Stabilized Rotoscoping for DaVinci Resolve

In 1992 - Gary Tregaskis - invented VFX software called Flame.  Flame was one of the first mass market tools to include tracking. But then in 1997 Fusion improved on that tracker and it still is amazing. So all you have to do is track the shot, set the tracker to match move BG only, draw a polygon shape, and change the tracker to FG only to make the tracker do all the hard work.

Here’s the result of a magic mask cut-out AND here’s a tracking-assist roto result. It's sox much cleaner!

Chapters are marked, and the tutorial footage is up on creativevideotips.com/cuttingclub for those who have joined or would like to. So download the clip, and let me teach you how to rotoscope a pixel-perfect mask on a stabilized plate in DaVinci Resolve Fusion.

Oh and at the end I’ll show you how you can access the Fusion mask directly in the Color Page!

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Today's footage is a simple sign to keep this tutorial short, but the same principles of using 1 or 2 tracking points can be used on more complicated rotoscoping tasks.

5 simple steps:

Step 1 - track and stabilize the shot

Step 2 - draw our polygon shape on the stabilized reference frame

Step 3 - animate our polygon on the least number of frames possible

Step 4 - use the tracker node to matchmove the polygon shape

Step 5 - Apply the mask shape to the footage

Track & Stabilize

• Old contrast pattern point tracker - look at channels (viewer and pattern box)

• Starting track frame matters for the match move

• Match Move BG only

Draw Shape(s)

• Draw on the 1 of 3 frames (start, end, select time)

• Poly for sharp corner objects

• Sets a keyframe in the frame you start drawing

• Use several simple OVERLAPPING shapes - and connect them to build a complex shape

Animate Edges

• Move to the far end from reference fame and adjust points/edges

• Option/Alt-drag

Match Move

• FG over BG, blend to overlay to QC

• FG only

• Motion Blur or Double Poly - (maximum paint mode)

Apply Mask

• Matte control branch copy with a patch

  • text behind

  • blurs

  • color

  • composite other footage

• Media Out 2 to color