Make new shapes under the same polygon mask node in fusion

"Is there a way to make new shapes on different frames under the same polygon mask node in Fusion?"

So I'm doing a scene that requires a lot of manual masking, and, personally, the best way for me to go through this scene is to: create a mask shape for frame 1 > go to frame 2 and create a new shape from the start > keep going until it ends.

Normally, in some cases, I could just make one shape in the first frame, and keep going forward while I just move the points to match what I want to mask in the next frame. However, this cannot be done in this specific scenario I'm facing, it wastes WAY too much time due to how many points I would have to move each one at a time. So it would be best if I could just go to the next frame, quickly make a new shape from scratch, and keep on doing that for the frames ahead.

What happens is that I am unable to do this, since if I try to make a new shape on a frame, it affects all the previous ones (Like if I delete a shape to create a new one from scratch, all of the previous ones are deleted as well)! So when I make a shape, I am forever stuck in that shape unless I create a new node. It just baffles my mind how something like this cannot be done (apparently), without having to spend time creating nodes, and nodes, and more nodes just for different shapes (coming from someone who used to edit in like Vegas Pro, MANY years back then, it was possible there, to just do everything under a single event), which is pretty frustrating to deal with.

This is not the main issue, but another thing to add, I also think it's pretty weird that on the same polygon node, it is not possible to have 2 or more masks at the same time. ONE polygon mask node can only have ONE mask apparently, so if I want to work with 2 or more at the same time, I have to keep switching nodes over and over. (Again, this used to be much easier, and I don't know why such a thing is not possible here, or perhaps it is, and I just don't know how to do it, that's why I am asking you guys, and I hope you understand, thank you!).

If I understand you correctly, you're talking about using something like a polygon mask node on which you've enabled shape animation so that it can take on a different shape with each frame by moving the vertices of the polygon from one frame to the next.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no way for a polygon mask node to have a different number of vertices between frames. For example, I don't believe it's possible to have one polygon node that masks off a square area using four vertices on one frame and then a pentagon using five vertices on the next frame. When you add or remove a vertex to the node, that vertex gets added or removed on all the frames.

But if you have a polygon with enough vertices to describe the most complex shape in your sequence, you can use that same number of vertices to describe a simpler shape. For example, you can take a polygon that masks a pentagon using five vertices on one frame, and on the next frame you can turn it into a square simply by moving two of the adjacent vertices to the same location and rearranging the others to form a square shape.

"Is there a way to make new shapes on different frames under the same polygon mask node in Fusion?"

So I'm doing a scene that requires a lot of manual masking, and, personally, the best way for me to go through this scene is to: create a mask shape for frame 1 > go to frame 2 and create a new shape from the start > keep going until it ends.

Why? Why from the start are you creating new shape? What are you making that requires this?

Normally, in some cases, I could just make one shape in the first frame, and keep going forward while I just move the points to match what I want to mask in the next frame. However, this cannot be done in this specific scenario I'm facing, it wastes WAY too much time due to how many points I would have to move each one at a time. So it would be best if I could just go to the next frame, quickly make a new shape from scratch, and keep on doing that for the frames ahead..

What is this thing you are doing or attempting to mask this way? I don't understand.

What happens is that I am unable to do this, since if I try to make a new shape on a frame, it affects all the previous ones (Like if I delete a shape to create a new one from scratch, all of the previous ones are deleted as well)! So when I make a shape, I am forever stuck in that shape unless I create a new node. It just baffles my mind how something like this cannot be done (apparently), without having to spend time creating nodes, and nodes, and more nodes just for different shapes (coming from someone who used to edit in like Vegas Pro, MANY years back then, it was possible there, to just do everything under a single event), which is pretty frustrating to deal with.

Show what you are doing and I'll suggest how to do it more efficiently.

This is not the main issue, but another thing to add, I also think it's pretty weird that on the same polygon node, it is not possible to have 2 or more masks at the same time. ONE polygon mask node can only have ONE mask apparently, so if I want to work with 2 or more at the same time, I have to keep switching nodes over and over. (Again, this used to be much easier, and I don't know why such a thing is not possible here, or perhaps it is, and I just don't know how to do it, that's why I am asking you guys, and I hope you understand, thank you!).

You can combine splines in one of two ways, actually there are more indirect ones, but directly you can either connected them in serial manner, which automatically opens up the use of paint mode to connect or merge them in variety of ways, such as subtract, add, merge etc,

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Or you can use multiply node which basically houses individual nodes, like layers. Either way, its easy to modify them individually or all of them, you don't have to switch nodes, you can select it from the viewer, any point you want.

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P.S.

Here are some useful keyboard shortcuts to use with B-splines, which I personally prefer over polygon splines because they require less points to make same shape and are easier to work with most of the time, but require some knowlage of very powerful keyboard shortcuts. So here are some useful ones.

If you hold the ALT key you can than move selected points around with a mouse and not be super precise where you click. This is the most useful and quickest way to work with splines.

Hold ALT key and use mouse to either move around selected points or if you have whole spline selected it will move it all, or if you have no points selected you can hold ALT and move your mouse close to any point and than move it. This is super quick way to reposition points or whole spline where you need to.

If you have whole of spline selected....

Hold X and move mouse to move spline along the X axis only, depending on where you mouse is at the time. And hold Y for the same thing along Y axis. Hold X or Y and move mouse up or down, left or right, depending on where you mouse is , it will prioritize that side of the spline.

