Masking

[Megamom]

Rotobrush is love

[Niotex]

Rotobrush is for crude background elements at best. It's not meant as a general purpose tool, when using large assets [video files] it'll eat up ram like nothing else as it needs to cache large quantities in it's active memory rather than writing it off to your scratch disk. It doesn't work well with line art either, so if you're set on using it stay within the outer line art and expand it over the lines with a alpha matte choker or something. Even then when the line art is preserved, it'll still look half-ass compared to just masking it with a pen tool.

I've used it for various things over the years and I can't stress enough how crude a tool it is. Do not rely on it for your main roto work people, please I beg of you.

[Castor Troy]

Rotobrush is for crude background elements at best. It's not meant as a general purpose tool, when using large assets [video files] it'll eat up ram like nothing else as it needs to cache large quantities in it's active memory rather than writing it off to your scratch disk. It doesn't work well with line art either, so if you're set on using it stay within the outer line art and expand it over the lines with a alpha matte choker or something. Even then when the line art is preserved, it'll still look half-ass compared to just masking it with a pen tool.

I've used it for various things over the years and I can't stress enough how crude a tool it is. Do not rely on it for your main roto work people, please I beg of you.

This.

Anime and Rotobrush don't mix.

[HalOfBorg]

I've spent 8 hrs doing roto work and got 5 seconds of finished footage. Go with the deluxe tools.

[Shui]

Why would you even mask yourself in the first place?

[seasons]

Why would you even mask yourself in the first place?

holy shit

[qyll]

Why would you even mask yourself in the first place?

I detect a touch of disdain in that post.

Yeah, uploading crappy masks to youtube is not the best way to do it, but in the end, a repository for finished masks is not a bad idea. Unfortunately, it would be tough to pull it off.

You would have to rely on:

1) ... peoples' goodwill to donate finished masks. Unfortunately, people are selfish, and you're going to have a ton of freeloaders.

2) ... people to donate high quality masks. This is the hardest part. There are not many people who mask frames let alone people who mask well let alone people who mask high-quality, fluid footage let alone people who mask high-quality, fluid footage and then are willing to share them with you. Ideally, you would like masks in 1080p resolution, but I suspect that's not what you're going to get most of the time.

3) ... people to index the correct source and time stamp for each mask. A bit of a drudging task.

3) ... other people to maintain and curate masks. That means knowledgeable people who can check masks for quality and convert files between usable formats such as psd.

4) ... having an online host for the masks. Charging for use is obviously out of the question. Donations seem like the go-to.

5) And unless you have a lot of masks to choose from, you'll begin to see the same masks being used over and over again in various videos.

Still, I would rather be gouging out my eyeballs than roto'ing those pixels lodged in between someone's hair over and over again. Someone do it!

[Castor Troy]

Maybe I should donate all of my Naruto Ball Z Shippuden masks.

[Shui]

No I think having a public mask repository is shit. If you want masks do it yourself. It's also a matter of pride. I think Masks don't make a video good or bad - but if you use them just because you can, don't bother.

[UnluckyArtist]

Why would you even mask yourself in the first place?

holy shit

This is.. a thing?

To me masking is a pain in the ass that you should only do if you feel it's absolutely necessary, there are faster ways (which I just recently found out about) and the sad, basic way of pen pointing every outline, either way it's very tedious.
Agreeing with Shui, if you feel you need a mask so bad then do you yourself, that way it's yours and you'll have a better connection with the video entirely.