when played back, and its much harder to keep track of all the points.

A good technique is to find the most complex shape that the subject is in, and outline that first so you know the
most points youll ever need for that rotoscope. The rotoscoping tools in your compositing software have very
powerful curve manipulation abilities that are able to create complex curved lines with a minimal amount of
points.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Create Separate Shapes
If the object or person is a very complicated shape, do not try and use one shape for the entire subject. Often
times it is best to separate different limbs, fingers, etc., into different sub-shapes. For instance, parts that are
going to be moved independently of each other should be separated, like the hand, the fingers, the forearm,
and the arm. If you were trying to follow the outline of a complex movement, two characters fighting for
example, it would be nearly impossible to follow the actions accurately with one single outline.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Use as Few Key frames as Possible
When you are animating the rotoscope to follow along with the movement of the element in the footage, you
typically dont need to create a new key frame for every frame. The computer will automatically interpolate
between key frames and will generally produce the desired results.
The same way that an animator would first draw in the key poses, you can do the same thing when
rotoscoping. Find the frames where the most movement occurs, and adjust the shapes accordingly. If the
outline is not following perfectly with the subject you can then go in and add another key frame to make that
adjustment.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Study the Footage
Before you start rotoscoping, you should study the footage you will be working
with. Are there large changes in direction? Do parts of the subject get obscured
by other elements within the scene? Are there big camera shakes that could be
stabilized to make the rotoscoping process easier for you? By knowing the
footage, youll be able to better determine the timeframe for the project, as
well as the best way to approach the rotoscoping. You are animating the rotoscope to
follow along with the movement of the element in the footage, you typically dont need to create a new key
frame for every frame. The computer will automatically interpolate between key frames and will generally
produce the desired results.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Consider Animation Principles
Rotoscoping is a lot like animation; you are creating key frames and animating
the outline of the subject within the footage. The same way that an animator
would think about arcs, ease in and ease out, so should you. After all, the
animation principles were based off of real-world studies and youll see these
principles in action while tracing your footage. By thinking about these things
while you are rotoscoping, it will help you place the key frames in the right spot
and figure out early on where the ease ins and ease outs would occur in the
footage, and how your key frames should be placed to follow with the subject.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Use of Tracking Data
Use tracking data where ever you can. The point tracking in Silhouette is really
good and the planar tracking in Mocha is amazing. Let these do the hard work
for you and will allow you to use less key frames.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
Necessity
Make sure you know why the matte is needed. You can waste a lot of time if
yourotoareas or frames that arent needed.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
EDGE Consistency
Keep your edge consistent. If your spline is 1px in from the edge at the
beginning of the shot, thats fine, as long as it is 1px in at the end too. The
compositors can always slightly dilate orerodeyour matte but only if it is
consistent.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
USE whole shape not individual points
Try to transform your whole shape using the transform/rotate/scale tools before
you start editing individual points. This will prevent boiling. Keep the control
points of your shape on the same part of the object all of the way through the
shot. If the outline of the shape changes too much to keep your shape
consistent turn off your shape and start a new one.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

DEALING WITH MOTION BLUR


Maintain the core matte or alpha and it is possible aim for the motion blur as much as
possible. Hence, I went back to the project and started modify the shapes again.
In Nuke you can also do the following:
1. Create a mask with a natural-looking motion blur, regardless of the background objects
mixing with the hand.
2. Shrink a copy of the mask to the point, where all the semi-transparent (blurred) edges
are cut away. You can adjust the black point of the mask for it, the mask thus becomes
hard-edged.
3. Multiply the hand with the shrunk copy of the mask.
4. Blur the multiplied result as much as to cover all the motion-blurred area of the original
footage (you can adjust it more precisely later, looking at the final result)
5. Unpremult the blurred hand. You can see, that the skin color is now expanded.
6. Merge the unpremulted result over the screen image, using the original motion blurred
mask.
7. Use the shrunk hand mask to put the screen image with the blurred hand over the
source.

THINGS TO REMEMBER
MAKE SURE
Dont be afraid to trash your work and start over. Beginning roto artists often
make the mistake of trying to fix a flawed approach by adding more and more
key frames. Experienced roto artists learn to quickly identify an inferior
approach and are unashamed to trash their work and start over, often many,
many times. It is very difficult to get a good matte without a conscious effort to
keep the key frames to a minimum.

STEREO ROTO
Roto has seen vast growth with the matching explosion in stereo productions. There
are actually two types of stereo roto work: Stereo Workflow and Stereo. With stereo
workflow, the material has been shot with two cameras and the task is to match as
closely as possible roto in the right eye with roto in the left. Failure to match the
rotos for certain operations can lead to viewer fatigue and actual motion sickness.
By comparison, stereo conversion sees roto being used to isolate elements in a
mono-shot sequence so that a depth map can be made that will allow a second
'virtual' camera to be produced - with the correct offset for stereo parallax. In the
case of a face this may mean a separate roto for the eyes, the eyeballs, the face, the
nose, the lips, the hair and ears. In the simplest form, these roto shapes would then
be combined using screen, multiple, darken and lighten, to build up a manual depth
map (z-map) of white to black gradated grayscale roto-based shapes that defines the
depth for of the face. Given that every shot of a mono film needs to be processed for
a mono to stereo feature conversion, this can mean a mountain of roto work.

STEREO ROTO
STEREO WORKFLOW
The largest area of growth in roto tools in recent times has been in the area of stereo
roto tools.
Fusion, Silhouette, Mocha, Flame and of courseNuke and Ocula from The Foundry all
have stereo workflow tools designed to help roto objects or items seen by both eyes in a
way that matches and does not hurt the stereo comfort of the viewer.
The Foundry was one of the first companies to provide tools for working with stereo
production. Ocula's O_Correlate, for example, is a collection of tools to assist an artist
when roto scoping, creating paint effects or doing other operations dependent on image
locality. It provides extensions directly to Nuke's existing Correlate function. Ironically,
Nuke itself was left a tad behind other products in providing cutting edge technology for
stereo conversion.

Stereo Conversion process typically involves isolating objects using roto tools
and trackers, then the building of a depth map and then an additional roto fix-up
to patch the missing information revealed in parallax as the second stereo pair
frame is created. While both the object identification, disparity map and
secondary output view generation all have some automatic tools, there is still a
huge amount of roto in stereo conversion.

You might find these tips


helpful.

REGARDS

DIPJOY ROUTH

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