Masking with Moving Characters on Top of Themselves
 

Having just figured out how to mask properly, I'm trying to go about with our new project, which involves many of the same character in the same shots. However, I'm having particular trouble with movement masking. The character in this scene is standing at a sink, with each individual at a sink. One of them in the middle raises up their hand, obviously requiring a remask. I tried simply going frame by frame using the event pan/crop function and tracing out a new mask, but this leads to the blocky effect pictured below, and looks even worse in motion. Look at the middle characters arm for this effect.

http://www.uploaderx.net/pics/blockproblem.jpg

So, this way is neither producing very good quality, and it's taking way too long for a three second shot. Any ideas/advice/anything?

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /pics/blockproblem.jpg on this server.

Sorry not sure why it's not working, you have to copy and paste the link into your browser.

Not sure what's causing blockiness for you.

To create a dynamic mask, use the Bezier masking and set keyframes to follow the motion so the mask koves and changes size and shape as needed.

You can realign the points as needed and/or move the entire mask. The process is actually pretty quick when you get the hang of it.

Gary

Thats the method I was going with, but problems arise when I see the product in motion. Because it's almost impossible for me to create exactly the same looking mask with every frame, I get a slight flickering as the video plays as the mask keeps aligning itself. Needless to say it's fairly distracting and looks terrible. Anyway to eliminate that would be great.

Josh, what you are trying to do, if you're looking to cut out a person, is more of a deep level rotoscoping task, and while it *can* be done in Vegas, it's very, very difficult to do with motion media, and if it's interlaced media, it's darn near impossible to cleanly do without hours and hours of painstaking labor. For interlaced media, you need one keyframe per half-frame of video, or 60 keyframes a second. Boris RED, Combustion, and other tools are better suited for extracting a subject from a background. I'd bet you'd find it faster to render out progressive frames, go into Photoshop, cut out each frame there, and reassemble the frames in Vegas, and probably have a cleaner frame/image that way.

Which would you recommend for ease of use, speed and quality...Boris Red or the photoshop method.

If you're going to be doing a lot of this, I'd definitely recommend Combustion, but if this is a one-shot deal or a not-so-often occurence, I'd use the script to create 30 frames a second, drop those into Photoshop, and go that route. RED is good too, but personally, I find Combustion a tad easier to work with.

Well unfortunately the project we've decided on involves an invasions from an army of clones of this one kid, so the effect is gonna be used extensively in the movie. Where can I find some info on this Combustion?

look here- they even have a trial.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...112&id=5562397

I don't think it's cheap though.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...112&id=5562397

[edit]LOL, Keith was posting at the same time. Ya beat me, Keith! No, it's not cheap. But this sort of rotoscoping isn't cheap, nor easy, even with a high end tool.

Thanks for the info guys, once I find it, any good tutorials I out there that'll get me on the right track quickly?

This is quite the project for a group of guys just making a movie for fun, isn't it. :)

Just do what we did- Google Discreet Combustion.

Josh, take a look at the "Two Cats From One" tutorial at http://matthew.chaboud.com/vegas5/twocats/ and see if it gives you any ideas.

Mike

Well looking at the cat tutorial really got my hopes up that this kind of thing was possible in Vegas, but I've been following it step by step, even downloaded his file of the project and media, and I STILL can't recreate it. I don't know what's wrong, anything you guys see in this tutorial that possibily needs to be updated for Vegas 6.0?

Sorry to double post but I'm reaching the end of my rope here. I've watched both the cat example and another example of two guys on the same sit, and I've EXACTLY duplicated the set up and video fx used, and it still looks nothing like the examples. I end up with a mostly black screen, with an almost flourescent outline of the character we are trying to manipulate, who happens to be translucent. Can ayone try to replicate what this guy did and walk me through step by step.

I feel like a fool after all this, especially considering the title of that guys page for these projects was "Vegas Throw Togethers." I'd kill to make stuff that looks that nice. Anyone?

How about posting a couple of snapshots (i.e. one from 3 or 4 of your clips) and your VEG file?

Ok well the first thing to go wrong happens very quickly. Looking at the cat project file, specifically at tracks 2-5, which do the actual masking of the jumping cat. I turned off all other tracks and all effects on track 3 to try and emulate it in its most basic form. After turning off all those effects and isolating those tracks, he still has a pretty clear image, albeit very dark, of the jumping cat. It's a bit hard to see but it looks about right.

I did those same exact steps with my own footage; a clean background of an empty elevator as a parent track, set to difference and masked, with a child track of my friend standing in the elevator to hopefully be masked, and a copy of my friend's clip right below it on a subsequent track. Exactly the same set-up, here's the result: http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=374120

Compared to the cat:
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=374118

This seems to be my fundamental problem. He is able to use those effects I disabled to lighten up the image to make it clearly visible. I'm stuck with a translucent character. What the heck am I doing wrong.

Here's another shot of my project, with the EXACT effects and settings he used, in exactly the same place: http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=374121

Here's a shot of my project, not sure where I can host the project file: http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=374122

Set...Edward you still out there?

Yes. Can you post a picture of the scene with nobody in it and then post a picture of the scene with one person in it?

Green screen may be something you want to consider as well.