Wire removal help

[AAAron]

If you can get a hold of a old copy of Pinnacle Commotion, thats the greatest tool ever made for this type of work. It got a great wire removal tool. Sadly they don´t develop it anymore.

[Studev]

Hmm....i don't know at all.

I'm in a middle of finding an old post. What about furnace and mokey applications ?

It seems to be a great tool too. What do you think ? How does Commotion compare to this ? I mean, what convince you to use commotion ? What do they offer ?

Regards

[AAAron]

I´m sure Monkey is nice but the price. :argh:

Commotion was the main tool for rotoscoping, tracking, paint and wire stuff till the idiots at Pinnacle bought it and discontinued it. I think 4.someting was the last release.

You should really check it out, I used it daily for downconverted 35mm film clean up like 3 years ago, lovely app. There is yet an application to replace it. It got great tools, like the superclone brush (like a time based clonebrush) and a wire removal tool that works great and the paint brushes and tracking are outstanding. It´s very easy to play the whole clip to see how your paint job works in motion.
It is still used and got an active userforum over at creativecow:
http://www.creativecow.net/forum/view_posts.php?forumid=33
I shouldn´t be to hard to get a copy if you look around.

Another software tip are Curious gFx from http://www.curious-software.com/products/gFx/ haven´t worked with that one though but it looks cool for paint and mask works.

[Tocy]

Another software tip are Curious gFx from http://www.curious-software.com/products/gFx/ haven´t worked with that one though but it looks cool for paint and mask works.

Yes it WAS, because Adobe has bought it in april :sad: I really hope they will continue it in some usable form.

link (http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200504/041705CuriousLicense.html)

[AAAron]

Yes it WAS, because Adobe has bought it in april :sad: I really hope they will continue it in some usable form.

link (http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200504/041705CuriousLicense.html)

They have not bought the whole company, they bought a licence to use gFx tools within After Effects. With can be exactly whats needed to give Afx the power to be a better paint and rototool. :bounce: I think some positive stuff can come out of this deal.. If were lucky.. :argh:

[Tocy]

Yes they only bought the software licence. I thought they won't create another standalone software, because AFAIK After effects needed some serious improvement in this area - bsplines and other paint&roto features. Lets hope the best!
Otherwise I agree that commotion was the best :)

[AAAron]

After effects needed some serious improvement in this area - bsplines and other paint&roto features.

Yes and individually keyframeable maskpoints would be a dream come true :bounce:
Plus a rasterpaint function, the vector ones are nice but when your up to like 11000 strokes in one comp :argh:

[Studev]

Thanks for the reply aaron,

I will definately check it.

But do you have any idea about the problem that i face ? Where the clips on the back of the actor are being shot together too. Is the only way to do it by painting and roto the movement ? That will be pain in the ass job. Luckily there're only 3 shots that have that problem.

Regards

[AAAron]

Could post a picture of a frame, so I can have a look at it?

[hiphopcr]

I was actually wondering the same thing, I've got a ton of wire removals coming up but I'm not tremendously experienced in it. What are some general techniques for removing wires when the camera is moving? And when the background is active as well?

Generally I'm roto'ing the wire and putting some "effects" on it to remove it, or cutting out pieces of the background over it, but what does everyone else do?

[Studev]

I will try to post a pic by tomorrow aaron. I need to ask permission first.

About hiphopcr question :

I found out mostly the best option is clone manually. But you must have a good eye and patient for it. Eg. It took me 1 hour just to paint 24 frames where in a case software fail to perform what we really want. Software will do 80% of the job, and the rest of 20% is really manual touch up. Really depends on the shot, there's no hard rules for them. Good news, you will get used to it after you do a lot.

Best Regards

[Phred42]

Make sure you're tracking the frame and using masks in a program like After Effects or Combustion...you really don't want to use the paint tools in photoshop because unless you are a paint GOD, you will see your paint strokes "ghost" as they move through in motion.

