How do I Cut out the characters in After effects?

ALT · Post by **ALT** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:29 pm

OK, I know this has been brought up many times but I just got After Effects and I want to do a Vid with this effect, I think it is something with creating a mask around the character and changing the verticies every frame. I tried that but the playback was not smooth, the changes in the mask warped each frame it progressed. Anyone know what I am doing wrong and the correct way to go about this,I'd greatly apreciate it. Thanks.

bum · Post by **bum** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:56 pm

Export the video as an image sequence, open each image seperately in photoshop/gimp, cut out the character, save image as img0001, img0002, etc. open the image sequence in photoshop, or vdub and export to huffyuv,

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:04 pm

In anime, the character does not move on every frame, so what you need to do is copy the shape keyframe to the mask, and paste it over the frames where its the same. Then when you get to a frame thats different, adjust your vertices.
I recommend you dont try to change the number of vertices that you have as you animate... keep the number constant. If it gets to a point where you really have to change it significantly, and its not wanting to work right, try duplicating the mask, and adjusting the new one how you want it, and cut off the old one at that frame.
I also highly recommend reading ALL the material in the help regarding masks. They can be a bit unwieldy at first, but I found that it really helps.

DrngdKreationz · Post by **DrngdKreationz** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:02 am

Bum he said in After Effects... Not in Vegas. you don't need to resort to such medial tactics to do it when AE can do it itself.

also as a side note to Zarxrax. make sure that when you keyframe your mask shape you hold the shape until the very last moment.. then on the frame that it does change readjust your vertices. that way the mask just snaps into its correct shape without any awkward mid shapes.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:48 pm

DrngdKreationz wrote:Bum he said in After Effects... Not in Vegas. you don't need to resort to such medial tactics to do it when AE can do it itself.

You don't need that method with Vegas either, if you have Vegas 5:

Produce keyframeable Bézier masks for complicated objects. Bézier curves let you closely track object outlines to mask and keyframe shape and motion changes over time. Create depth-of-field effects, apply color correction to specific areas of a clip, crop surrounding source material and create mask overlays. Multiple animated free-form shapes can be created in a single window, with mask invert control for each object. Feather and blend hard edges, set opacity levels for each layer, and zoom the workspace to the sub-pixel level for extremely accurate Bézier mask creation.

DrngdKreationz · Post by **DrngdKreationz** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:06 pm

bum · Post by **bum** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:34 pm

DrngdKreationz wrote:Bum he said in After Effects... Not in Vegas. you don't need to resort to such medial tactics to do it when AE can do it itself.

Then again, the cropping tools in photoshop are probaly alot more powerfull and could give more accurate results than the one's in AE.

DrngdKreationz · Post by **DrngdKreationz** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 3:57 pm

Nah, I've used both and it's like picking which bottled water to drink.. there really is no difference.

MousePotato · Post by **MousePotato** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:09 pm

So how do you keep the AVIsynth/DVD quality If you want to export a frame into PS 7 from Premier Pro and then import it back into Premier?

bum · Post by **bum** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:10 pm

DrngdKreationz wrote:Nah, I've used both and it's like picking which bottled water to drink.. there really is no difference.

So AE even has the polyonal lasso? I love that thing.