After Effects - easier object removal?

[Christoffer Glans]

So I'm trying to paint an object in AE that has some complex tracking and changing properties. Now, I've tried every single way to track and get the clone stamp to stick and I've animated the properties, trying to blend it during the course of the footage. - The conclusion I have is that the clone stamp and object removal in AE is pure crap. With all these new camera tracking and warp stabilizer tools they put in, why can't they just do an object removal tool that sticks to where it's supposed to stay? The tool has been like this for 15 years untouched.

Is there any plugin or similar to AE that takes care of this better?

 

[PC Greene]

Best of luck...let us know what you find please having similar issue.

 

[jake blackstone]

Mocha Pro

 

[Christoffer Glans]

So Mocha Lite that is included in AE doesn't work?

 

[Björn Benckert]

Difficult to say without watching the clip.

 

[David Battistella]

Mocha Pro

Plus 1

the AE version has enough tools to do the job, but bjorn is correct, hard to say without seeing the shot.

mocha site is a very valuable resource with lots of amazing tutorials on complet object removal. You need a decent grasp of what planar tracking is before attacking it.

While many people believe this kind of work is, or should be child's play, it's not and almost every shot is a different beast.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Tough to say unless you see the clip. At times you may be able to reconstruct the scene and track that portion. But mocha pro is pretty impressive.

 

[Brad Hawkins]

Jake and the others are absolutely correct about Mocha, and yes the AE version is plenty powerful enough.

I've been doing paint and roto work for network shows for years and we use Mocha 90% of the time, but never for anything more than tracking and roto - I.E. we don't use the Mocha replacement tools, that work is done with PS and AE.

My general workflow:

1 - export 1 or more frames to PS, and use the Clone and Heal tools in PS to remove the unwanted objects from frame.
2 - track the shot in Mocha and export the tracking data (non corner pin, just translation, rotation, etc)
3 - paste the tracking data to a null in AE
4 - import the PS clean patch and link it to the null (be sure your timeline is parked on the export frame number when you connect the link)
5 - roto and tweak as needed (this is the 20% of the work that will take 80% of your time)

If there's a lot of parallax you might have to track multiple objects and create multiple patches, but the workflow would remain the same.

And don't forget to add some noise or grain to your patch layer before rendering.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Difficult to say without watching the clip.

My question was more in terms of general. I've already completed the work on the clip but was wondering if there are better ways to do paint-jobs?

Plus 1

the AE version has enough tools to do the job, but bjorn is correct, hard to say without seeing the shot.

mocha site is a very valuable resource with lots of amazing tutorials on complet object removal. You need a decent grasp of what planar tracking is before attacking it.

While many people believe this kind of work is, or should be child's play, it's not and almost every shot is a different beast.

Yes, I do a lot of tracking, both planar, point and 3D cameras, but I was really after something faster than the procedures you do with object removal in AE. The tracking isn't the problem really. Here's the thing...


The image was of an actor with an unintentional tear due to cold weather. The actor was moving from a slightly darker shade into light. That meant that the point being painted changed in color and light throughout the clip. So I tracked it without a problem, and did a clone stamp on it. I had to do 5 of them in order to make it invisible without artefacts. So far so good...

...but here's why I don't think the methods are very modern. I should just have to track and paint and maybe tweak the thing during the time of the clip, but that should be it. It should be like the 3D camera tracker, the warp stabilizer and many of the smart solutions Adobe put into AE, but no, it's unnecessarily complicated; The 5 clone stamps looked fine, but then I did an expression to lock it to the trackers "feature", now the position of those five clone stamps changed to the position of the tracker (?), instead of just locking on to the movement (doing a null did nothing either). So I had to manually adjust the positions back, but it's hard to tell where each clone stamp should go since the original position is gone. After a bit of work I though it looked good again. Now, instead of having a locked time of the cloned area I wanted it to follow the movement of the tracker as well in order to follow the differences in light, shade and color during the clip, but the cloned area is stuck at a certain place in the picture during the time of the clip, so that is impossible. Instead I had to have it locked to a certain time, then manually animate the change the shade and color. But then came another problem, the painted area is not detatched from the rest of the image and there was no grain or motion blur. So now I needed to dublicate the entire image and do a mask of just the painted area to be able to apply those color and shade changes, force motion blur and match grain. At this point it looked ok so I rendered it out and did som more adjustments to the color and shade in Resolve.

This is a very tedious and weirdly over complicated way of doing something that should be better with todays tools. First, why don't the clone stamp work as 1 effect instead of giving me five different stamps that all need expressions to follow a tracker? Or at least the choice of having it as 1. Second, why can't the clone stamps just follow the tracker instead of locking to the trackers feature position and changing them? Third, why can't the source of the clone stamp move together with the painted area? Fourth, why isn't the painted area detatched to the rest of the image so further effects can be applied in order to retouch the painted area?

Main thing is, why can't there be a paint-tool that you use as the clone stamp, then within that effect it has it's own trackers, the ability to track both the painted area and cloned area without them changing their position after being tracked. Then the ability to within that effect, adjust color and shade, adding grain and motion blur. With all these other "automatic" tools that Adobe put into AE, why isn't there anything better than this decade old way of object removal? It's not that I don't understand the process, it's that the process is so freakin time consuming. It should be just: 1. Paint it over, 2. track the area, 3. adjust the features to match it through time. Done.

That's why I'm lookin into if there's anything better. I have the Fusion Lite from BM which I've tried a little, but maybe it has better tools for the job?