Roto Assist

Anyone know how to use it? Nothing in the manual. Nothing in internet/youtube searches or this forum so far.

In the Fusion page, I add a paint node between the in/out nodes.

I then, at the top, click 'Polyline Stroke' which reveals a row of buttons including a 'Roto Assist' "wand" button at the far right (see screenshot).

roto wand.png (5.33 KiB) Viewed 4564 times

I click the Roto Assist button, it turns white. Cool. I choose 'Roto Assist Multi Points' from the drop down.

Then, I click the outline I am trying to have automatically rotoscoped. Boom! Selects a huge portion of my outline! (see attached)

roto assist.png (110.27 KiB) Viewed 4564 times

So I figure: I'll click again and keep clicking until it gets the entire outline... nuthin'.

It selected a portion one time after my first click on the outline but then won't select any more of the outline no matter how much I click.

Anyone use this tool and can tell me how it works?

TIA

I would also be interested to know how this works

P286 of the fusion 9 manual has a description of the tool

WHY is the documentation so bad for this. Its not even slightly helpful.
I dont consider my self a daft person but ive been through key combinations and different clicks but nothing produces repeatable results.
if i click the first point and then click and hold i see the track of the suggested poly line...when i let go of click, i get straight line from first click, the points have gone.

Its beyond poor in its function and documentation, sorry

Did you find the answer for that?

I tried to use this tool for the first time today.

What I found was that:

1. If "Roto Assist Multiple Points" is on, then on the first click of the tool - and seemingly ONLY the first click of the tool - it is capable of adding an automatic outline, assuming I click on a high-contrast edge. However, there is no preview of what edge it will create, and the edge you get is highly dependent on where you click.

It may therefore take several clicks and undo's before you get something semi useful, like I have in this screenshot:


2. After achieving that auto line, it seems to be impossible to get it to continue automatically outlining. It seems to shift into a different mode, regardless of the fact that "Roto Assist Multiple Points" is still enabled.

In this different mode, if you click and hold to make a new point, you will see a yellow outline along a high-contrast edge. Your points will 'stick' or be magnetised to this line.

It's therefore possible to keep clicking and holding to manually add points and they will approximately follow that line. This is likely a little quicker and a little more accurate than adding those points manually.

Here's an example of that yellow line appearing for subsequent points:


What's baffling is why there's no way to get it to do the automatic mode anytime after the first click. It can clearly see the high-contrast edges, as it shows them in yellow. So why can't it just add points to them, like it does on the first click, and seemingly the only click? It's like "Roto Assist Multiple Points" just breaks after the first click.

It's also very confusing as to why it offers no preview as to the auto line it will add on that first click, making it trial-and-error getting a suitable outline.

Then there's the fact that there's basically no settings for it at all. You'd think there'd be some threshold control for the contrast edge detection, like there is for the Magic Wand in Photoshop and other similar tools. The only setting is a Distance control which I think relates to the distance in pixels it will snap points in the "yellow line" manual point mode.

Add all that on top of the fact that it has no more than a paragraph of documentation, which doesn't explain any of the above, and the end result is a really confusing mess.

If anyone knows any more about this tool and has got it to work reliably and more usefully than I've described, I would love to know! Maybe we're just missing some mode of operation or hidden option that suddenly makes it really useful.

For me, the first click places a point, and seems to give Resolve an idea about what edge I'm trying to roto, but there's no visual feedback on the first click. It isn't until the second mouse down that I see a yellow edge, which seems contingent on wherever the first one was placed. After that, I can continue to add points along the yellow line until it eventually runs out. When that happens, but I still have more to go, if I twirl down the disclosure arrow next to the magic wand icon, there's an option that says "Reset", which lets me define a new starting point, like the first mouse click, but it doesn't throw out the points I've already drawn, letting me continue around the edge.

I've never used this feature, so I can't say whether or not it behaves this way consistently. I am using a very contrasty, sharp, straight edge to test.

Imho this kind of autotrace features are either totally useless or mostly useless. If there is no additional option to clean the shape and get rid of most points, it can't be used for proper roto anyway without tedious fixing and in that case better create the shape manually in the firstplace.

For me, the first click places a point, and seems to give Resolve an idea about what edge I'm trying to roto, but there's no visual feedback on the first click. It isn't until the second mouse down that I see a yellow edge, which seems contingent on wherever the first one was placed.

