Tips for complex power windows?

Hiya,
I doing some more complex power nodes or masks of moving animals where I have several animals moving around coming in from behind things etc. I was wondering if anyone has tips for how to make the workflow easier on masking them.

A few problems I have
- if I add a new "dot" on the curve of the power node then this breaks the blend between the different keyframes. Sometimes I just realize later that i need more points for a certain place. Currently I only use the PowerCurve.
- For more complex things like this should I use another program for making the masks? I think Davinci is great for simpler masks, but harder to use for more complex details. I used After Effects which also lets you paint details on each keyframe that was good when it was needed. It feels a bit easier to use, you can change colors of the masks, name them etc.

Fusion probably has much better masking tools, but have not tried them yet.

Any general tips or tutorials that could help out?
/Andreas

The perfect program for this is Mocha, but unfortunately it doesn't yet work as a plug-in in Resolve.
You can send the results of the standalone version to standalone Fusion, though.

Thanks for the reply Uli. I briefly tested the stabilizer in Mocha and love it. Hopefully the plugin will work in Davinci

I guess in this case round tripping to Fusion FX could be worth it for trickier shots like this.

I'm just trying the Fuxion FX masking tools and they are WAY more powerful than Davinci's so I think for just masking it could worth it here.

/Andreas

If you can export the mask as a video from Mocha I guess you could use that in Davinci?
Best,
Andreas

Yes, you can use them in Fusion, but there is no direct import into Resolve. What you can do, though, is render the masks out in Mocha and use them as clip mattes in Resolve.
But it's also true that Fusion has more advanced masking tools, so maybe BM will focus on improving stability there. For the time being use VFX Connect.

Spent 2 days with Mocha. Seems fantastic for tracking, but takes a while to learn.
I think the workflow I will use is just export the mates and use them directly in Resolve. Then if I need to tweak them I will just go back to Mocha.

I am tracking a big bear with furry hair. Any tips for how to deal with the fur. What I have been thinking is that I use the matte from Mocha to get the shape. But then I can try to do a luminance mask in Davinci so I focus on the darker parts (bear). However one problem I have is that some parts of the fur is quite bright so it ends up cutting out things in the middle of the bear.
It is almost as what I would want is to only get the edges of the mask and select the dark parts only, but in the center of the bear I select everything.
Not sure how to set that up though. Maybe export the outline from Mocha with a thickness and use this filter here and maybe shrink the mask for the inside.

Any thoughts on how to tackle the fur?
/Andreas

With a few nodes you can combine a 'core' matte and an edge matte (or even several).
You can work as freely with your matte in the node system as with the picture. Even without looking at your footage, though, I'd expect it to be tricky if the bear didn't care to dance in front of a greenscreen

I figured out a way that seems "clever" for how to shrink the alpha. This is how I do it:
1. Output the alpha but drag it to the color on a corrector now. Now you have a black and white image.
2. Use the Alpha Matte Shrink and Grow. This will grow or shrink the colors which is the black and white version of the matte.
3. Output the color and drag it to the alpha to your next node.

Now the matte is smaller or larger. And what I should be able to do then is subtract the smaller version from the larger to get and edge, and THEN in that edge only mask the dark things which would be the fur.

Seems like it could work!
/Andreas

Such a ‘core’ matte is a good approach that is regularly used for greenscreen too.

Thanks Uli.
It worked really well to bring in an matte from Mocha and use these methods on them. Only downside it takes forever to render from Mocha.

/Andreas

Do you have recent version of Mocha and did you check to use the GPU? It has been improved a lot, but rendering image sequences needs fast drives too.
Check the format you use for output, it might be overkill for your project.