General Roto information
Rotoscoping for VFX is used to create a matte or mask for an element from a plate, so it can be extracted out to place on a different background or edited. Rotoscoping gives artists a chance to produce scenes that would otherwise be difficult to do in real life. It also allows us to edit out unwanted elements in post-production. the possibilities are endless.
Roto Node and Rotopaint are generally similar. Rotopaint allows you to paint on the plate. But the roto node is lighter.
Colour Channels & Alpha
Mattes can be located on each channel
Motion blur in mattes is important, and often roto mattes have motion blur included
Rotoscoping
Divide and conquer, split the subject into parts for the roto mask.
Lesser spline points will result in a smoother animated mask
Roto Assignment: Running Man
The assignment brief was to create a matte for the running man as well as the bridge railings from the plate. The following is my attempt at the assignment.
Reflections
Today we learnt about isolating specific elements within a plate into different layers. It involves creating an animated mask which is black and white so that we can use different pixel operations to extract them out from the background. I find that this is a incredibly tedious task. Although Gonzalo said it can be quite nice and easy to do, I find that my mind when numb when trying to shift those individual keys to create the roto masks. Perhaps my workflow is not that refined, but I did not enjoy the entire process. I also was not pleased with my final result of the running man as I see a lot of problems with my work. I will need more practice to get better.