Re: Rotoscoping

I'd have to agree with Arniepix about Shake being a good option. Unless your rotoscoping is very simple, the frame by frame rotoscoping in Photoshop can lead to a flickering effect on the fringes of your rotoscope. This is because you are treating each frame separately, rather that being a series of related frames. A slight difference in the masks you are creating for each frame will cause this effect, where rotoscope shapes created and changing over a number of frames should have better smoothness and fluidity.

Shake is very affordable these days (compared to what it used to be) at US$499 and less if you are a student/academic staff. The question is: is it worth the expenditure of money and is that going to pay off in terms of quality or savings in time. Only you will know that for the project you are working on. The more rotoscope you are doing, the greater the benefits.

When creating rotoscope shapes from curves, a good suggestion is to build your full rotoscope out of the union of a number of simpler shapes, due to the non-independent nature of the curve to each point on that curve. Thus instead of having to tweak, say, a lot of points in a curve outlining a whole body, you just change the points that make up a leg or part of a leg which is easier and gives better results.

Picking the smallest number of good keyframes and curve-defining points is an art in itself: too many points and it's a nightmare to get the rotoscope smooth, too many keyframes and you risk a flickering effect like you might get from rotoscoping in Photoshop.

Bill Lee