Masks can be edited in either Image Editor or Movie Clip Editor. Movie Clip Editor allows to link mask to motion tracking data to drive the whole mask or it’s points using data came from tracker.
Editing of masks happens in a way similar to editing bezier curves or (pathes) in GIMP: control points are adding to define general shape of mask, handles of different types are used to smooth bends. This allows to define only few points of mask and make it following needed object on the footage smoothly. Internally control points and handles coordinates are stored in normalized 0…1 space which allows masks to be reused for any kind of resolution.
To prevent tools mess, special mode called Masking is added to Clip and Image editors. When Maskign mode is enabled, almost all Clip/Image specific tools and properties are hidden and only tools needed for interactig with masks are displayed.
It’s possible to control feather of mask, including a way to define non-linear feather. Linear feather is controlled by a slider, non-linear feather is controlled in the same curve-based way to define feather falloff.
Not sure if this will be added to trunk or Tomato branch at the moment, but obviously it will get moved along for Mango.
To be able to use this as a rotoscoper will be quite nice, especially if you have access to the mask layer from all those areas of blender. The Rotobezier tool is nice, and works, but this looks like it will inherently have more flexibility. Can’t wait.
In the last dev meeting notes Ton mentioned that the code is ready but Sergey is waiting for some library.
Considering that the Mango folks will desperately need masking from now on, my guess is that it will be in trunk soon.
Btw, did anyone notice the double edge mask node in the compositor?
It looks like a decent implementation. The only thing I see missing is the ability to grow and shrink a mask which can be useful as an animated parameter. But I guess we can throw an erode node on top of the rasterized output.
All very great updates, and more like Christmas every day - except this is like getting to peak at the presents under the tree and wrapping them back up so they can get even more awesome
The ability to translate a simple mask(multiple verts) via one track point(keep their offset).
Ability to convert grease pencil to mask
Something I might look into scripting is… something like potrace or siox that you could circle your intended masked object every couple key frames(10,20,50), set the number of verts/splines(8,10,etc) to use and keep it consistent. the script would then create shape keys for that curve based on that number of verts/splines.
It’s way past bedtime so maybe that’s why I can’t figure out how to use the double edge mask node. But then again maybe not, so any pointers would be appreciated.
I love the compositor masking but the masking in Tomato is for the tracker and exports to the compositor. It allows you to control the mask with tracked points it has real potential.
