Rotoscoping

[04dsmith86 0]

I've really been wanting to get into rotoscope animation lately. 'Scanner Darkly' and 'Waking Life' both have some pretty wild animation. I have been told that they use a custom program thats not for sale which is kind of a bummer. I tried using Flash by importing a previously recorded video and literally drawing frame by frame on top of it but it is extremely time consuming and the end result isn't really what I wanted. I've also tried using vectors on top of screenshots from a prerecorded video but I just couldn't get the hang of it. Probably my best attempt was taking the frames from a video, and batching a series of Photoshop filters that made the frames appear to be hand drawn. This was okay but I didn't really feel like I was animating...more like rendering. Does anybody have any experience with rotoscoping? It looks so damn cool I wish I knew how to do it correctly.

[DAC1138 0]

You can do rotoscoping in photoshop easily. In a program like After effects you can export your video to a "filmstrip" (which is essentially a single file that contains separate frames of your video) and in photoshop you can import the "filmstrip" and draw on top of the video.

http://www.alienryderflex.com/rotoscope/
I seriously think the best and easiest way is to do what you did and apply some filters to render it. It may not perfectly simulate the hand-drawn look of the video, but it's surely a helluva lot easier to do.

Best advice I can give you is to try many of the different lightsaber methods out there. You'll get the hang of rotoscoping fairly quickly if you do that.

I remember seeing something about a year and a half ago from microsoft that takes any video source and it renders it through a filter that makes it look like it weas hand-drawn with crayons or colored pencils. It was supposed to be for Microsoft's movie maker, but I havent seen anything about it ever since I shrugged it off a year and a half ago. Anyone know what I'm talking about and can provide a link?

Edited January 16, 2007 by DAC1138 (see edit history)

[04dsmith86 0]

It sounds so easy in principle but to make a really nice product (like the two films I mentioned before) it takes a lot of time and effort. Drawing the vectors isn't really the problem...it's just drawing them 29 times for each second of film that gets to me. I wish there was some way to use keyframes (say every 1/4 second) and automatically render frames to transition between those keys. I appreciate the response though. Maybe I'll play around with photoshop some more to try and get a better result. I really like the cutout filter...the only problem is that the color palette is limited so the "hand drawn" cell effect is lacking realism. I like the idea of rotoscoping composite real-life/cgi images but I am really looking to get into 100% cgi rotoscoping (such as that on Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly). I guess my best bet is to suck it up and draw/modify the whole 30 frames per second.

Edited January 16, 2007 by 04dsmith86 (see edit history)

[DAC1138 0]

You should post some screenshots of your current methods. Maybe they're pretty cool, I'd like to see them.

[unimatrix 0]

Yes, doing 29.97 FPS gets annoying, but typically that's unneccessary until you are doing HDV or 2k/4k film that will be displayed on a big screen. For most of my work in broadcast and for internet distribution I use Apple Shake and then keyframe what I need. Typically I key every 5 - 10 frames depending on the action. That means 3 - 6 redraws per second of video compared to 29 for true rotoscoping. Another handy program I am falling in love with is FXhome's Effects Lab Pro. Originally designed for indie/home/fan film making, it is a must if you do any kind of action or sci-fi work. The muzzle flash generator alone is worth it as the alternatives in Shake are buying stock footage for composites or a couple hours of design work by hand. Also the price point (half of Shake for the Composite Lab/Effects Lab bundle) makes it affordable and it works on both PC and Mac Universal.

[DAC1138 0]

Yes, doing 29.97 FPS gets annoying, but typically that's unneccessary until you are doing HDV or 2k/4k film that will be displayed on a big screen. For most of my work in broadcast and for internet distribution I use Apple Shake and then keyframe what I need. Typically I key every 5 - 10 frames depending on the action. That means 3 - 6 redraws per second of video compared to 29 for true rotoscoping. Another handy program I am falling in love with is FXhome's Effects Lab Pro. Originally designed for indie/home/fan film making, it is a must if you do any kind of action or sci-fi work. The muzzle flash generator alone is worth it as the alternatives in Shake are buying stock footage for composites or a couple hours of design work by hand. Also the price point (half of Shake for the Composite Lab/Effects Lab bundle) makes it affordable and it works on both PC and Mac Universal.

Yes. ROtoscoping frame for frame isnt really necessary nowadays. Now you can just do the first and last frame, and then adjust as needed in between. I do this all the time with After Effects when I'm using a layer mask and blanking stuff out. It also works with lightsabers (which is quite cliche now).

[unimatrix 0]

Truth be told, Shake is NOT an effects program: it's a pure compositing application. Frankly I've been impressed with the FX Home bundle. Very easy to use and produces quality effects at a price less than half that of AE or Shake. With Shake now only being $500 I think I'll keep it in my tool kit. Sometimes clients just like to hear what you have. What you actually use is a different story...