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Rotoscoping Techniques in After Effects

by Chris Glick

In this After effects tutorial, we'll learn how to use the tracking, keying, and masking features of After Effects to create a fast, robust, rotoscope shape. Software required: After Effects CS4 and up for Project Files.

What you'll learn

In this After effects tutorial, we'll learn how to use the tracking, keying, and masking features of After Effects to create a fast, robust, rotoscope shape. By using each feature for their specific strength, we'll be able to achieve production-quality results much faster than hand keying. We'll begin the tutorial by learning the basics of using trackers to speed up the rotoscoping process by removing camera jitter, translation, rotation, and scaling. We'll then dive into our main project where we will use a combination of tracking, color keying, and shape animation to create a clean mask for our foreground actor. We'll learn how each of these different methods can be used to speed up our rotoscoping workflow. Software required: After Effects CS4 and up for Project Files.

About the author

Along with creating and recording training, he also used to manage the support team and work closely with the production development team at Digital-Tutors, now a Pluralsight company. He began his career working freelance and quickly realized that he wanted to find a company where he could use his talents to help people succeed in the CG industry. Chris has likely watched more Pluralsight creative training than anyone on the planet, and its evidenced by his Einstein-sized brain and encyclopedic... more

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