We did a bunch of nasty wire removal a few months ago for this spot:
http://www.cutters.com/webPage/editors09QT02.html

I worked on a flame with the furnace sparks, which made things a LOT easier. What app are you using? The flame and shake versions of Furnace have quite awesome wire removal tools. Nothing ever works 100% of the time, though. For the spot above, we had to remove the rigging carabiners attached to the actors' shirts that were used to yank them into the air. The trick was to paint a single clean frame of shirt (or patch of shirt) from somewhere in the shot, then track/warp it back onto the actor, revealing other bits where necessary. The incredibly fast warping in flame made this bearable, but it still took hours and hours. If you are in After Effects, I highly reccommend ditching their warping plugins and instead getting Re:Flex.
http://www.revisionfx.com/rflx.htm
If you have combustion, you should already have Re:Flex.

The thing to know, though, is that even after you paint your clean frame it probably won't get you all the way through the shot. You'll have to paint a different clean frame from later in the take if the actor turns around or moves his arms a lot and then switch to that. After you've got it tracked on and warping (be prepared to have to animate your track points entirely by hand), throw some film grain back on it and you should be set.

Hope this helps!

[Studev]

Yeah...that's what i mean, the ghosting drives me nuts. Especially when the wire moves across fog in the background. ugh....

I still understand that it will take hours and hours

Regards

[Aruna]

Oye! Clone manually? That's crazy! There exists other techniques to remove wires and such besides painting frame by frame. Phred42's got some good advice above as well.

http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/2005/05/tip_of_the_week_11.php

http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/2005/01/tip_of_the_week_6.php

[Studev]

Thanks for the link.

But paintinng frame by frame is not crazy. It falls under certain circumstances where software fails to perform even by offsetting or whatever techniques it is. Remember, i said certain circumstances where software fail to perform, not on every situation. Read my post carefully.

For example. The wire cross over another actor on the background where the action dynamically changes from frame to frame, no other technique can do it beside painting it frame by frame. And it's not only 1 wire, there're about 3. You'll need to guess the shape behind it. Of course, having a paint skill is crucial, which i'm not struggle with. So it turns out to be ok.

Cheers

[Aneks]

Hi just to add to what aruna said I have written a marker removal tut for shake that is pretty similar to many commonly used wire removal techniques. Check in the tutorials section under shake tutorials !


www.tahlniran.com (http://www.tahlniran.com)

hope it helps !

[Aruna]

Personally, painting frame by frame for a length of 24 frames (1 film second) is something I would not do. But your paint skill may be different than mine. Even if it just took you an hour, there would have been a cleaner way to do it. The most frames I have ever painted to remove a wire, harness, etc maxs out from 3-5.

Most software fails to perform everyime. ;) It's all fixed manually anyway!


But paintinng frame by frame is not crazy. It falls under certain circumstances where software fails to perform even by offsetting or whatever techniques it is. Remember, i said certain circumstances where software fail to perform, not on every situation. Read my post carefully.

[Studev]

I don't want to argue here. But i'm a bit confuse from what you try to say.

You're conflicting yourself.

You said :
Most software fails to perform everyime. It's all fixed manually anyway!

Fixing manually means paint it manually or whatever like commotion use the wire removal tool (certain situation). Software fails everytime ? What are u trying to say here ? So everytime you only fix 3-5 frames manually when it fails everytime ?

You haven't seen my shot and i can't attach it, it's belong to client. So don't make it difficult, and acting like you're understand my situation. I've tried a hundreds of tricks and cleaner way from whatever source i can find. But it will comes to a time where you really need to paint it manually. If you're trying to run away from it, you'll be likely won't be able to handle a difficult shot and you will just give up the shot. My senior 7 years in doing wire removal works need to paint it frame by frame also. It's about 1.20 sec shot. It ain't that bad (the one that i'm talking about). Most wire removal tutorials from the internet are very basic. What about if the wire gets blur (motion blur), and it's moving behind a fog. If you have a cleaner way to do this. please tell me. I have my tricks to do it, but it doesn't work all the time.

Regards

[Aruna]

Perhaps I should clarify. No arguing, just informative debate.

To me, fixing manually means using a technique that automated software and plugins (mokey, furnance, sparks, etc) can't do well. Fixing manually does take painting into account as part of the toolset, but not doing removal solely with painting. Fixing manually means using rotoshapes, masks, offset frames, still frames, and SINGLE painted frames.

