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Tracker2Mask
Version: 3.0 Sign up to be notified by email when a new version of this script is posted
Tracker2Mask is an After Effects script that computes the movement of mask shapes based on the movement of trackpoints. It is easy and flexible to use. In particular you don’t need one trackpoint for each maskpoint.
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The workflow is as follows:
- track a few points (something between one and four points is reasonable, even for complex mask shapes) that represent the basic movement of the object which you want to draw a mask around
- keyframe the mask by hand in the first and last frame
- use the script to predict keyframes in between (the script uses the tracker information for this prediction which is hence much better than the simple interpolation done by after effects itself)
The third step can be interleaved with manual corrections which leads to a quite fast, assisted rotoscoping workflow.
Tutorial
In this first tutorial I show how to rotoscope the shape of a moving car based on only four trackpoints, for simpler shapes often one trackpoint is sufficient.
More tutorials and infos about Tracker2Mask on mamoworld.com
Version History:
- 3.0 Updated interface, automatic update check, improved function of |><| button – Dec 2010
- 2.3 Made CS5 compatible and minor bug fix – Jun 2010
- 2.2 Bug fix that made AE freeze in some very rare occasions – Mar 2010
- 2.1 Initial release on aescripts.com – Aug 2009
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Very nice plugin Mathias!! Looking forward to use it. It will most definitely decrease the time it takes to doing roto work.
how can i donwload it without account in paypal (sorry, i don’t have money to pay it and i can’t have one account in paypal)?
@tulio: You can just lower the price in the shopping system to $0. Then you are not asked any payment information but only have to give your email where the download link should be send.
Parabéns Muito Bom!
Seems a great tool. Can’t wait to have a go at it.
its what i want! thank u very much-and also thanx for toturial
Hi thank you very much, just to tell you….for sure you can change the language of AE, To get After Effects CS4 in English on Mac, just select the icon that launches the application, click with right mouse button and select “Show Package Contents” then go to the folder Contents / Resources / AMTLanguages. There should be 2 files: en_US.txt and de_DE.txt, simply remove it and you’re done. If the file of the English language was not present simply create a text file with TextEdit, type in the file “en_US” and save under the name “en_US.txt.
I like to play with it. Thank you
Super Ding, weiter so :]
Used your Tracker2mask script in AE to create DoF for a shot interview, tutorial can be found at http://vimeo.com/11726645
Nice tutorial and thanks for the info! I wrote a note about it on my blog:
http://aextensions.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-tracker2mask-tutorial-by-steve.html
i like your website very nice!!
Where can i find the discount code?
You don’t need a discount code. It is “pay what you want”. Just change the price to whatever you want.
Great tracker2mask script! Helps a lot
Thank you very much for developing it 
Mathias,
I love the idea of your script. I hate going in and manipulating my masks all of the time. Thanks for this and I bought you a beer. I’m having a problem. It’s probably my stupidity, but once I apply the script, I can’t see my mask anymore or what I want to put into the mask, ie; somebody elses face. I’m doing this for my son’s school project. I have 3 motion trackers on my footage and then put my mask on it. The problem is when I apply the script, I can’t see my mask path anymore. Can you help.
Hi Clint,
I guess that the trackpoint and the mask are located on different layers in your project. If you select a mask on some layer and a trackpoint on another layer, After Effects does not show the mask path anymore (don’t ask me why…). But you can select the mask and the trackpoint and then click the “freeze” button. Now you can just select the mask (in order to see it) and work with it as if you had also selected the trackpoint.
Best
Mathias
oke
1
Hy Mathias,
thank you so much for your script, it made my day! I just used it on a project and it worked perfect. Gruss aus Malaga (Spain)
I was curious if you have a link to download this tutorial so I can refer back to it even if my internet is down, thanks.
Lol, I love it. “Oops! Telephone!”
Hi Dustin,
you can download the tutorials on vimeo.
http://www.vimeo.com/mamoworld
But Vimeo requires you to be registered (with a free account) for that.
Amazing script, Mathias!!! Adobe should build this in to their next release (and pay you, of course!).
Thanks!
You can submit this feature request to Adobe here:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
i love
Hi !
Thx for tutorials and script. Looking forward to see more.
Ip
Is there a way for Tracker2Mask to use the average of several track points rather than a single track point? Like if I averaged 3 trackers using TrackerViz, and then used that data to drive the Tracker2Mask script. Is something like this possible?
The “interpolate between trackpoints” option does this in a clever and advanced way: For each mask vertex it used the weighted average of the nearby track points. Weighed average means that not all trackpoints have the same influence, but the closer the trackpoint is, the more influence it has. The “fall-off” and “filter” allow to further control this weighted average. If you want a simple average of the trackpoints instead, I guess you can use TrackerViz to create a new track point representing the average and use this in Tracker2Mask.
How do you create a new Track Point with TrackerViz? That’s related to another question I was going to ask — is it possible to use the tracking data from Mocha to drive Tracker2Mask? Like if I tracked position in Mocha rather than using AE’s point tracker?
You can use TrackerViz’s option “average position” to make the position of a layer the average of other position properties. Then you can manually copy and paste those position values to the attach point of some trackpoint (if you don’t want to overwrite the existing track point, duplicate it before pasting the new keyframes).
Concerning Mocha: Yes, you can use MochaImport’s function “4 AE track points from corner pin points” to convert a Mocha Corner Pin into 4 AE track points. Those can then be used with Tracker2Mask. Also note that in CS5 you can directly paste Mocha masks into After Effects.
Is there a way that the rotation and scaling data that comes from Mocha can be incorporated and used by Tracker2Mask? Similar like if you tracked scale and rotation with a 2 point track in AE.
No, if you want to use Tracker2Mask with Mocha, the only way is to use corner pin data and convert it into 4 trackpoints using MochaImport.
Ah, I see — So if I use the 4 Corner Pin to Track points, then does Tracker2Mask take rotation and scale into consideration? Or is it just taking the average of those 4 tracker points and still just creating a single positional track that Tracker2Mask uses?
Its not considering scale or rotation directly, but it is also not just considering a single track. Depending on the “Interpolation Method” you choose in Tracker2Mask, it considers for each mask vertex weighted averages of the trackpoints that are nearby, where the nearer trackpoints get a larger weight. It’s as if you would track 4 points in AE but not calculate some scale or rotation from them but just choose for each mask vertex only the closest (or several close ones) of the track points.