The Magic of Roto Painting

One of the most common and incredibly satisfying tasks to perform as an online video editor is making unwanted elements just... disappear! Photoshopping still frames is easy, but what about the moving image? Removals can be leveraged through tools like Silhouette or Nuke for motion-tracked vector painting. It's truly an invisible art form that polishes your visuals to perfection.

Roto painting out imperfections in Silhouette using the clone tool.

Cleaning Up the Frame

Even on the most meticulously planned shoots, unwanted elements can creep into the frame. This could be anything from:

• Production Gear: A microphone boom dipping into the shot, a stray light stand, or even a crew member accidentally in frame.

• Set Imperfections: A scuff on the floor, a power cable, or a mark that breaks continuity.

• Brand Logos/Identifying Marks: Sometimes, a product placement changes, or a logo needs to be painted out.

• Beauty Work: While often associated with faces, beauty work in this context can also mean removing blemishes on products, fixing a burger bun, smoothing out distracting textures, or cleaning up environmental imperfections.

The goal of removals is to achieve a clean, polished final product, free of any distractions. It's about ensuring the audience's focus remains exactly where it should be – on your story and subjects.

The Power of Motion-Tracked Vector Painting

One of the most powerful methods involves motion-tracked vector painting within specialised software like Silhouette or Nuke. Here's the breakdown:

1. Rotoscoping (or Masking): First, we identify the object we want to remove. Using tools in Silhouette or Nuke, we draw a precise shape (a vector mask or spline) around the unwanted object. This tracing-like process is called rotoscoping.

2. Motion Tracking: The object we're removing is rarely static so we need to track its movement, rotation, and perspective changes throughout the shot. This can be done with point trackers, planar trackers or 3D trackers. Whatever works. The tracking data is then applied to our meticulously drawn masks, ensuring they follow the object perfectly. This saves us from manually adjusting the mask on every single frame.

3. Painting/Cloning: Once the object is perfectly isolated and tracked, we essentially "paint" it out. This often involves:

   • Cloning: Taking pixels from an adjacent, clean area of the frame and "stamping" them over the unwanted object. This is similar to the clone stamp tool in Photoshop, but done across a moving sequence.

   • Patching: Sometimes, a larger "clean plate" (a shot of the background without the object) is available. We can then composite this clean plate behind the rotoscoped object.

   • Generative Fill: More modern techniques involve AI-powered generative fills that can intelligently recreate the background behind the removed object.

   • Painting: Sometimes in beauty work it is important to preserve the detail and some tools can separate the colour channel from the detail channel, allowing you to paint colour without losing the texture. So long pimples!

Lovebug Films uses Silhouette and Nuke for these types of removals. For example, a full day on set can be tiring work for a hamburger and by tea time, food might not be looking as fresh as we'd like. In a recent Hungry Jacks campaign, various adjustments were made to the hero burger, repairing cracks in the bun, painting out loose cheese strands and cleaning up some mayonnaise that had soaked into the bun.

The result of this meticulous process is an incredibly clean and polished image, where the removed elements are completely unnoticeable. It's a testament to the detail-oriented nature of online editing and the power of specialised VFX tools in delivering a flawless visual experience. Don't forget to check out the Lovebug Films Instagram for some fun examples!