What is “Rotoscoping”? ( Part I )

For a VFX/Compositing artist “Rotoscoping” is the technique to cut object or objects out of the scene, frame by frame, by creating a musk/matte using any process. In another way, animated mask to cut object or objects out of the scene is called “Rotoscoping”. In VFX/Compositing one more thing is also known as “Rotoscoping”; painting an object or objects out of the scene, frame by frame.

Now a day, “rotoscoping” is an obvious technique for a VFX artist/production house to achieve the desired result for a scene. Not only that, you can convert your 2d images/movie from 2d to 3d(stereoscopic) movie by a software like View D(Developed by Prime Focus) after creating proper matte/alpha channel by rotoscoping technique. In the present scenario if you want to be a vfx artist, rotoscoping is the 1st step to start your career. If you wants to be a good vfx artist, 1st you have to be a good rotoscoping artist also.

In India most of the production houses have the maximum number of artist in rotoscoping department working for a big number of Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters. They are working for different types of job like conversation, restoration, cleanup, compositing, enhancement etc.

Most popular softwares for rotoscoping are:
1. Fusion
2. Shake
3. Combustion
4. Aftereffects
5. Nuke
6. Silhouette

Almost all the production houses in India are using Fusion, Shake, Silhouette etc. but they are upgrading their pipeline to Nuke very fast. As per my knowledge within next 2 years it will happen that everybody will use Nuke. Fusion is the most user-friendly node based compositing software, that’s why artist always prefer Fusion.

Software maybe any one of the above, it does not matter, just you need to have a good idea and technical knowledge of rotoscoping. If you have it then you can easily get entry into this industry as rotoscoping artist.

If you want to be a good rotoscoping artist then just follow the following things, you will be successful:
1. If you are practicing then, create a layout on the footage as they (production head) do it for their rotoscoping artist.
2. Play the footage again and again to read the movements of object or objects which you have to cut out of the scene in the footage.
3. Now start placing roto shape according to given layout. In most of the case we use roto shape with soft edge and motion blur according to objects motion. But in 95% case of 2d to 3d(stereoscopic) conversation you have to use hard roto shape. It may be blur as per requirement.
4. Now the breakdown of the footage for roto shape animation, say for example the duration of the footage is 96 frames. In step one animate the shape in a breakdown of 1-32-64-96. In step two animate the shape in 16-48-80 and thereafter 8-24-40-56-72-88 in next step 4-12-20-28-36-44-52-60-68-76-84-92 now 2-6-10-14-18-22-26-30-34-38-42-46-50-54-58-62-66-70-74-78-82-86-90-94. If you follow the same pattern, in next step your rotoscoping will complete all the frames. If the motion of object is not maximum then only you can skip frame otherwise you have to match the animated roto shape frame by frame with 100% perfection, because production houses are looking for that.