Ah, thanks for the hints, Roman.
Still, when it's foreseeable that you won't be very lucky finding hard contrast edges, you surely would use tracking dots, wouldn't you ?
So, last attempt: Is there really nobody working with tracking dots ?
Chris
If I use it to corner pin, I make sure the tracking dots are well within the interior of the object so the layer I'm overlaying is big enough to cover the dots.
If worse comes to worse, I roto over them with Commotion (which will probably be replaced by AE 6's new vector paint.)
Only time I had to cover dots applied to a set piece was a simple Photoshop trick. Copy the footage layer and apply some blur. Make the dots disappear with a soft-edged circle matte or wipe so the blurry layer shows through.
It's not that easy, of course. Lots of hand-tweaking was needed to keep the bottom layer precisely positioned and the dots never really went away completely. I tired to apply some noise to the edges of the mattes so they had a more random appearance but I ran out of energy and time.
Next time I would shoot a clean plate without them. I think that would be easier to matte into the dots.
Now that you know what you're doing, plan the shot carefully enough next time to make it easier to hide them or replace them.
bogiesan
Thanks a lot to all of you for your input.
Christian