Fundamentals of Compositing, Tracking, and Roto Techniques with After Effects

In this workshop Jeff Foster — video producer, compositor, visual effects artist, and author of "The Green Screen Handbook" — teaches you the basics of green screen compositing and setting up a streamlined roto workflow with After Effects and a Wacom tablet. You’ll get real-world tips on getting the best mattes and keys from your green screen shots, stabilizing and tracking footage in After Effects, and using the Roto Brush feature to create quick and accurate mattes of anything that moves in the frame. You’ll also learn how to create more believable composites by matching your foreground and background plates, using roto-spline masks, and applying match-moving techniques.

In this workshop you’ll learn the basics of getting a good green screen composite and setting up a streamlined roto workflow with After Effects and a Wacom tablet. The contents of this course include:

Setting Up a Wacom Tablet for Editing
A Wacom tablet is a great tool for editing in After Effects, and in this chapter you’ll get some recommendations for how to set one up.

Getting a Great Matte from Green Screen Shots
In this chapter you’ll learn techniques for extracting and compositing green screen shots, matching foreground and background plates, and fixing problem shots.

Roto-Masking in After Effects
In this chapter you’ll learn about the process of defining a mask that changes over time. This involves deciding what you want to mask, defining keyframes, and letting the “tweening” process fill in between those keyframes.

Stabilizing and Tracking Footage
In this chapter you’ll learn techniques for stabilizing and tracking footage and get an introduction to the process of match-moving.

The Roto Brush: Compositing with Masks
The Roto Brush in After Effects is a great tool for quick roto work. You’ll learn all about it in this chapter.

Matte Layer Tips and Tricks
In this chapter you’ll get a few final tips for maximizing the quality of your mattes.

The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. Also included are exercise files that give you an easy way to try out the techniques you learn.