Automatic/trackable rotoscoping

[Hegs]

Is there any program/plugin which allows for, at least to some degree, automated rotoscoping. I.e, you create a spline around an objecct and then it tracks the spline following the movement of the object. I mean, obviously it wouldnt work well with objects which change a lot, but surely things like a foot or something simple would remain consistent enough to be able to track its outline? yes or no....

[hype]

not that i'm aware of. There is certainly roto tracking, which allows you to track a 2d point and apply it to either a mask point or an entire mask, but it's uses are limited. There are programs/plug-ins that can turn a matte into a rotospline. But I'm not aware of anything that auto roto's.
Mokey claims to be able to remove things automatically from shots, but I've tried using it in a production setting on a major motion picture, and it failed, even with 3 still plates fed in to help it. But it can work, as long as your shot is designed with the limitations of the program in mind. The company that makes it has a few other programs as well that claim to do "automatic" stuff.
I've learned to be wary of anything claiming to be "automatic".

but if anyone knows of an auto-roto tool, i'm certainly interested!

[girlcompositor]

I think there is a plugin for Shake that is called Furnace which claims to be able to do something along those lines.


http://www.pluginz.com/product/12811

[hype]

Imagineer Systems also is in development with something called Motor, but it sounds just like Silhouette Roto to me.

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

http://www.silhouettefx.com/roto/

[SalaTar]

pixelmonkey? (humor)

actually it was called pixeldust(dead)???

but commotion still come up as usable

[hype]

commotion's not automatic rotoing, though.

[unxetas]

something like this IS being developed, but it'll take a while. There have been a few siggraph papers and presentations on it, I wish I had a link though.. Basically it decomposes the scene and represents it as a 3D view, with time being the 3rd dimension.. you can then do quick strokes selecting what you want to keep and what you want to throw away and it does it's best to maintain consistency..

From what I know, it's still far from ready, but I've seen some very impressive results on a few clips!

[Aruna]

The only impressive results I've seen were at Siggraph (in 2001), in a controlled environment, with TV resolution stuff (or smaller!). I have yet to see pixeldust or mokey automagically pull a convincing key usable in production. Furnace makes several tools to help you separate the foreground from the background, but it's still a very manual process.

[hype]

mokey is useless.

[hiphopcr]

I've learned to be wary of anything claiming to be "automatic".

Agreed!

[fin]

I rember reading a couple years back that boujou was creating a roto/match software built into bullet, but looks like that idea quietly went away. They do mention something about tracking masks in their recent updates. Sound like a lot of work though. You have to get a 3D camera match first then you can work on the mask.

I think the reason there isn't a popular roto plugin or software is that you'll probably spend more time cleaning up a bad roto than building one from scratch. The same thing was happening with the first solvers built for 3D matchmoves. Now they're all very sexy. with tons of bells and whisltes that allow you to do very elaborate camera moves and match intersecting objects. Roto will never be as complex.

[hype]

roto tracking is available in alot of compositing programs, even After Effects with a little research.
And Photoshop has a magnetic lasso that is kind of an interesting technology, but it hasn't yet found it's way into compositing.
Those companies that create masking plug-ins for photoshop seem to be the front runners in auto-extraction. maybe one of them is working on it.

[Jay_C]

Is there any program/plugin which allows for, at least to some degree, automated rotoscoping. I.e, you create a spline around an objecct and then it tracks the spline following the movement of the object. I mean, obviously it wouldnt work well with objects which change a lot, but surely things like a foot or something simple would remain consistent enough to be able to track its outline? yes or no....

Have you tried Motor? The LE learning editon is more than adequate for trials, only watermakrs renders and prevents exporting of shapes.

I agree that nothing is every truely automatic but Imagineer's planar tracker sure makes for easy tracking and has proven to be very usefull for roto scoping on various high-end productions.

http://www.imagineersystems.com/products/motor/
http://www.imagineersystems.com/prod..._Basic.mp4.php

[hype]

I recently discovered the Auto-Trace feature in After Effects. Select a channel (R, G, B, Luminence, Alpha, etc...) click the button and it creates a mask for you based on the channel you selected. Pretty friggin' impressive, and I've never seen anything like it in any other program.
it's under Layers > Auto-Trace (near the bottom).

[Jay_C]

I recently discovered the Auto-Trace feature in After Effects. Select a channel (R, G, B, Luminence, Alpha, etc...) click the button and it creates a mask for you based on the channel you selected. Pretty friggin' impressive, and I've never seen anything like it in any other program.
it's under Layers > Auto-Trace (near the bottom).

Yeah it's pretty neat but tends to be noisy as is the case with most Edge detection solutions...

I found the advantage with Motor's built in Planar tracker is that one can track more than just the edges i.e. an element with a dark edge over a dark background can be tracked and roto'd...