Need new effect: pixel spread / erode-dialate / cleanplate

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
November 2, 2023
3 replies
951 views

I don't see a lot of discussion around this topic and most After Effects compositors either use sub par methods or simply aren't in need for high end solutions. But for us being stuck in the ecosystem it is tremendously hard to perform high quality composite work without any form of pixel spread to do clean ups, edge extends and creation of clean plates from green screens.

These tools have been available in compositing packages like Flame, Fusion and Nuke for years already. The only thing we have is an immensly slow performing extend in Refine Hard Matte with tons of options we don't need and a range limit of about 1pixel. Their tools perform close to realtime and are able to smear the pixel information much much further.

Please consider implementing a very fast performing high quality pixel spreader that is able to take RGB information and spread it with different methods/modes via it's own layer's alpha/mask or external via the mask layer selection.

To understand what I'm talking about here are the tools in other software.

Flame (best implementation and featureset): https://youtu.be/d1q_4XTGaJk

Flame (same tool to do cleanplate in interpolate mode): https://youtu.be/DEg4jM11TQ8?t=203

Nuke EdgeExtend: https://youtu.be/_KhF9WnxITY

Nuke IBKColour: https://youtu.be/EALBwyXXVFE

Fusion (least good algorithm/quality): https://youtu.be/wUSxUv9Y6Xc?t=593

Thank you.

E

ericmlevy

Inspiring

I built it. 😅

Extendo, the edge extension plugin for AE.

Shebbe

Author

Community Expert

Hey thanks for that link! Looks close to what I'm looking for although not quite there. It doesn't seem to recursively grow/shrink the color information in my limited testing. I wasn't able to produce a good cleanplate, just a 'filled' one.

Furthermore, it's cool that there is a plugin but I would hope that AE has such tools natively at some point. With third party tools it's always a matter of time when they become incompatible/obsolete. Plus the extra hassle of managing licenses etc... having something natively is just better always.