Overall, and Rotoscope Panel

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‌Overall, and Rotoscope Panel

The Rotoscoping Panel controls the assignment of Mask ML layers and animated splines to cameras and objects. The next section will describe how to set up splines and alpha layers, but for now, here are the rules for using them.

Big Picture. SynthEyes’s roto system has one task: to determine whether to assign a new-found blip to the camera, to any moving objects that might be present, or to relegate it to the garbage. Even though it looks like we’re generating roto masks in a compositing app (for your convenience), we’re not, and SynthEyes doesn’t generate any mattes unless you specifically ask to see them. (Mask ML does generate individual layers, however.) During auto- tracking, the roto system is only used on the few thousand potential blips on a given image, not on every pixel.

The rotoscoping panel contains a list of layers, each either an alpha channel layer or a spline, in any combination or mixture of types. The top-most layer that contains a given blip wins that blip. (The top of the list is the top of the stack on the image.) As you add new layers (at the beginning of the list), they override the ones you have previously added. Internally, SynthEyes searches the layer list from top to bottom. You can think of the layers as being layered: the bottom of the list is the back layer, the top of the list is at front and has priority.

There are two buttons, Move Up and Move Down , that let you change the order of the layers from the Roto panel.

Tip : Layers are also listed in the Hierarchy View and the larger display area makes for a more informational and traditional view. You can control layer’s status, drag to change the ordering, or clone them, including dragging or cloning to a different camera (especially for stereo work).

A drop-down listbox, underneath the main layer list, lets you change the camera or object to which a layer is assigned.

This listbox always contains a Garbage item. If you assign Garbage to a layer, that layer is a garbage matte and any blips within it are ignored.

If a blip isn’t covered by any layers, the blip is treated as garbage.

NOTE: Historically, there’s another option, when the alpha channel of the shot itself has been set up to be used from the Shot Settings panel. That is no longer recommended in favor of matting using the alpha layers on the Roto panel.

NOTE: We’ve added an “invert” button for SynthEyes roto layers, even though it’s not necessary. Inverting a mask makes sense only if there are two possibilities, but here, there can be more: the camera, the background, or any number of moving objects . In every case we’ve seen, if you think you need to invert, there’s a trivial way to get the same result without inversion—keeping in mind that you can change the order or object assignment of the layers, including changing or deleting the default catch-all spline.

Stereo Shots : You can use the Hierarchy View or Copy Splines script to copy a spline from one eye to the other. You'll usually need to adjust the keyframes somewhat for the other eye.

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