In this tutorial for video2brain, Get up to speed fast with a range of important tips and techniques for getting the most out of the powerful new Roto Brush tool introduced in Adobe After Effects CS5. Watch Tutorial
Workflow Update
Adobe’s Todd Kopriva on making corrective strokes: I think the reason that you were having some trouble cleaning up the top of the mage’s head is that you weren’t working outward from the base frame. Corrective strokes only influence the frames that are away (not toward) the base frame. Think of it as “working the bubbles out a frame at a time”.
Rotoscoping with masks: In the example shown I used one single mask but generally rotoscoping is more effective using multiple masks. That being said, it’s still very time consuming and labour-intensive.
77 Responses to this post
April 12, 2010 at 3:09 pm |
Amazing John! Thanks for share!
April 16, 2010 at 9:37 am |
Glad you found it useful Yepez.
April 12, 2010 at 3:13 pm |
Thank you so much john for this tutorial.
April 16, 2010 at 9:39 am |
You’re welcome Akash. Best wishes, John.
April 12, 2010 at 3:49 pm |
Hey John, Great Video. Very excited about this. Quick question. Is the tool pressure sensitive for use with pen and tablet?
April 14, 2010 at 1:15 am |
Hi Jordan, I haven’t tried but will let you know when I get back to the office after NAB. Best wishes, John.
April 15, 2010 at 9:57 am |
Yes, it is.
April 16, 2010 at 9:38 am |
Thanks for clarifying that Jeff. Best wishes, John.
April 12, 2010 at 3:51 pm |
I hope it will work in real situations.
April 16, 2010 at 9:42 am |
It will depend on the footage you are throwing at it Ant. Even in this easy shot it still was a time saver, just don’t expect miracles and use it in conjunction with your other tools. Best wishes, John.
April 12, 2010 at 3:52 pm |
I want all those weeks/months of my life back that I used up with old school roto-ing.
Nice walk through John.
April 16, 2010 at 9:43 am |
You’re welcome Simon. Best wishes, John.
April 12, 2010 at 11:17 pm |
Thanks a lot for this présentation John !!
April 16, 2010 at 9:44 am |
Sure thing Onskin. Best wishes, John.
April 12, 2010 at 11:22 pm |
Wow… O_o
April 13, 2010 at 12:16 am |
Nice, nice!
Exited about all the new features coming in the Suite
April 13, 2010 at 6:35 am |
Thanks John, impressive demo. I’m curious if it works that well without a heavy back-light though.
April 14, 2010 at 1:14 am |
Hi Luke, it works better on some shots than others. I shot with a busy background is not going to be easy, having said that, even this shot would have taken longer to separate manually if I had used traditional methods. It’s up to you guys as users to determine when it will help by testing it on shots before trying traditional methods. Best wishes, John.
April 13, 2010 at 7:44 am |
Alazing! no more sitting upp until 4 in the morning rotoscoping!
April 13, 2010 at 7:45 am |
blown awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! thanks John!
April 13, 2010 at 9:31 am |
Holy crap!
Man, Adobe have really come through for us with CS5!
April 13, 2010 at 12:14 pm |
Amazing! This new feature will help me so much. I will not tell my client about it, they may ask me for a discount! Thank you John!
April 16, 2010 at 9:45 am |
You’re welcome Jean-Marc. Best wishes, John.
April 13, 2010 at 2:00 pm |
You do know that traditional masks can have motion blur too don’t you? As long as motion blur is on for a layer with masks they’ll blur.
That said, this looks pretty good. Great to see some of the potatoshop tools migrating to after effects (since they got puppet pins in this release).
April 14, 2010 at 1:10 am |
Hi Stib, thanks for your input. I’m aware of mask motion blur. Smooth motion blur from masks in roto work can be tricky depending on the number of keyframes and changes in direction of the mask. The Refine Matte setting also has the decontamination function which works in conjunction with the motion blur. I’m sure Dave or Todd at Adobe will have some more insight as well. Best wishes, John.
April 13, 2010 at 4:44 pm |
Exited about all the features coming in the Suite
April 13, 2010 at 6:03 pm |
great
April 13, 2010 at 6:13 pm |
Excellent Tutorial John! Excited about CS5. Resembles Ultimatte Advantedge in some of the features.
April 16, 2010 at 9:48 am |
You’re welcome Naveen. Best wishes, John.
April 13, 2010 at 9:53 pm |
It doesn’t play past 1:21. I tried several times.
April 14, 2010 at 1:16 am |
Hi Willem, perhaps try again later, it’s been pretty popular. Best wishes, John.
April 14, 2010 at 2:24 am |
Seems to work now, John.
Absolutely stellar. I can already see the amount of tedious work saved with this tool.
