Using the Rotobrush?

#1

Folks,

I’m trying the demo of AE CS5 and either I’ve been away from AE way too long (8 years or more) or I’m too old or both but I’m having a heck of time getting it to work.

I can create the matte just fine, but when I hit the spacebar to render I only get 20 frames and then it starts playing normally (without creating any more matte). If I go to the end of those 20 frames and start again I can make another 20 and so on.

The Rotobrush doesn’t appear as an effect like I am used to, where you can just stretch out the timeline, but that may be because I’m unfamiliar with how AE may have changed. Can anyone tell me how I can just make this so once I’ve done the start matte it will continue to render the whole timeline?

#2

Hit 0 on your numeric keypad to render not spacebar. Doing it that way is a true RAM preview, not the spacebar way.

How much RAM do you have? You could also try previewing in a lower res (although not ideal for roto) to get longer previews…

Are you in Leesburg, VA?

#3

No, that does the same thing (albeit in a loop). IOW, it renders 20 frames and then starts looping those 20.

I have 16GB of which 12GB is being used by AE (i7 machine, if that helps).

#4

I should note that if I put any normal effect, like Glow, on the timeline and then hit the spacebar it will render the whole thing. It also allows me to jump to any frame and correctly render it. It’s only the *#$#! Rotobrush that only works about 20 frames each time.

And I’m in Leesburg, Florida (there are a lot of Leesburgs in the South – the General had a lot of influence, I think :>)

#5

Check this out.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3bf812c123007fb8513559df126b537c840-8000.html#WS3bf812c123007fb8513559df126b537c840-7ffd

The little arrows beneath your layer are your span duration, 20 frames. You can drag it out to make it longer or shorter.

#6

It is as Timmay says.

Roto Brush is not a tool that you can jump right into using without reading the documentation first.

There are several useful resources pointed to from this page.

#7

Thanks, guys, that’s exactly what I needed to know.

Yeah, I guess I should have RTFM <g> – I just wanted to see if this was something that would even work for me. Plus I wasn’t so sure that AE hadn’t changed so much I wouldn’t recognize it (which to my fear seemed to be the case).

From my preliminary tests it looks like RB is useful but not the Holy Grail – but then if all of this stuff could be done automatically then anyone could do it <bg>.

Again, mucho thanks and I’ll start reading docs and seeing what else I am probably missing.

#8

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