Basic Object Removal on 360/VR Footage with VR Comp Editor

Using the VR Comp Editor in Adobe After Effects, we can quickly remove static objects (such as tripod mounts) from any 360 scene. The VR Comp Editor is compatible with monoscopic 360 footage.

Published December 16, 2025

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00:01

Introduction

Using the VR Comp Editor in After Effects CC, we can quickly remove static objects such as tripod mounts, from any 360 scene.

Let's start off by launching the VR Comp Editor.

00:08

Opening the VR Comp Editor and adding a 2D edit

So, I'm going to come over here to the Window tab.

Down here at the very bottom, you're going to see the VR Comp Editor.

It's going to open up this dockable panel.

I'm just going to go ahead and dock this in the After Effects CC interface.

Now I need to select "Add 2D Edit".

And then I'm going to select the composition that I'm working with and I've got my "360 Main Comp" here.

If you don't see your composition, just click here and then select it.

And we're going ahead and "Add 2D Edit".

Now we can see it's went ahead and opened up the Edit 1 window and that's where we're currently viewing this in.

And you can hit C on the keyboard for the shortcut for the camera

00:39

Navigating the 360 scene to identify objects to remove

and you can look around your 360 scene now.

So, what I want to do is I want to line up the area that I want to remove.

So you can see here, I've got a tripod with a shadow in the shot.

So, I'm going to go directly down at that tripod and this is the area of the shot that I want to remove.

00:55

Removing a tripod using the clone stamp tool

So, I'm going to come up here and select the "Clone Stamp Tool".

Then I'm just going to double click on my tripod image and once you double clicked on that, you'll see this has opened up a layer view of our 360 video.

So this is a flat video at this point and we just have this area of the tripod in the scene.

You can also see that that launched the Brushes and the Paint tabs over here and those automatically opened in After Effects CC.

Currently I'm working with a brush that has a 70 Diameter, a Hardness of 0% and a Spacing of 20%.

That's going to work perfectly for me to paint out our Clone Stamp out this tripod and shadow.

Now what I want to do is I want to make sure my Current Time Indicator is at the very beginning of the video.

That's very important, that way it paints it out over the entire video and now if you're on Windows, go ahead and hold Alt or if you're on a Mac, hold Option, and when I do that, you'll see I get this little target that's appeared and that's where the start of my Clone Stamp is going to be.

So, I'm just going to click up here in this dirt and grass area.

And now, if I come down here to the tripod and shadow, in just two short little clicks, you'll see how that gradually paints out the tripod and shadow.

And as you can see, we were able to do that very quickly.

So now, it's actually been removed from our entire scene.

Now, in order for us to see that,

02:04

Previewing the 360 result and preparing the output for render

let's come over here to the VR Comp Editor, and I'm going to click on "Open Output Render".

And when I do that, we can now see a 360 degree view and you will see down here at the bottom that the tripod and the shadow have been removed from our 360 scene.

And now if I want to render this out, I just want to render out the output composition that was created by the VR Comp Editor and you can see over here in the Project panel, we have this folder structure and you'll see we have the name of our composition and the output.

What you learned: How to remove a static object using VR Comp Editor

● Remove static objects using 2D Edit and the Clone Stamp tool.

● Ensure you keep the Current Time Indicator at the start of your video clip.

● Once the object has been removed, render the Output composition created by the VR Comp Editor.

Adobe Stock Contributor: Charles Yeager

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