To answer your question, yes, the most I've had to PAINT is 3-5 frames (sometimes not even sequentially), and that's just to touch up little bits, not entire harnesses or wires. The brunt of the work is done by manually using the techniques above. I don't rely on software to automatically remove wires or harnesses, which I think may have been the confusion that is happening here.

I'm just saying that while you can do paintwork successfully and without noticeable ghosting or bubbling over a span of 24 frames, I would prefer to do it (and would recommend) using a minimal amount of paintwork.

Hope that clears up some confusion.

[Aruna]

You haven't seen my shot and i can't attach it, it's belong to client.

That's true. I have not seen your shot. You will approach it the best way you can.

So don't make it difficult, and acting like you're understand my situation.

I don't understand your situation, and I don't pretend too. Just putting out alternatives that may or may not work for you.

I've tried a hundreds of tricks and cleaner way from whatever source i can find. But it will comes to a time where you really need to paint it manually. If you're trying to run away from it, you'll be likely won't be able to handle a difficult shot and you will just give up the shot. My senior 7 years in doing wire removal works need to paint it frame by frame also. It's about 1.20 sec shot. It ain't that bad (the one that i'm talking about). Most wire removal tutorials from the internet are very basic. What about if the wire gets blur (motion blur), and it's moving behind a fog. If you have a cleaner way to do this. please tell me. I have my tricks to do it, but it doesn't work all the time.

Most of the skill behind roto/paint comes from being in production and having to deal with it on a regular basis. As you said, you've had seven years to find the tips and tricks, and have probably dealt with a lot of bad rigging that had to be removed. For the shot at hand that you described, you could try and pull other areas of the fog and cover up the wire using soft travelling mattes. Like you said, I don't have the shot in front of me so can't really get very specific.

[Hugh]

Aruna: I had a wire removal shot on my last project (you know what it was) that required a lot of paint work (after doing a couple of Furnace passes)

Basically, what it involved was a guy in a t-shirt, doing a lot of movement (and so there were a lot of moving creases in the t-shirt). The wires were pressed right up against his t-shirt.

The furnace passes did remove the wires but there was still a very visible line.

In the end, I recreated the folds underneath with a mixture of rotoshapes and paint, but I don't think there was a single frame in there that didn't require paint of some kind...

[Studev]

I have the same difficulties like what you describe Hugh. It's very very similar. Just curious. How long is the shot and the amount of time you need to complete it ? I'm in the middle of doing it actually. Recreating the fold.

Regards

[Hugh]

Hmmm - it was a few months ago....

Looking at the dates on the shake scripts, it looks like it took me about 6 days to do - it was a 51 frame shot with 2 wires.

That said, the wire removal part was only half the shot - there was glass in front of the person in the scene, and a nice reflection of the camera in the glass - that took me at least 2 days to remove...

Oh, and there was also the reflection of the wires in another bit of glass...

To be honest, though, someone else started off the shot - he did the Furnace bits - I used his as a base, but did end up re-doing most of it.....

[Aruna]

I must have been extremely lucky in my past to not have to encounter wire removal like you guys have done!

[Studev]

Hmm...that's a long time. Now, i'm a bit panic. My shot is about 6 sec, CU shot which have a pin nicely seen on the side of his back, i've i got chance i will damn the director. My other frustation is when the wire moing too fast and it becomes blur. It's hard to get rid of the shadow.

But thanks for sharing it hugh. At least i can be prepared for the worst. Need to crack my head to find some tricks to do it.

Hey aruna,
No worry, you'll face it someday. It will comes.

Regards

[Hugh]

You do realise that Aruna is one of the more experienced compositors we have on here (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0995886/)....?


Good luck with your shot - let us know how it goes...

[AAAron]

I still say that if you are going to use a lot of manual painting and travelling mattes, an old copy of commotion is a nice helper. Since it got superb clone tools, a good tracker, and you can preview the motion with ease, to see how it work.
And it´s easy to grasp, started using it after one day when I was totaly fresh to painting and roto. :)

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