All language subtitles for 02. Drawing Shapes in the Roto Node and Viewing the Shapes

In this lesson,

we're going to learn how to draw shapes using the Roto

Node and how to view our shapes.

OK, so I'm just starting off here in your project files in 02_begin.

And I've gone ahead and put it in this Read Node

with our candy Png sequence here.

So if I just play this through,

this is just a little clip of some jelly beans being thrown onto the table.

And they're just settling in here and wiggling around.

So let's say-- one of the main uses of Rotoscoping is for color correction.

So sometimes,

you don't necessarily want to actually take it out of its original background.

But you do need to mask it simply to change one little thing about it.

So let's say,

maybe we've been given the task to change this green

jelly bean to a different color.

Now, even if we don't get to the color correction part in this lesson,

I want you to understand why you would even need to be

drawing this Roto Shape in the first place.

So we need to create something that's going to follow the

outline of this little green jelly bean as it moves and

wiggles around on the table.

Now first, we won't even really get into animating this.

I just want to show you how to draw this shape.

So let's just start over here on frame 20.

Now, you don't have to start on the first frame.

I'm starting on 20 because the jelly bean is facing us.

And we get just a little more clear view of the bean.

If I'm all the way back here at the beginning,

my points that I'm going to start creating are going to be a little more round.

And I might not know how many I need to make.

So let's move over here to 20.

And we'll start here.

So to drop in your Roto Node, you don't have to really have anything selected.

But if you do have the Read Node that it's going to

be looking at as its background, then if you have that selected,

it's going to drop it onto your tree for you and just

make things a little bit easier.

So the way you get a Roto Node is just by coming up here to your Draw button,

clicking and holding.

And Roto is the first option.

So we'll just choose that.

And it drops in our Roto Node for us.

And you can see that that's already connected with its pipes.

OK, so what I want to do here,

just middle-clicking and dragging this right into the middle of my viewer,

I want to start drawing.

So I've got these three little tools that pop up

when I have the Roto Node selected.

And the one that I'm going to use to start drawing is the one at the bottom.

If I click and hold this,

you can see that we have several different choices for how to draw this.

Now, the Bezier is the first one.

And that's my personal favorite.

I feel like it has the most control.

And that's going to allow you to have curves in the path that you draw.

Cusped Bezier is going to be similar.

But there's not going to be any curves.

So that's great if you have something with lots of straight edges.

And a B-Spline is going to be different again in just the way that you

control it is a little bit different from the Bezier.

So I'm going to start with the Bezier simply because I

feel like it's the easiest to control.

So we'll just choose that option.

And then all we have to do is come over here and start clicking to draw.

So I'm just going to start over here in the lower left-hand corner.

And we'll just click right here in the middle of that little curve.

And then we'll come up here,

just right about where that curve starts to go in a different direction.

And I'll just click again.

And you see this makes a line between those two points.

Now, if I just left it like this, I would have a really straight line.

And it wouldn't really follow the outline of the bean.

So I'm still holding down my left-click on my mouse.

And what I'm going to do now is pull on this.

I'm just pulling over to the right.

And this is going to give me a curve.

And you can see that it gives me those Bezier handles.

So I can just pull that right out like that.

And it's making a really nice curve right along the edge of the jelly bean.

OK, so now, I'm going to click over here to the right.

And you see that it gives us a curve.

But it follows the curve that it was already creating before.

And that's not really the curve I want.

So if I pull the handles out now,

you see that it starts to fix it towards the right side of the curve.

But on the left side, we get this strange little bump.

So this is something you're going to run into whenever you're

using the Bezier to draw this Roto Shape.

But I'm going to show you how to fix that a little bit later on.

So you don't want to fix it while you're drawing.

Just go ahead and get your rough shape drawn out.

And then we'll go back and fix it after the shape has been closed.

So to complete this shape, I'm just going to get a little bit closer.

I think, instead of just completing it, we might need one more point right here.

So let's go ahead and add another point there.

And that one's pretty close, but not as close as I'd like it.

So we still need to edit this shape a bit.

And then we'll just click here to finish the shape out.

And I can pull, again, now, to make this curve as well.

So I'm just pulling that out.

But you can see that it affected the curve on the other side.

So now we have this shape that really doesn't perfectly match our jelly bean.

But we do have Bezier handles on all of the different points.

So the way to view those handles and to start editing them is to

come up here and choose this option right here,

your selection.

So if I click that, it's going to give me the Select All,

Select Splines, Points, and Feather Points.

Now,

I usually just will stick with the Select All because

you can still just click one point.

And then you have access to those handles again.

So then I can come in here and start adjusting those by pulling them

in to fit the jelly bean just a little bit better.

And I can also move the point around if it's not in the right position.

So you can see how just grabbing those anchor point

handles allows me to edit this very, very easily.

Then I can just pull that one back down there.

And now it looks pretty good.

We're pretty close to the contour.

If you want to zoom in a little bit,

you can see that it could use just a little more fine-tuning to make it perfect.

But we're pretty close.

Now, I am noticing that no matter what I do here,

I have a little bit of trouble getting this curve to do the right thing.

It's still bumping up here.

And I've tried manipulating those handles.

It's not really doing exactly what I want.

So I need to be able to edit this a little bit differently.

And we're going to talk about how to do that in our next lesson.

But before we move on to our next lesson,

I want to come over here to, let's say, this brown jelly bean.

And I want to draw a Roto Shape for it, as well.

So I'm going to move to a frame where that jelly bean

is a little more facing the camera.

And we'll zoom in a little bit.

And let's draw another one here, as well.

So the reason why I want to draw two is because I want to show you that you can

use the same Roto Node that contains multiple Bezier shapes.

So let's just come back over here, grab that Bezier tool again.

And this one I'm going to do a little more quickly.

So I'm just clicking around the edge here,

and dragging out those points, and creating that shape.

And by clicking that, I've closed the shape.

Then I can come back in here and start to edit those a

little bit just by pulling on those handles.

And you'll notice that whenever I close this one, I just clicked.

And so now I don't have any Bezier handles on that point.

So we might want to have those to control this a little bit better.

So we have two Bezier shapes inside of our one Roto Node.

And basically, that's just really how you get started with creating Rotoscope.

So we've created a Rotoscope for our brown jelly bean.

And because I created it on frame four,

you can see that it added a little key frame there.

So basically,

that's saying that that Roto Shape is going to be that shape on that frame.

Then if I come down here and select the Bezier shape

that I created for my green jelly bean,

you can see that that key frame is now on 20,

because that's the frame that we drew the Roto Shape on.

So a couple little helpful tips there as we're learning how to create these.

And in our next lesson,

we're going to start back up just right here where we were leaving off,

and just using the same asset.

And I'm going to show you how to tweak these Bezier shapes even a little

bit further to really get the perfect shape that matches the image that

you're trying to create a Rotoscope for.

So we're going to learn how to do that in our next lesson.