A Scanner Darkley

M

maxout

Member
Ok Vegas gods! Anyone tried to mimic a rotoscope feel/look like in this movie? Just wondering if anyone has tried.
 
Like in which movie ?? Nothing below your message. Anyway with experts like David Jimerson on board here i dont want to take the liberty of trying to tell you this, but you can do something like rotoscoping using Bezier Masks. There are workarounds in Vegas to create almost all of the effects you could want from a compositing program. On exact methodologies youd have to hope some of the senior members here like the above mentioned can help you. Youd be amazed at what you can do within Vegas. Apart from the fact that it has never ever crashed even a single time since i installed and have rendered more than 5 projects with it. I hope this helps. Bye.
 
maxout said:
Ok Vegas gods! Anyone tried to mimic a rotoscope feel/look like in this movie? Just wondering if anyone has tried.
Click to expand...


Not a Vegas God, but...lol... I tried it on a very small scene once. Couldn't even come close. On the other hand, the look of the movie and of a very similar "stock broker" commercial is annoying to me. Something about a cartoon looking too real. It just doesn't seem right.....

I've done stills in that look, but I don't have the skills to pull off a long clip. (at least, not yet anyway)

I imagine it to be as hard as "re-coloring" old BW films. Then again, I really don't have a clue.
 
No, it's just for Mac oddballs like myself. I saw your post, this seems to be a question a good number of people have right now. I did shoot the behind the scenes documentary for "A Scanner Darkly", from pre-pro all the way through post & animation. They use Bob Sabison's proprietary software, which is not for sale. Best way to describe it's interface is sort of a car crash between After Effects, Illustrator, & Flash. My best suggestion for anyone trying to emulate Sabison's look is not to, find a different way of animating, using off the shelf programs. In my opinion, Studio Artist is a program worthy of a Mac purchase. I'm using it right now to animate my own documentary feature. The thing it's really good at is natural media, so Studio Artist is kind of a car crash between Painter & After Effects, and so that's the look I went for. Find your own look, you'll be glad you did, and ultimately, more satisfied with the results.
 
scharky said:
A few years ago I did some rotoscoping projects. After about 30 hrs of work, I had a 30 sec short. Here are the results of my efforts, shot on mini dv, animated in Flash

http://www.stefweb.net/cinematography/target.wmv

Flash has a pretty good interface for rotoscoping, much better than trying to mess with bezier masks.
Click to expand...

I remember seeing that on here. Very cool ! Thanks for the repost link.
 
AFAIK, a scanner darkly uses proprietary software.

2- You might be able to do something similar in a compositing / paint program... maybe something like Combustion.
 
It is most certainly NOT fully automated, depending on the motion, at best in can interpolate about three-MAX five frames between two frames. I watched them (doing the EPK/BTS) and it was like Walt Disney in there. Everywhere you turned, there was another animator, stylus to Wacom pad. The interpolation is what makes that program though, it's what gives that "flowey" look.
 
I have an idea that may work within vegas to create this effect.
Im shooting this right off the top of my thinking cap so dont flame me.
Think greenscreen. Key out the green into a red solid. The front layer or image of the person can be turned black using restore black or some similar filters within vegas. To turn it completely black. This would be so much more easier than rotoscoping each independent frame.the chair etc could be different layers manually key framed to match the running characters movements. A lil bit of masking here and there to enable him to run thru the ring etc. Or even try this. Your character could be dressed in green (green cloth mask on head) then we could key him out. Im sure we can work on this to create the same effect.

BTW : we have actually done this (but not red and black) we have shot and changed a person into a silloutte shadow only. Using green screen. And 2 layers within an avid editing system. And we did it by adjusting the rgb levels of the person layer so low that it turned black. And we keyed the green to look like pure white. This i can vouch we have actually done and gave a smooth as real result.
 
Actually, all you need to do is shoot greenscreen, key out the green, and then check "show mask only." You then have a white silhouette on a black background. Use secondary CC to change the colors at will.
 
See....Im glad my idea was endorsed by Jimerson himself. Thanks Jim for giving an actual working method to my vague dream concept. We at least proved Vegas can do what all these members thought needed rotoscoping and proprietory softwares. Imagine rotoscoping a project like this. LOL.
 
I just made a quick little Scanner Darkly thing in Vegas, and it was pretty easy.

Some angles look better than others. I could correct each shot so that it looked the best, but I just used the exact same presets for every camera angle.
 
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