All language subtitles for 04. Drawing a Complex Shape with the Roto Node

In this lesson,

we're going to learn how to draw a complex shape with the Roto node.

OK, so in our last lesson,

we learned how to basically draw an editor rotoscope for a Jelly Bean,

but now we're dealing with something a lot more complex,

which is this human hand.

And over time you can see that this moves.

Now if you weren't worried about this moving over time,

you could draw a rotoscope that simply went around

the entire outline of her hand.

But if you know that your rotoscope is going to be moving over time,

which most of the time when you're rotoscoping it's going to move somewhat,

you want to be able to have the easiest way to be able to edit those

shapes and animate them once they start moving.

So in this lesson, we're going to go ahead and draw our rotoscope.

And then in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to animate it,

and you're really going to appreciate the extra work we

took to draw it in the correct way.

So let's go ahead and get started by dropping in a Roto node.

I'm simply going to select my read node,

then we'll come up here to our Draw button and choose Roto.

And that'll just drop that in there for us, already connected to our viewer.

And now I'm just going to come over here and start with the palm of the hand.

So let's just zoom in a little bit here.

And I'm going to grab my Bezier tool again.

Now notice if I just click that and I kind of click it rather quickly,

it just is going to change those and it's just basically cycling

through these different options for tools that I have.

So we want Bezier, not Cusped Bezier.

You want to make sure that you have the ability to get those

curves because this is a very organic human shape.

So I'm just going to start over here,

kind of on the side of her hand where it curves here,

kind of bumps out where this bone is.

And we'll just kind of draw a point there.

Now your first inclination might be to go up around this finger,

but that's not what I'm going to do.

I'm only going to focus on this area here, that doesn't have a joint.

So the joint kind of starts here and then fingers

are going to move from this point.

So this is kind of one big solid area, and that's what we want to focus on.

So I'm going to go ahead and we'll click another point here,

kind of draw that out.

And then we can click up here, kind of pull this a little bit more.

And just get several points going inside of this hand shape.

Now I'm just middle clicking to kind of pan down a bit,

and then I'm going to overlap this a little bit onto the area of her thumb,

just to make sure that I get this extra piece of skin here on the side.

Then we'll come in down here, kind of pull out those corners,

and I get kind of a sharp point in here.

So later on when we continue drawing,

we'll want to make sure that we get this area covered by at

least one of the shapes that we're drawing.

So I clicked and I added a point that was a little bit too high,

I want it to be closer in here.

So I'm going to undo that just by hitting Control,

Z, and we'll get a little closer to that edge,

maybe pull that out.

I'm still not really happy with the way that looks but you'll

notice that I'm getting this kind of S curve,

which starts to happen further down on her hands.

So I'm actually going to undo this again and we'll draw this

point a little lower and pull this out.

And you can see that that follows the contour of her hand much more closely.

Then we can go back and edit this point later to kind of make

this area filled in a little bit better.

Then I'm just going to kind of make a large shape down here at the bottom.

You can worry about her arm later on,

we're not really focusing on that right now,

so we'll just skip that.

And then just come up here, and let's go ahead and close the path,

pull out those handles to kind of get that shape

looking a little more realistic.

And then let's zoom in down here and edit this point.

I'm just going to make sure I have that selection tool,

and we'll pull in this curve a little bit here.

Maybe pull this one down a bit, you could actually pull it out if you need to.

And just kind of play around with editing that shape until you get

that contour looking just the way you want it.

OK, so now that we've gotten her palm created,

I want to go ahead and name these,

because before you know in our last lesson we only had two Bezier shapes.

But we're going to have six because we're going to have one for her hand and

we're going to create some more for the rest of her fingers.

So once you get six Bezier shapes in there it's kind

of hard to remember which is which.

So all you have to do is come over here to where it says Bezier,

click that, and it's going to allow you to type something in.

So we'll just type in palm.

And then you can just click off down in the blank

area and it'll name that for you.

OK, so let's continue drawing.

I'm going to go ahead and have my Roto node selected still.

And just grab that Bezier tool again, and now let's focus on her little finger.

So I'm just kind of zooming in, getting that to a good middle point there,

and instead of just starting right here on her finger,

I'm going to start down in this area here.

And we'll just kind of go to go to where we know that

joint attaches inside of her hand.

So I'm just going to kind of come right there,

and then we'll come up here on the side.

So you can kind of see how you want these shapes to

have lots of room to overlap,

because you want to be able to not have anything that's

accidentally getting cut out by not giving yourself enough

of that overlap that you see here.

And it's OK that this point kind of gets a little strange,

because as long as it's overlapping that's not really going to matter.

If we need to edit it later on, we can.

But as long as there's a good amount of overlap there, you'll be just fine.

