Hi, I am quite new to After Effects. I shot a short film, edited it in Premier and now have this one scene here: shoulder - YouTube in which I want to add a black basinet to the background, like this (see below). Let me know if I am on the right track as to what I need to do to accomplish this.
- You'll notice that the video I posted currently has a blanket in the background where I want the basinet to be. I will have to clone that out...is there anyway to do that in After Effects vs. individual frames in Photoshop?
- Because the shot is a moving closeup over his shoulder the basinet will be 'revealed', there is a point in which the actor's shoulder will be blocking the basinet until the camera reaches its destination over his shoulder. Does that mean I have to extract the actor, make him his own layer, then make the basinet its own layer so that it is in front of the actor?
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salr69696969 wrote:
- You'll notice that the video I posted currently has a blanket in the background where I want the basinet to be. I will have to clone that out...is there anyway to do that in After Effects vs. individual frames in Photoshop?
Possibly. See this.
salr69696969 wrote:
- Because the shot is a moving closeup over his shoulder the basinet will be 'revealed', there is a point in which the actor's shoulder will be blocking the basinet until the camera reaches its destination over his shoulder. Does that mean I have to extract the actor, make him his own layer, then make the basinet its own layer so that it is in front of the actor?
Yes. This technique is called rotoscoping - as you probably know 
You may be successful just using the Roto Brush (it's not intuitive, see this for how to use it), but you may need to go the more traditional animated mask route (see this).
Also, don't forget to color correct the basinet to make it match the shot. Right now, it's much too dark.
There's no need for Rotobrush on this scene. The roto is way too simple to require that. Total time to create this demo project and capture the screen shots - 15 minutes.
The roto on this shot will be very simple. The most efficient way to do this is to first split the shot so are only working on the frames that need to be changed. I'm guessing that the new object, the bassinet, will start appearing in frame 101. (I almost always use frames instead of time code - personal preference) The last frame would then be 155. You'll end up with a very short clip like this:
The next thing I would do is figure out the best way to track this shot. So much of the frame is obstructed that I don't think Camera Track is the best option. The building in the back is visible in all of the frames so Stabilize Motion or even Mocha would be a good option. I'm going with stabilize motion. Open the Motion tracking workspace and set tracking up like this:
Note how I have made the search areas bigger than the default and positioned them so there's a lot of detail for the tracker to look at.
When you apply you'll get something like this where background stops moving in the frame. Note the exposed edges in the shot:
Now you have a stable work area where you can add the bassinet.
The next step I would take is to create a Photoshop file from the frame that shows the most detail and combine a basinet into the shot like this:
A 2 second color correction was applied. I would add all the shadows and get the best composite I could using this step. then turn off the background layer and save the PSD and import it into AE:
I've positioned the bassinet over the blanket and set the in and out points to match the frames I need to fix. Now check to make sure that the replacement layer is sticking to the ground. If all is good add a deep purple solid to the comp, set the blend mode to screen so you can see through it. I chose purple because it's easy to see through on this shot. Set the out point of this layer to the first frame where the shoulder is running into the bassinet.
Now move to the first frame of the project and draw a mask over the shoulder that looks like this
Press Alt/Option + m to set a mask keyframe, then move to the out point of the stabilized layer and adjust the mask. Check half way in between and make adjustments. Repeat as needed. You only need to be accurate where the shoulder and the bassinet interact. It should only take you a couple of minutes. Now set the Purple solid as an Alpha Inverted track matte for the bassinet layer. With just a few keyframes you'll have this:
The last step is to add a null, make sure that you are at the in point of the bassinet layer, make sure the stabilized layer is named stabilized and then apply this animation preset to the null: Dropbox - destabilize Rotation Scale.ffx . The preset will tie the position, scale and rotation property of the null to the Anchor point, scale and rotation property of the stabilized layer. Now parent the stabilized layer, bassinet and track matte layer to the null and the motion will be put back in the stabilized layer and added to the other layers.
Your done.The finished project looks like this (hopefully you'll spend more time creating your bassinet layer):
In case you have trouble with the animation preset here are the expressions:
Position:
thisComp.layer("stabilized").transform.anchorPoint
Scale:
x = value[0];
y = value[1];
tx = thisComp.layer("stabilized").transform.scale[0];
ty = thisComp.layer("stabilized").transform.scale[1];
nx = x/tx*x;
ny = y/ty*y;
[nx, ny]
Rotation:
- thisComp.layer("stabilized").rotation
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