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• "FIN." - Rotoscoping, it's all in the wrists..

  Saturday, Oct 17, 2009 3:00AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  

  The end shot of this piece has requires that our main character stops walking and at that moment, he see's himself walk into frame. The main character faces himself and then an action ensues. This would be a very easy thing to accomplish if the final shot was locked off on a tripod but because this piece is shot on a steadicam, the final shot actually is a slow drifting shot, that being because it is virtually impossible for the steadicam to stay completely motionless. so what this means is I have to do several things in order to compile this last shot. The first being that i would have to do an initial stabilization of the final approach. I then have to go in a rotoscope the second main character. Once that is done, I have to go back to the final shot and track a portion of the frame to get the spatial data. Once I have done this, I have to pin the rotoscoped figure to that data to give the illusion of both characters being shot at the same time. This in effect will match the camera moves with the second character thus creating the effect that both where shot simultaneously.

  Tracking video can be touch and go especially depending on which software I use. For the initial track, I used the built in affter effects tracker to do a two point track tracking the position and the rotation. This would stabalize it enough to allow me to do a rotoscoping. Then I used mocha to go back and motion track a portion of the scene so that i could pin the second character to match the slight drifting of the camera. But below is some shots of roto heaven.

  

  See the full gallery on posterous

  Below is a little timelapse of a portion of the roto. I don't know why I bother to document this process, I guess I do it just to remind myself what a pain in the ass it is and just how I can actually do something really difficult if I just put my mind to it.

  FYI the project is done but I am going to wait a bit before I put it up for viewing, the project has to screen first and a few feathers have to be unruffled. Plus I have yet to post on the motion tracking of the background for inserting the morphing trippy graphic smorgasbord... or not. FUN STUFF!

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