Now let's go ahead and do the same thing for her next finger.

So I'm going to grab that Bezier tool again,

and we'll just come up through here.

And you can see I'm working a little more quickly now that

you're getting more comfortable with this tool.

Just pulling out curves where I know that I'm going to need them.

And I just know where I'm going to be needing the curves,

simply based on the anatomy of the hand.

So if it's something that's going to bend,

you're probably going to want a curve there so that you can

bend that later when we start animating.

Let's go ahead and add some more here.

I'll just grab that Bezier tool.

And your points-- I'm gonna undo that,

I'm trying to pan up here a little bit-- your points you want to

keep in generally as few points as possible,

simply because when you start animating these shapes around,

you start to have point consistency issues if you have too many points.

So I'm trying to do this just kind of in a minimalist fashion.

Now it looks like a missing a little bit of her finger here,

so I'm going to undo that before I close the shape.

And we'll just click straight down and then close that there.

So if I have a few extra points in this overlap area,

I'm not too worried about it.

It's mostly up here on the area that's going to be moving a lot.

Let's finish this up, just grab that Bezier tool again.

And just come up here around the curvature of her finger.

And it's good if you can try to keep your points kind

of right across from each other.

I've been working kind of quickly,

but that's something that you want to keep in mind.

I'm going to undo this one,

and it looks like we have this sharp area here as well.

So we maybe need to have this overlap just a bit more,

so that comes down a little bit farther just so we can get that little sliver.

And now I have drawn four shapes and I haven't renamed anything.

You can kind of see how this doesn't look very organized.

So let's go ahead and rename these before we draw our last shape.

So I'm going to grab that Bezier one, and you can see that whenever I click it,

it highlights or shows the points of the Roto that I'm referring to.

So that makes it easier once you have to go back and rename it,

just so you know which one it is.

So I clicked that, so it's going to allow me to change that.

And we'll just call this one little, because it's her little finger.

We don't need to type in finger,

we know that we're only working with fingers pretty much.

And then I'll grab Bezier two, and that's going to be her ring finger,

so I'll type in ring.

And then three, Bezier three, that's going to be her middle.

And Bezier four is her index.

So it looks like I have to click it twice,

once to select it and then once again to be able to edit it,

so keep that in mind as you work.

And then I'm just going to pan down here,

just using my middle click to move this around.

And then I've zoomed in a bit just using that middle wheel.

And now I'm going to go ahead and we'll grab our

Bezier again and draw our last shape, which is going to be for the thumb.

And I'm just kind of starting lower,

just like I was earlier to get that shape looking good.

And maybe I actually want to undo this and pull this down

around her finger a little further,

just to kind of get that shape in there a little bit better.

I'm just kind of undoing until I'm happy with the way that the curve looks.

This one's going to be a little tough,

we may have to come in and edit this after we close the shapes.

So we can do that, we'll just pull that down there and close that up.

OK, so let's come in here and figure out how we need to fix these.

So I'm going to grab my selection tool,

this one definitely needs to be pulled over a little bit.

And it looks like just by clicking that, I switched over to the Select Slides.

So I want to make sure it's on Select All,

so sometimes that can happen to you if you're just quickly moving

around and you're not using keyboard shortcuts.

Sometimes you can accidentally choose that wrong tool,

but it's pretty easy to get in there just fix that.

So it looks like the most problematic curve we have is this one,

we don't want that strange little point in there.

So what I'm going to do,

it looks like this one doesn't have any handles and

that's why we have that probablem, we didn't pull any handles out on this one.

So I'll just come in here and we'll click and hold and choose Smooth Points.

And then we'll just click that, and that gives me that extra little point there.

We'll grab our Selection tool,

and then we can kind of come in here and start to smooth this out a little bit.

Looks good down here, but up there we have a little bit of an issue.

And this is a great opportunity for you to see how this curve,

this point in the curve,

is actually occurring because of the way that this

handle has been pulled out so straight.

You can see how that follows along there with that Bezier handle.

So what we need to do is hold Control and click it,

and then we can pull this back up closer so that

curve is just a little more smooth.

And then we just get a little bit of a bump there,

but that's what her finger looks like.

So that's perfect.

So now we've drawn all of our shapes, let's go ahead and come over here.

We'll rename this one to thumb, just for the sake of consistency.

And now we've basically created six Roto shapes,

even though we're only doing her hand.

So whenever you're doing a complex thing like this-- I'll go and

play this for you so you can see how it moves-- it's going to be

so much easier to animate now.

It takes a little more time to do it in this way,

but in the end it's way more organized and way better

for controlling in the long run.

So in our next lesson,

I'm going to show you how we can start animating these shapes to

follow along with the contour of her hand.