Thanks for the test. It sounds like you're only getting the 'manual points' mode (as I called it). Yesterday I was testing the feature with someone on the Resolve/Fusion Discord and he also could only get it working in manual mode - it wouldn't automatically add points along a line in the way it sometimes did for me.

This manual mode is semi-useful I guess - slightly better than not having Roto Assist on. But still very time consuming.

It's the auto mode (Roto Assist Multiple Points) that we hoped could be used more reliably, but I just can't get it to automatically add more than one edge per mask, which is very frustrating. So too is the lack of any feedback prior to clicking, which I find especially weird as it's clearly capable of showing a preview of the edge, which it does in manual points mode in the form of that yellow line.

Imho this kind of autotrace features are either totally useless or mostly useless. If there is no additional option to clean the shape and get rid of most points, it can't be used for proper roto anyway without tedious fixing and in that case better create the shape manually in the firstplace.

After it adds its points you could use the standard spline option to "Reduce points"? I didn't try that specifically, but I imagine it would work to some extent.

But yeah, a fully implemented tool should definitely have more options. There should be some kind of threshold control for the high-contrast edge, and a control that affects how many points are added along a detected edge, like you said. Photoshop's Magic Wand is one example - it has options for the Sample Size (Point vs 3x3 average, 5x5 average, +more), Tolerance, and more. And Photoshop's automatic path creation tools has controls for the number of anchor point to use when making the path. Roto Assist is kind of the combination of those two tools, and should have both sets of options.

Mocha's magnetic edge spline works pretty well to quickly get an initial path set up, and I had hoped that Fusion's Roto Assist might be somewhat similar. Sadly not.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It seems likely to me now that this feature just doesn't work properly for anyone. Maybe they never finished implementing it, which could explain why there's so little documentation and discussion around it.

They are still far behind what Mocha Pro or Silhouette can do these days for semi-automatic roto.
But then, have a look at the price!

They are still far behind what Mocha Pro or Silhouette can do these days for semi-automatic roto.
But then, have a look at the price!

Sure, I was never expecting the sophistication of those in Fusion.

It's just frustrating because the Roto Assist feature exists and is so near to being really quite useful, but it just seems to be unfinished, or buggy.

As far as I'm concerned all that's really needed is for it be able to keep automatically adding points along any edge you click on. It does that on the first click (usually), but then it just won't do it again on that mask, even when it can clearly see other edges which it outlines in yellow for the manual point mode.

So near, yet so far!

It sounds like you're only getting the 'manual points' mode (as I called it).

Guilty, as charged, your honor.

Mocha's magnetic edge spline works pretty well to quickly get an initial path set up, and I had hoped that Fusion's Roto Assist might be somewhat similar.

Yeah, I use the Mocha OFX plugin, which is why I haven't used the Fusion roto assist much. BRAW always crashes Mocha for me, though, so it'd be nice to have an alternative to baking out prores.

I messed around with it a little last night, but Mocha still seems more useful. One thing that I found a little awkward was that if I use Fusion's planar tracker, there doesn't appear to be an obvious way to perform a planar transform on a polygon, and keep the curve editable after the transformation. Maybe that's not necessary and I should just animate the upstream polygon, though, and I'm just too used to thinking in terms of Mocha.

They are still far behind what Mocha Pro or Silhouette can do these days for semi-automatic roto.
But then, have a look at the price!

It's just frustrating because the Roto Assist feature exists and is so near to being really quite useful, but it just seems to be unfinished, or buggy.

This is how Im starting to feel about a lot of features in Fusion! It's like the old eyeon team would give these sorts of "projects" to a programmer who would get it almost done and working but not all the way before being put on the next programing project.

On the example you showed, couldn't you get there faster by using a keyer or several and use roto only for cleanup? Just curious why it needed to be roto'd.

This is how Im starting to feel about a lot of features in Fusion! It's like the old eyeon team would give these sorts of "projects" to a programmer who would get it almost done and working but not all the way before being put on the next programing project.

Yeah, same here. The roto assist so far doesn't seem to work at all. It sometimes shows me a preview of a part of the shape that it looks like it's going to place points on, but it only actually creates points once... and after that, it doesn't actually do anything other than intermittently generate a non-functional preview, which doesn't even appear to constraint the points in any way.