Is it Possible to Create a Mask for a Moving Horse using Motion?

short answer: yes.

longer answer: rotoscope

google and the manual are your friends.

adam

hi,

rotoscoping has new meaning in modern post production parlance. it is also the act of cutting out an object from its surroundings in a segment of moving footage. This is achieved by drawing a mask around the object you want to isolate and then animating that mask over time. Isolating a horse could be a lengthy and tricky procedure. You might want to mask certain body part at a time. ie do the legs separately, then the body, then the head, then the tail. The overall effect will be the same as doing it in one go.

hth
adam

Erniewoof wrote:
Why piece by piece? Don't I run the risk of making the horse look lame/fake thru re-assemblage?

the mask you create around a moving horse is going to be quite complex. Most of the head and body are not going to change very much. But the legs will be very different on every frame. If you get really good at rotoscoping, you will create a library of stored mask shapes. A horse's legs, for instance, shot at 30fps, are only 4-10 repeating shapes.

Erniewoof wrote:
And you say animate over time - so, in other words, every frame would need a new mask, for video footage?

Every frame requires its own mask. This is why rotoscoping is such a PITA. However, it's also what makes rotoscoping so interesting and why After Effects CS5 includes a new rotobrush tool.

bogiesan

bogiesan

peice by piece because doing the whole complex horse shape in one go is very very hard. Try it and see. No it won;t look lame you are only creating a new mask, you'll never know when its finished.

no its not a new mask for each frame, you simply keyframe the position of the points of the mask to make its shape animate. You need to look it up in the manual and search via google.

adam