Advanced Windows – Difficult Shape Masking

In an ideal world we could get away with using circular power windows for everything (trust me I try to as much as possible!) but a time comes when you’re going to have to do some difficult shape masking.

Sometimes it’s possible to say it’s going to take too much time to do what your client is requesting and you can compromise on the shot and the grade but other times for example on a commercial when you have a full 8 hour day to grade 30 or 60seconds of footage it’s not possible to say no!

I’m sharing my technique to masking difficult shapes which I learned from my days working on Flame as a compositor. It’s not a groundbreaking new technique but something colorists may not have realized before.

The main thing we need to keep in mind is what areas we actually need to mask in fine detail rather than doing a perfect compositing style rotoscope. If you can get away with just rotoscoping one edge quite finely and the other side quite roughly it will save a ton of time!

Check out my insight below to find out more!

– Dan