April 14, 2010 at 9:19 am |
I can’t believe that there are so many great new features in that Suite. Amazing, just amazing.
April 14, 2010 at 11:40 am |
Awesome!!, I do a lot of rotoscoping and this is going to save me sooo much time.
April 15, 2010 at 4:19 am |
This is gonna save me so much time!!
I’m very excited!
April 16, 2010 at 3:57 am |
thank you for sharing. i wonder how does it work on a more complex shot? you know, less flat background and maybe even less close.
April 16, 2010 at 9:36 am |
Hi Peter, more detailed shots won’t work as well, it really depends on the shot. Even if Roto Brush gets you some of the way it’s better than not using it. My advice is to not treat this tool as a magic bullet but to consider it another tool in your arsenal. Best wishes, John.
April 18, 2010 at 8:51 am |
Nice tut John! And great seeing you at NAB!
Brian
April 20, 2010 at 9:11 am |
Thanks Brian, great hanging out with you too!
April 19, 2010 at 3:42 am |
Nice!
So i don´t need a green screen then?
April 20, 2010 at 9:12 am |
Hi Sondre, Roto Brush doesn’t replace green screen keying. I would always go for green/blue screen as the first option. Best wishes, John.
April 20, 2010 at 7:03 am |
great stuff
May 1, 2010 at 2:59 pm |
This is awesome
To bad my after effects cs5 wont load because all it comes up with is this:
After Effects warning: Unable to create font.
Do you know if this can be fixed, ive been searching for hours
May 1, 2010 at 7:03 pm |
Hey Tyler, that’s a good one! Please file a bug report with Adobe.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
Best wishes,
John
May 2, 2010 at 2:22 am |
Thanks John,
I filed the Bug Report, so hopefully they get back to me.
Its a big disappointment after waiting for quite a while to get it.
May 2, 2010 at 4:23 am |
You might also see if deleting AdobeFnt.lst files (where is a number) allows After Effects to run. For additional help, post a follow-up message to this thread on the Adobe User Forums: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/629119?tstart=0
May 2, 2010 at 4:48 am |
Hey John and Jeff and anyone else who has read this comment,
I just got after effects CS5 to work all I did was uninstalled CS4
So that is pretty great.
May 2, 2010 at 5:02 am |
Tyler… glad it’s working now. The uninstall might’ve cleared out the offending AdobeFnt file. CS4 & CS5 should coexist. If you need both, it’s best to install CS4 first, then CS5.
May 3, 2010 at 5:32 pm |
Thanks for helping out Jeff. Best wishes, John.
May 2, 2010 at 7:23 am |
it does not work for me. Complete CS4 uninstallation did not help..
May 3, 2010 at 2:59 am |
Hey Dmitry, That is weird, im pretty sure it was due to files from CS4 messing up CS5 (sorry im not a computer expert so I cant really say what I think is wrong) but do you have any leftover CS4 files because I know I deleted just about everything with CS4.
Also before I uninstalled it it came up with a message saying “metabrowser is missing”
Sorry that I cant be of more help, I know how annoying it is when computers wont respond like you want it to.
May 3, 2010 at 7:22 am |
Thank you! I cleaned adobe font caches in Onyx and reinstalled CS5. Now it’s working!
May 18, 2010 at 7:05 pm |
Hi Mr.john
i have very good chance for finding your website . and i have to just say Thank you.
May 23, 2010 at 8:55 am |
Boa noite, estou fazendo algumas animações no after cs5 e quando procuro um efeito na paleta Paint, não consigo localizar essa paleta de efeitos, poderia me ajudar ?
Desde já agradeço e boa noite !
May 23, 2010 at 12:03 pm |
Thank you John,
This tutorial has helped endlessly! It has really cleared up a few issues that I originally thought were bugs/faults with AE.
July 27, 2010 at 9:41 am |
Great to hear Mark, I’m glad you’re finding value in the tool and the tutorial. Best wishes, John.
June 13, 2010 at 8:12 am |
Hy there!Thanks a lot for this vid,u’ve explained it pretty well.
On the technique what can I say?with this tool we really save up some time and u can be sure that using a green screen,even if it’s not so expensive,we will obtain great results ANYWAY thanks to this ROTO BRUSH.good job,thanks again for sharing.
June 17, 2010 at 8:36 am |
Thanks Sergiu. It is a great tool to have in your toolset for sure. Best wishes, John.
June 17, 2010 at 8:59 am |
hehe,it’s strange,you are now famous enough to “avoid” us and not to reply all the messages,but you do answer us.i really appreciate that you remain always the same,even if you are now a powerful designer.nice personality,good job.
June 17, 2010 at 7:29 pm |
Hi Sergiu, I do my best to respond to comments directed towards me, which has nothing to do with any recognition of me in the industry
Best wishes, John.
