Planar Tracking Roto (like Motor) in AE

[hype]

Hi gang!!

So, have you all seen Imagineer Systems Motor yet?

http://www.mokey.com/products/motor/

It's a new roto program that costs alot and uses a technology called Planar Tracking to help you roto faster. Watch that quick start video if you're interested (I recommend watching it before watching mine, so you know what we're replicating). I did, and all I could think the whole time was "After Effects can do that just fine".

The basic premise of planar tracking is to match up a virtual plane with something semi-planar in a scene (in their example, the side of a car is one plane, the front is another). Once your plane is tracked to match the thing representing the plane in the scene, your roto, if done on the plane you tracked in, will match up much faster and easier than normal (MUCH less keyframes). In Motor, the virtual planes are hidden under the hood. In AE, they'll just be solids.

So, rather than ramble on about it like I just did, I made a video tutorial.
Like I said, you should watch the Motor Quick Start first. If you watch that and think "holy cow thats amazing I have to have it right now how in the world does it do that i wish i could roto that fast!", then this is the tutorial for you!!

I think it's about 55 Megs, should be Mpeg4 compression. This is fresh out of my screen capture thingy, no additional compression, so if anyone has problems, let me know.
Also, this one has no audio. Most of the time, my audio doesn't line up with the video, so I have to do all this reworking of the audio... I didn't feel like doing it this time, so I just type in Wordpad instead of talking.

http://www.mackdadd.com/tutorials/Plana ... in_AE7.avi

[mechis]

Very cool, Hype. The one thing I liked in motor that I think AE doesn't have, is the variable feather edge.

I liked the demo you made... I learned a few workflow tips that will be handy the next time I use AE.

Thanks!
~Mechis

[Artflame Noir]

ARGHHH waiting for my bandwidth to reset for this month lol... this is exactly what I need.. thanks man, you're a mind reader..

[hype]

the variable feather edge

yeah, AE has needed this for a while. Every other compositing program has it. If you get silhouette roto, you can have it inside of AE (cuz silhouette runs sort of inside AE), but otherwise, this is one of those features AE developers seem to have forgot.

[WillRyan]

Supposedly ReVisionFX demoed a low-cost plug-in at NAB that gives us the variable edge feathering in AE. I can't find an official review of it anywhere, but I think someone mentioned it over at mogrpah.net.

It seems like we're still going to be waiting on an implementation of the Curious Gfx roto tools that Adobe bought ages ago.

[hype]

yeah, someone else mentioned that ReVision thing to me too. I'm anxious to see it!

But seriously, every other program has had it for a while now, and it's really something they should just build in. And what's that about Curious GFX roto tools?

[WillRyan]

Back when I started at the Pixelcorps, everyone was raving about Curious Gfx roto tools. Then this happened, and I never got my hands on the tools. In the meantime, Silhouette Roto has become the de facto standard, and now Eyeon has demoed a Digital Fusion-derived set of roto tools called Rotation that's supposed to be rocking.

I just want to be able to keyframe the postion and feather of verts in AE's native masks.

Awesome movie by the way Hype!

[hype]

thanks Will! (please vote for me!!! tonights the last night to vote!!)

i searched curious gfx and found these

http://www.toolfarm.com/tutorials/index.html#curious

i'm gonna take a look. I still think AE has perfectly fine roto tools, especially when used in conjunction with tracking. All it needs is the CV tracking built-in instead of having to run a script, and variable feathered edges. then all would be well.

but Adobe bought curious GFX's roto thing? interesting. wonder what happened then?

[kilroy]

wow great stuff mate.

thanks a lot dude

[jasmin@revisionfx.com]

yeah, someone else mentioned that ReVision thing to me too. I'm anxious to see it!

But seriously, every other program has had it for a while now, and it's really something they should just build in. And what's that about Curious GFX roto tools?

FYI
It's out now, it's called PV Feather

[hype]

bought it without even demoing it, AWESOME tool!

[danielrigano]

This program is awesome.