These videos show that age-defying retouching isn’t just for photos anymore

Most people wish they could look a few years younger when captured on camera. Especially these days, with 4K and 8K cameras that seem to catch every pore and detail. While retouching to “fix” this is common with stills photography, it’s much more tricky to achieve in video. But filmmaker Rousselos Aravantinos seems to have it cracked.

Using a combination of Nuke and Mocha Pro, Rousselos says he’s been playing with new techniques to achieve some digital age reduction. And his results are just incredible. And he’s not just been working on faces, either.

Yes, Rousselos has been working on retouching entire bodies to assist with age reversal process. Yes, entire bodies. This video is a little NSFW.

It’s a pretty extreme difference. Rousselos talks a little about his process in one of the video descriptions…

1. Nuke, for the 2D work on the bodies and faces.
2. Mocha for some tracking.
3. Photoshop, for painting the young/old beard and body hair.
4. Maya 3D, for Adam’s hair, the crystal snake, and the leaves.
5. After Effects, for color and finishing.

He doesn’t say how much of the retouching was done inside Photoshop itself, but I can imagine a fairly substantial amount. Although it’s difficult to imagine it was as much work as has gone into this Nuke script.

https://vimeo.com/255944097

One thing I thought was quite interesting in the above Hybrid Mud video was that the rotting apple sequence was actually a timelapse. That’s right, it wasn’t CG, which really surprised me given the nature of the rest of the content in the video. He says that it took a whole three months to shoot that one sequence.

Defying age is not the only thing Roussselos’ process is good for, either. He also uses it to remove acne and other skin blemishes from subjects.

It’s pretty incredible just how well it works without turning into an uncanny valley CG style look.

While things like this have been going on in Hollywood for a few years now, it’s insane to think that we now have all this capability right here on our desktops.

It’s going to be very interesting to see where video software technology will be 5 or 10 years from now.