Tracer/pickers in Smoke's Gmask tool - Tutorials/demos?

[alan_okey]

When the Gmask Tracer tool was introduced in Flame, I recall having read about the Tracer/pickers in the Smoke manual several years earlier, although I never really tried using it.  I realized that prior to recent video demos/tutorials of Flame's Gmask Tracer, I've never seen any tutorials or demos of the Tracer/pickers in Smoke.

How many people use or have used it?  It seems like something that was buried in the UI that never really got much notice or publicity.  In what ways does Flame's Gmask Tracer differ from the Tracer in Smoke's Gmask tool?  Is the new Gmask Tracer a refinement/reworking of earlier ideas, or is it a fundamentally new and different tool from the earlier Tracer functionality in Gmasks?

Since Flame's Gmask Tracer tool is not available in Smoke, would anyone find any value in seeing tutorials/demos of the Tracer/picker functionality in Smoke's Gmask tool?

[jaseo · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

The naming is a bit confusing. The GMask Tracer is an enitre tool dedicated to matte creation, and is based on the Action ecosystem. The tracer component of creating location-based keys using pickers is just a function of the gmask node inside the GMask Tracer. 

Both Smoke and Flame have the CFX(BFX) GMask tool with its tracer. However, Flame also has the newer Action/GMask Tracer GMask nodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_VeV_ZLvxo

I believe the new improved tracer inside the Gmask Tracer/Action GMask node was introduced with the release of the GMask Tracer. 

cheers