September 5, 2010 at 6:25 pm |
hi,
somebody can help me…. just wondering why when im saving my works in after effects as mov only shows (save as SWF and XML) when expoting… what is the problem did i have something forgoten to install pls help me.. thanks in advance
September 7, 2010 at 1:54 am |
You don’t want to “Export”, you want to “render”. You do this by either choosing Composition – > Make Movie or Composition – > add to render queue. Either way the clip gets added to the render queue, where you choose your settings and click “render”.
September 20, 2010 at 4:50 am |
we are involved in the production of catwalk videos ‘on-site’ with turnaround est. 5 mins per video. this tool has become invaluable overnight.
October 11, 2010 at 11:38 pm |
very good work
December 31, 2010 at 7:34 pm |
extremely helpful john!
March 17, 2011 at 12:16 am |
You are a legend! Thanks for this!!
July 29, 2011 at 7:31 am |
IMPORTANT for RotoBrush users !!
When you use the RotoBrush tool, make sure you set your picture/movie to FULL resolution before start. The rotobrush is more efficient on FULL rather half or quarter, even if you think rendering time is faster working on half resolution, when you change to FULL resolution, the rotobrush found new pixels and the results will be different !!
August 2, 2011 at 4:56 am |
Hi Jhon
It’s great tutorial, well done.
August 24, 2011 at 4:01 pm |
Hey John,
Thanks for the tute. The concepts I’ve learnt here have been invaluable to the job I’m working on, and having discovered it halfway through the job i appreciate it even more. The first part of rotoscoping was extremely laborious.
I’ve come to a point though, where i’m happy with the matte, and have about 3 base frames for a 3 second clip. I have this problem that it looks fine in editing mode, but as soon as i freeze everything, the first span refuses to freeze or render. It just appears as the original footage, while the other two spans are fine and the matte processes and renders perfectly.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Do I need to have a base frame at the start? I have one a few frames in, as it was an easier point to start from. I’m just trying to avoid redoing stuff….
cheers
Josh
August 24, 2011 at 4:24 pm |
Hi Josh, I haven’t had that problem. Why not try putting a base frame at the start then just adjusting until you reach the next frame. Todd or someone else may be able to comment also.
August 24, 2011 at 10:24 pm |
Hey Mate,
I found a solution here: http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/992682
The problem was in the cache file that AE saves.
For some reason that file became corrupted and keeps reading it every time it needs to freeze the roto, thus resulted in the same errors happening time and again.
The problem is solved by simply copying and pasting the footage layer into a new comp, which gives AE the chance to create a new cache.
Hope this helps others.
Thanks again for the tute.
Cheers
Josh
August 26, 2011 at 3:01 am |
Hi
The videos I’ve seen in the tutorials have source footage of approx a few seconds.
What if I need to rotoscope 10 minutes of video.
I’ve noticed that after a few seconds of rotoscoping CS5 just stops the rotoscoping process. Is there anyway to increase the rotoscoping length?
Thanks
August 26, 2011 at 6:54 am |
Hi Eric,
I’ve only used the Rotobrush tool on short clips but one way to make it work effectively on longer clips would be to split them up into short ones.
September 23, 2011 at 6:30 am |
please let me know where is available rotobrush plugin
September 23, 2011 at 8:50 am |
Hi Diwan, did you watch the tutorial???? It’s not a plug-in, it’s a tool which is selected from the toolbar.
October 1, 2011 at 5:57 am |
dear jhon dickinson,
rotobrush tool is not available in ae cs4,how to work in ae cs4. please, i am waiting for your reply
November 15, 2011 at 2:35 am |
I’ve just completed about 2 minutes of material, 50P so 50 frames for each second, man no wonder the features boys are happy with 24P !!
This works pretty well, but I wish you could freeze areas of the matt, for example, I’ve been matting a hand and arm waving around in front of monitor to which I’ve added a new shot.
Sometimes there is very little movement in most of the shot, but Rotobrush always produces a varying matt, which shimmers and jumps, even with reduce chatter at full, so I’ve had to carefully tidy up each frame in shots where almost nothing is happening. It would be so cool if you could lock an area of the mask, which is propogated to the next frame, and so on, until the user chooses to un-lock that area manually.
I’d also love to see this: draw mask on frame 1, tidy it up and project that matt forward through the clip in question, to a pre-chosen point, you can then go in and modify those frames that need it, this would also reduce “Chatter” and save huge time on shots which are not moving so much, or motion blured, because these slow moving or non moving elements are the hardest to disguise, and require the most pains taking work to make good, fast blurred movements are simple to hide, softness, blur and away you go!
Anyway, it’s a great tool, looking forward to an update!
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