Hold O or S and move your move with spline selected and you can resize it. One resizes it based on positing of the mouse and the other is more proportional.

Hold T and click somewhere with mouse and move it while holding T, and you can rotate the spline around the pivot point of your mouse.

In B-Splines select a corner point and drag mouse while holding W and you can adjust very precisely the curvature of the spline of that corner.

In Polygon splines, if you hold SHIFT while dragging a handle, the handle will not change angle, only length. And if you click on one side of the handle and hold CTRL than you can change just that half of the handle.

Selecting all points and choosing SHIFT + S or SHIFT + L changes between smooth and linear points and this also works for just some of the selected points and whole spline.

If you select all points and use TAB you can cycle to go between points.

If you select all points and click DoublePoly button in the toolbar of the tool, than click TAB it will allow you to switch between single and double poly mode, quickly.

What I'm trying to mask are two different hands from a subject, they happen to be pretty far apart, so I can't make one single mask that covers them both like they're connected, and I have to make 2 nodes and work with the 2 masks separately.
Plus, the hands change shape a lot, by that I mean that the fingers and the hand position itself move quite often, so if I were to keep masking the fingers, I would need to keep moving each point from the mask from the previous frame to match the new position of the hand and the fingers, which consumes time, while I could just make a new mask from scratch, which I can do faster than moving all the points.
This is why I asked if something like this was possible, because I used to do it before switching, and I thought it was a pretty good quality of life feature to be able to do that.

What I'm trying to mask are two different hands from a subject, they happen to be pretty far apart, so I can't make one single mask that covers them both like they're connected, and I have to make 2 nodes and work with the 2 masks separately.
Plus, the hands change shape a lot, by that I mean that the fingers and the hand position itself move quite often, so if I were to keep masking the fingers, I would need to keep moving each point from the mask from the previous frame to match the new position of the hand and the fingers, which consumes time, while I could just make a new mask from scratch, which I can do faster than moving all the points.
This is why I asked if something like this was possible, because I used to do it before switching, and I thought it was a pretty good quality of life feature to be able to do that.

If you are rotosciping hands and making new shapes for each frame, something is off. And if you are trying to do it in two shapes only instead of multiple shames, you will probably lose more time than if you did it properly, paper doll style. Rotoscoping is done that way for a reason. The points move at different speeds since they are at different distance from camera. And if fingers start to overlap or motion blur is present, you are in trouble if you have only one shape.

Rotoscoping is notoriously laborious and lows process. If what you want to do what the best way than no one would bother doing it any other way.

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Silhouette Essentials Roto - 04C Hand Roto [Boris FX rotoscoping]

Silhouette Essentials Roto - 04D Leg Roto [Boris FX rotoscoping]

Silhouette Essentials Roto - 05G Motion Blur [Boris FX rotoscoping]

...if fingers start to overlap or motion blur is present, you are in trouble if you have only one shape.

I agree with your post completely, manual rotoscoping of something like hand movements is going to be very labour intensive no matter what you do. And using multiple shapes to cover individual fingers is usually a lot easier to deal with because the individual shapes will often have relatively simple movements between keyframes such as translation or rotation, which is much less work than having to reposition all the individual vertices.

Not only that, but you'll often find that you need different keyframes for the different subparts of the mask. If you have only one mask, changing one point will freeze all of the vertices to that frame, which means that you end up with the entire mask having all the keyframes for any small movement of any piece. That's a real pain to deal with as you go through and adjust the points.

I will say, though, that you don't have to rule out using a single mask for parts that may become overlapping. If, for example, you set the "Fill Method" of a polygon mask to "Non-zero Winding" then the mask can double back over itself to accommodate overlaps. This gives you some more options on how to put the mask together depending on how the hand moves through the duration of the clip.

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Not only that, but you'll often find that you need different keyframes for the different subparts of the mask. If you have only one mask, changing one point will freeze all of the vertices to that frame, which means that you end up with the entire mask having all the keyframes for any small movement of any piece. That's a real pain to deal with as you go through and adjust the points.

True. Technically you could tell fusion to only change some key frames not all, but its even slower to have to do that for every little movement.

I will say, though, that you don't have to rule out using a single mask for parts that may become overlapping. If, for example, you set the "Fill Method" of a polygon mask to "Non-zero Winding" then the mask can double back over itself to accommodate overlaps. This gives you some more options on how to put the mask together depending on how the hand moves through the duration of the clip.

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"Non-zero Winding" Interesting. When I was learning fusion, I came across that option, but couldn't find a reference in the manual, and when I asked around, no one answered, so I think you are the first guy to mention it. Nice. Thanks.

It does have a nice ability. I've just tried it.

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And I managed to find some more info on wikipedia of all places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero-r ... kin=vector

P.S.

You hand roto example seem to have great many points. Which can be cumbersome to adjust as the shape changes over time. Have you considered using B-splines, since they can accommodate the same shape with less points. I personally, default to B-splines and don't even use polygon splines. It just seems easier to work with if you use proper shortcuts.

...Have you considered using B-splines, since they can accommodate the same shape with less points. I personally, default to B-splines and don't even use polygon splines. It just seems easier to work with if you use proper shortcuts.

Polygons are pretty obvious and intuitive to understand, so I latched on to them early - once you know a tool you tend to stick with it. At least that's true for me.

But your post has intrigued me and I think I'll spend a bit of time playing with B-splines to see how they work. Thanks for your posts!