Paint each frame : smooth it!

[shiver]

Hello everybody !

I like to use front matte offset for it’s ability to track and shift position, etc in time but,
I also use a lot the paint node to drag, recursive clone etc to fine tune a lot of complex details like reflections, shadows, dust in timelapse closeup…

And it’s a big deal to have the same retouch across frames, especially when you have a lot of them in a shot,

My question is:
How do you smooth your frame by frame paint to avoid glitch paint effect accros time ?

I tried recursiveops to smooth paint across frames or accumulate, maybe just paint every 3 or 4 frames and timewarp it to have smooth transition between paint strokes…

Thanks for your paint experience feedback

[allklier]

In 2024 you can Axis track select paint node strokes, that will make them match the plate and should avoid visible issues.

Alternatively you can stab/unstab and paint inbetween.

In both cases single stroke with sequence scope. So it’s identical across all frames.

[shiver]

Hello @allklier
Sure i use it all the time, lock the frame with stb / unstab.
Maybe use the motion vector map and lock it and inverse to paint easier.

No idea if we don’t use stab unstab ?

[allklier]

The axis track in 2024 works without stab/unstab.

There’s a learning channel video by Jeff Kyle on it. And also another thread that goes into detail how the tracker works with different strokes (it acts as a clipboard for position data)

Paint Tracking - stroke/tracker relationship

I think it’s worth clarifying how this works, piecing together @Jeff’s explanation and my experience since. Each paint stroke has a number of animation channels, including a position x/y. This is stored on a per stroke basis. Even though in the UI this is labeled ‘Axis’, there doesn’t appear a separate persistent Axis object attached to the stroke. Instead there is a single hidden Axis object that exists for the entire node. When you enter the tracker, it is this hidden Axis object that you ar…

[hBomb42]

@shiver

…eal to have the same retouch across frames, especially when you have a lot of them in a shot,My question is:How do you smooth your frame by frame paint to avoid glitch paint effect accros time ?I tried recursiveops to smooth paint across frames or accumulate, maybe just paint every 3 or 4 frames and timewarp it to have smooth transition between paint strokes…Thanks for your paint experience feedback

Set your paint strokes to Sequence and paint on just one frame instead of Current Frame and start from there. If you are stabilizing and un stabilizing that should get you most of the way.

[hildebrandtbernd]

When you really need to paint frame by frame, never do more than one step at once, but one step frame by frame. This keeps the procedure linear enough to merge with the flow. But painting frame by frame that way is only an option when tracked sequences or the stab/unstab workflow is no option.

[allklier]

Every once in a while tracking just doesn’t work.

As @hildebrandtbernd said, if you do one stroke at a time you can keep it smoother. Try to keep your hand steady, use the other hand to advance frame, make a very similar motion. Then go back to the beginning and do the next stroke. But even with that, you often still are left with noticeable jitter.

One more option: Do the paint stroke on frame 1, then add this frame as a source, and do the remaining one as a reveal of your stroke at frame 1, copying your exact stroke, but adjusting the offset/rotation manually. It can help, except when there’s lighting changes on top.

If all that still fails (and I had one of those cases), find other ways of solving it. In my case I ended up using extended bicubics to remove the problem pixels by stretching the surroundings.

Or you can try Silhouette Paint. It has a few more tricks up its sleeve. It offers you the ability to perform color correction on each stroke, which allows you to compensate for lighting changes when you’re painting from neighboring frames (i.e. reveal).

(ps: I just made a feature request for Flame to incorporate brush color correction a-la Silhouette - if you agree that this is useful, feel free to upvote it)