Removing object from background when foreground object to retain moves in front of it

Question

I need to remove a wall outlet from the background of my video. This would be dead simple with a mask, except for the fact that at one point my foreground subject to retain moves in front of that wall outlet. From what I've been able to "learn" it seems that rotoscoping in AE is the way to go. But for some reason my defined rotoscope area doesn't "stick" throughout the video when I expand the workspace. It's a somewhat subtle beige outlet on a beige wall, but still, it's definitely obvious so I'm not sure why my rotoscope would "lose" it like that?

As you can no doubt tell, I'm new to AE so please accept my newness. 🙂

Thanks.

Szalam · Accepted Answer

You want to rotoscope your foreground object, but only the part where it crosses the wall outlet removal layer.

For this task, I would probably create a blank wall by using the healing tools/content aware fill in Photoshop on a frame that didn't have anything occluding the outlent and then bring that into AE to put over the offending spot on the wall. I would use a mask so that I'm only putting it over the spot that needs correction. Then, maybe add a little noise or grain to it so it fits the video better and doesn't look like a pasted still. After that, depending on what your foreground object is, I'd probably just use an animated mask on a copy of the foreground layer. Again, only need to roto the parts that go in front of the new wall piece.

Rick Gerard · Answer

You are going to have problems trying to clone over the outlet because of the shadow cast by the actor. an easier approach is to just use a copy of the layer shifted to the left. You can also use a trimmed, masked, and pre-composed copy of the footage to greatly simplify the roto work using rotobrush.

Here's the workflow. Duplicate the footage layer twice. Name the top copy Mask. Trim the in and out points of the Mask layer to one frame before the actor's head starts to cover the outlet and one frame after the outlet is revealed. Add a simple rectangular mask to the Mask layer that is about 4 times the size of the outlet, Pre-compose moving all attributes, and trimming the comp to the in and out points of the layer.

Now run Rotobrush on the few frames where the actor moves in front of the outlet. The mask in the pre-comp will limit the propagation of Rotobrush and make it a lot easier to select the hair as it moves in front of the outlet. You only really have to worry about the very few frames where the actor's head is starting to cover the outlet and the last few frames where the actor's head is revealing the outlet. That's a total of about 10 frames. Then run refine the edge and freeze the Roto.

The next step is to draw a rectangular mask just a little larger than the outlet just to the right side of the outlet on Layer 2, the second copy of the footage. Apply a few frames of feather and then slide the layer to the left so that the masked section of the clean wall covers the outlet. Set the Matte layer as an Inverted Alpha track matte for layer 2.

The final step is a very slight curves adjustment to match the patch (layer 2) with the original wall. I downloaded your footage, followed those steps, and got this comp (which you can download and replace the missing footage with yours). It took about 10 minutes and looks like this:

You'll need two or three keyframes on the Curves adjustment to hide the patch completely.

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