User Manual

Table Of Contents
Using the Planar Tracker with the Paint Tool
Here’s an example that dives deeper into a workflow where we use the Paint tool with the
Planar Tracker for retouching a clip. We’ll eliminate some facial scars on an actor’s forehead in a
commercial by combining the Paint node with the PlanarTracker node, illustrating a common
way of using these two powerful tools together.
The actor has some scars on his forehead that the
director would like painted out.
Because this is a clip in motion, we can’t just paint out the scars on the man’s forehead; we
need to deal with the motion so that the paint work we do stays put on his face. In this case, a
common workflow is to analyze the motion in the image and use it to apply a “steady
operation, pinning down the area we want to paint in place so we can paint on an
unmoving surface.
Setting Up the Planar Tracker for Stabilization
The best way to do this is to use the Planar Tracker, so we’ll add the PlanarTracker node after
the MediaIn1 node, such that the image connects to the background input of the PlanarTracker
node. As always, it’s important to be careful about which input you connect for the effect to
work properly.
Adding a PlanarTracker node to analyze and steady the part
of the image we want to paint on
With the PlanarTracker node selected and loaded in the viewer, a viewer toolbar appears with a
variety of tools for drawing shapes and manipulating tracking data. The Planar Tracker works by
tracking flat surfaces that you define by drawing a shape around the feature you want to track.
When you first create a PlanarTracker node, you can immediately begin drawing a shape, so in
this case, we draw a simple polygon over the man’s forehead since that’s the feature we want to
steady in preparation for painting.
We draw a simple box by clicking once each on each corner of the man’s forehead to create
control points, and then clicking the first one we created to close the shape.
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