[Bf-committers] Masks are not only for Mattes

[Daniel Salazar - 3Developer.com]

I've been testing the cool mask editor and have detected that it is
too centered around the matte workflow. Rotoscoping is one big use of masks
but it is not the only one by far

Another big (arguably bigger) use case for masks is to localize composite
effects

In the making of of Exeter Shot by alex roman you can see the heavy use of
power windows and other kinds of masks to colorize, darken, etc zones of
the composition

https://vimeo.com/8217700

We got to rethink how to present the masking tools not as something
strictly attached to a footage but something of regular use in the
compositor for any scene, even fully generated

Part of the solution can be to allow a compositor viewer to feed the mask
editor, this way we can see the composited results under the masks. Similar
to my simple design from more than a year ago that used the image viewer to
both edit masks and also load the viewer result

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/15LEi9SAE4KcsIOdWX16iPoSXhCjM0vA1ws6KxF4Dhzk/edit?authkey=CJ7U-dQK&authkey=CJ7U-dQK

Another problem is the difficulty to manage multiple masks at once. The
current workflow contemplates editing of one mask, if you need another mask
you need to disable the current one and create a new mask databloq. Even
with layers available they can only be retrieved as a single mask in the
compositor, hence being useful for a single effect. In practice you will
need many fully independant masks acting in a single composite. One for
colorizing some part, one for darkening, one or two for blurring, etc.

Cheers

Daniel Salazar
patazstudio.com