Using Roto Brush for Rotoscoping in After Effects

Every week, Frame.io Insider asks one in every of our professional contributors to share a tip, software, or method that they use on a regular basis and couldn’t reside with out. This week, Laurence Grayson makes rotoscoping in After Effects a lot simpler with Roto Brush 3.0.

If you’ve been working in movement graphics or VFX for any size of time, you’ll know two issues to be true. One, that rotoscoping is unavoidable—each VFX or movement artist might want to rotoscope one thing sooner or later. And two, that rotoscoping sucks.

What is rotoscoping?

For anybody who doesn’t know, rotoscoping is the apply of separating one thing in a video body from its background—creating foreground and background layers or “plates.” Historically this was performed in After Effects by outlining the foreground topic by drawing nodes with the Mask software. You’d then alter these masks nodes to match the motion of the topic. Frame by body. For (practically) each body. In brief, it could actually a repetitive, time-consuming activity, which is why it’s usually handed all the way down to whomever sits on the backside of your group’s pecking order.

After Effects Roto Brush 1.0 and a pair of.0

It’s really been 14 years since Adobe launched Roto Brush in After Effects in CS5, and it was an enormous leap ahead. But like most groundbreaking instruments, there was a good quantity of room for enchancment.

If there was clear distinction between your foreground and background, and every little thing was in focus, and your topic didn’t transfer an excessive amount of, and you didn’t have quite a lot of high-quality element across the edges, it might prevent hours. Otherwise, it was fairly hit or miss. And not having handbook nodes to fall again on meant that quite a lot of die-hards (like me) tended to play it secure, and caught to the previous methods.

Fast ahead about ten years to when After Effects Roto Brush 2 landed, and every little thing acquired noticeably higher. Improved edge refinement instruments took a usable software and made it a helpful software—as Frame.io Insider Jason Boone demonstrates on this video.

After Effects Roto Brush 3.0

These days, we’ve got After Effects Roto Brush 3, and to be truthful, it’s not fairly the enormous leap between nothing and 1, or 1 and a pair of. But in rotoscoping any enchancment is one thing to rejoice.

There’s really quite a bit to tweak with Roto Brush 3.0, and that is an Insider Tip, not a full tutorial, so I’ll follow what it’s worthwhile to find out about Roto Brush in After Effects.

How to make use of After Effects Roto Brush 3.0

1. First, be sure that the clip you wish to roto is within the Layer monitor (not the Composition monitor). Double-click on the clip if it’s not.
2. Move the playhead within the Layer monitor to a degree in your video the place most of your roto goal is seen in body.
3. Select the Roto Brush software from the highest of the After Effects UI and alter the comb measurement with the mouse wheel, if wanted.
4. Draw over your roto topic to outline the foreground, and maintain down Opt/Alt and draw to outline your background.
5. You can scale back the vary—or “span”— that Roto Brush 3 will analyze by dragging the handles on the Layer monitor’s timeline.
6. When you’ve acquired a tough consequence, you’ll be able to change from the Roto Brush software to the Refine Edge edge software (click on and maintain the software button on the high of the After Effects UI).
7. Use the Refine Edge software to attract round any areas, significantly hair, that want fine-tuning. If you’ve gotten X-ray enabled (default), this can present a adverse view of the main points you’re highlighting.

Now it’s attainable to only hit Space and let Roto Brush do the onerous give you the results you want. But even Roto Brush 3.0 can’t produce miracles, so that you would possibly favor to advance body by body, maintaining a watch open for any areas the place your masks is beginning to slip. (Jason does an ideal job of demonstrating this within the video above.)

When you’re pleased along with your choice, you’ll be able to hit the Freeze button to lock it in place. You can unfreeze it later in the event you see one thing you missed on the primary cross.

Set your expectations

If you’ve by no means rotoscoped something earlier than, then you definately is likely to be anticipating Roto Brush 3.0 to be a totally automated, fire-and-forget, single-button software that does every little thing completely the primary time. It’s not.

There are going to be occasions when it’s worthwhile to step in, and occasions when the footage will resist your greatest efforts. But belief me after I say this, After Effects Roto Brush is a lot sooner than doing it by hand and it’s the very first thing I attain for after I’ve acquired rotoscoping to do. It additionally lifts the bar on footage, saving in any other case unusable clips from the bin.

As Morgan Prygrocki put it in a recent episode of Frame.io Live, “No one will miss rotoscoping by hand.” She’s not incorrect.