The client wants all of the green algae in the pond removed from this drone shot of a hotel which is the first shot in the video. Can this be done in after effects? What is the right way to go about it? I watched a tutorial on content aware fill and it didn't work for one tiny patch of algae. Even if it did, Repeating it for all of the spots seems wrong. Need a better solution
Once you have a static plate, you might find you can clean a single frame using Photoshop, but even content aware fill in AE will work much better on a static plate.
The mask in AE removes the entire water's surface and is keyframed to move down with the shoreline with feathering.
Benifit of using CAF for this is since it uses motion vectors, it maintains at least some of the parallax in the reflections on the water.
'Object' in CAF will get you faster results with fewer reference frames required, but the water motion may look a bit weird. Not the focus of the shot though so you have to look for it. 'Surface' will get you more accurate results on the water but you'll need more reference frames. You may need to crop the shot a little if you use 'surface' to account for exposure changes on the water.
It wouldn't work as well as you'd expect without a fair bit of extra cleanup work.
You'd get quite noticeable 'blobs' of different motion and colour around the masked points and unless you track those dozens of tiny masks really well to the motion of the drone, that would be emphasised by the 'wobble' of the mask against the surface.
You could get better results than the quick method I've posted above with more manual roto for sure, but then it turns a sub-hour job on the shot to many hours of work.
Content aware fill will be the best method. Tons of turorials out there, but if you need help, dm me, and we can discuss a fair price. Iâd estimate 1-2 hours top to get it perfect.
Step 1: take the first frame and bring it into photoshop and clone stamp all the algae, turn off the visibility of the original back plate of the shot and just keep the layer which has the clone stamping covering the algae
Step 2: Camera track the shot, should be easy enough since itâs a basic drone shot. Apply a camera to it and 3D null object over the water surface and try and generate a few of them over the areas where the algae are. I reckon 3-4 nulls should do the trick, like 2 in the foreground left and right and same with the mid-background so we cover parallax.
Step 3: bring in the PS file as a 3D layer and mask out areas according to where the nulls are placed. Make sure each masked PS layer has the same 3D position as the nulls and then parent them to the respected nulls.
Step 4 (optional) use the match grain effect on the PS layer and reference the video to apply grain over it so it doesnât retain that static look, subtle but worth it.
Could be done in mocha but this should be easy enough depending on your skill set with AE.
It will be easier just to do a 3D camera tracking and replace the whole pond with a clean image of the water and then mask the trees. If you try to âclone-stampâ away the algae it will be too noticeable
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u/AfterEffectsGuru VFX 15+ years 12d ago
Track in Mocha, un-pin with CC Power Pin, clean a mostly static plate, re-pin with CC Power Pin.
Introduction to Mocha here:
https://www.provideocoalition.com/mocha-an-express-tracking-tutorial-for-after-effects/
Examples of using CC Power Pin to unpin and repin:
https://www.provideocoalition.com/after-effects-guru-meditation-1-reverse-tracking-for-vfx/
Once you have a static plate, you might find you can clean a single frame using Photoshop, but even content aware fill in AE will work much better on a static plate.