AI To Mask?

[Atomic]

Hi All,

I just discoverd the fact that CS3 Adobe Bridge can batch process an image sequence with Illustrators Live Trace feature. This basically gives you vectorized version of your footage. This made me all googly inside. I have been wanting a way to turn an AI path into an After Effects mask.

Can anyone thinkg of a way to do this with scripting? Now that I can turn my folder of footage into a folder of AI files, does this help?

[lloydalvarez]

Do you get different results than using Auto Trace in AE?

[Atomic]

Lloyd,

It is a different result, but I had forgotten that AE could do tracing as well. The main difference seems to be that while AE autotrace produces a mask, the AI autotrace produces a "posterized" vector version of your footage. This allows you to scale your footage fairly large without blurring or pixelization. Because they are AI files, you can turn on continuous rasterization.

I mainly was looking for a way to auto-mask a figure in some video footage that was not shot with any green screen.

A thought occured to me for a script idea, perhaps there is something like this already around. Basically track a bunch of points on the moving figure in the footage. then write a script to connect the track points to make an animated closed mask around the figure.

But I may just visit auto trace again..

[hype]

A thought occured to me for a script idea, perhaps there is something like this already around. Basically track a bunch of points on the moving figure in the footage. then write a script to connect the track points to make an animated closed mask around the figure.

Yep, there's is something like that around already.

http://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1070

Hope that helps!

[Atomic]

Thanks, I'll check it out!