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Alternatives to rotoscoping for creating a silhouette (no green screen)

Participant ,
Jun 01, 2017 Jun 01, 2017

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I'm working with live rock concert footage to make a silhouette of the performer against a blue, glowing background.  The problem is that rotoscope masking is so tedious and imprecise, and there's no green screen so I have to manually scrub through the whole thing and remove the performer's figure from the footage. The idea is to abstract the figure and make him appear like a shadow against the background, but masking it with rotoscope just looks horrible and is too much work. Are there better alternatives for creating the look I'm after? I'll attach a screenie here of what I'm doing so far.Screen Shot 2017-06-01 at 10.36.11 PM.png

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LEGEND ,
Jun 01, 2017 Jun 01, 2017

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Where are the other layers?  What's that stuff over the subject coming from?  How are you doing the roto?  With

Rotobrush?  An animated mask?  What's the original image look like?

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Participant ,
Jun 01, 2017 Jun 01, 2017

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Screen Shot 2017-06-01 at 11.02.54 PM.png

There's the original footage.  It's literally just one layer with a roto mask, 4-color gradient in blue shades, find edges effect ("add" for blending mode) and some glow effect.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 02, 2017 Jun 02, 2017

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Sometimes you can use levels, colorama, curves or other tools to create a high contrast copy of your footage and use that as a Luma track matte. Sometimes this can help with the roto. Rotobrush can also help speed things up.

If you are stuck with manually rotobrushing then this video may help. The trick is to use multiple paths and pick places where the action changes direction so you are not stuck making adjustments on every frame. Doing roto frame by frame is next to impossible to do well, doing hand roto is surprisingly easy if you break down the action, it's just tedious.

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Participant ,
Jun 02, 2017 Jun 02, 2017

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Thank you Rick. Do you happen to know if Luma matte is an effect? I can't find it in my effects list.  Is that more of a general term? I will look it up online.  Thanks for the helpful video!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 03, 2017 Jun 03, 2017

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You find Luma Matte as one of the options under track matte in the timeline. When you have a question about AE the first place you should look is the Search Help field at the top right corner of AE. Type "Luma Matte" or "Track Matte" there and take a look at the search results. You'll find help files and links to community resources that are almost always much better than what you'll find with a Google search. There are so many folks out there right now that are posting 'tutorials" on After Effects that don't show effective, efficient or in many cases, incorrect techniques that teach bad habits or work you into corners that are very difficult to get out of. You need to vet your trainers to make sure they know what they are talking about.

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Participant ,
Jun 03, 2017 Jun 03, 2017

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Thanks Rick! And I will be more selective from now on about where the tutorials come from.  I've been watching far too many amateur youtube videos:/

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