Hair Detail in Clean-up shot..how?

[Gedas]

Hello everyone,

I have this shot, where I need to do some clean-up work and I thought I will ask for any advices how to go about it..

The idea of this shot is that the guy stands up from the table and sees that he is the last one in the room, after nodding his head he leaves the frame .. Now when I filmed this there were few people in the shot and since I could not do anything about it I had to just get the take, and with hopes that I will deal with it later on in post.. and now I came to that point..

the shot is 325 frames long.. I've done some cleaning work before, so creating a clean plate isn't an issue.. What's an issue is I don't quite know how to deal with the hair.. coz the actors moves threw all the clean-plate patches straight roto seems to be not the best solution to go with (since there is a lot of detail in the hair).. is there any other techniques/ways to deal with it? Any thoughts are welcomed and would be really appreciated..

screengrab attached (red areas would be the patches)

[theta]

One way would be to do your roto work, then track some hair patches over the edge. If the actor is still available take some shots of him against green screen, or shoot someone else with similar hair, and key out the edge of his hair, then just track that bit over the edge in this shot.

[kero]

Yeah - sorry to break it you, but roto may be the best way to go. I've had to roto hair with a lot more detail in than that - it's horrible work, but possible. Im not bragging by the way - I hated every moment of hair roto!
Also, as Theta said, you could try tracking in patches. If the hair doesn't move too much, you could create a patch (with hand painted alpha) every 10th frame (or whatever works) and morph between them. Id recommend taking your patches from the footage itself.

[djrovers123]

theta: thats a very interesting way of doing it thanks for sharing this trick.
but yes even though roto sounds and seems a lot painful but u will be happy with the end result. i would still try and see if the luma key works. but i think your best bet is to roto the shot.

[faridzadeh]

theta's idea is a good one, but I would like to offer a word of warning: A lot of us HATE rotoscoping and will spend HOURS upon HOURS trying to find a way to solve the problem without rotoscoping. Then in the end throw our hands up in defeat and just roto the damn thing, and realize it took way less time to rotoscope it, than it it did trying to find ways to solve it without rotoscoping.

[daddywags214]

I agree that roto is probably the best option here. I'd stress the importance of making several pieces, rather than one complicated shape. That way, if one part just isn't working, you can start it over without losing everything else. It can also help you minimize the number of bezier points, which is always good. There are some great tips in Aruna's sticky about roto.

[artisanfx]

hmm roto is a good way but sometimes you can do it more easy way but i think if you show the hole shot people can speak more about

first of all we need to see the film to talk about more