• Adobe After Effects

  Keying advice

  Posted by Christian Wheel on January 1, 2012 at 9:48 am

  Footage sample:

  

  All attempts to key so far have failed due to the blue light that spilled onto the foreground. Anybody know any way to do this?

  Ben G unguren replied 14 years, 4 months ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  January 1, 2012 at 11:35 am

  RotoBrush may be the only thing that can save this. Traditional keying will not work because of the spill- the values are way to close to eachother. Anyway, what gave you the idea that you can actually key of that background?

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Rousselos Aravantinos

  January 1, 2012 at 4:15 pm

  I assume keying such footage wasn’t in your first plan.
  Even the backdrop is pleated. Anyway..

  You may also have to dublicate your layer per filter such as:
  extract
  color key (the best part of it is that it’s not an inteligent one )
  color range

  Try to pull a matte for the hair using the extract filter.
  The same filter under different values will keep some of the green shirt also.

  color range for the shirt

  for skin (hands) try to add numerous color key filter, but don’t push them too far. in many cases color key will produce a decent matte but you will have to improve it using a choker or something similar.

  Later on merge/precompose your layers and apply a composite choker if needed.

  Roto for the headphone
• 

  Christian Wheel

  January 1, 2012 at 6:37 pm

  Thanks guys, for the suggestions, I will give them a try.

  Usually this footage is pretty easy to key, it was shot using the Chromatte keying system. Believe it or not, here is a shot of just the screen from the same shoot:

  

  The problem is that the talent got too close to the camera, allowing both the blue light to spill on himself and robbing the backdrop from reflecting it back to the lens. C’est la vie I suppose. But this was a problem for about 50 seconds of the 10 minutes of footage.

  Thanks again for your help. Happy New Year!
• 

  Rousselos Aravantinos

  January 1, 2012 at 10:49 pm

  C’est la vie vraiment alors!
  Donc, dix seconds…pas grave!
  Bonne annee!

  Best of luck then Christian !
• 

  Ben G unguren

  January 2, 2012 at 12:17 am

  I bet you cab get a decent result with his hair and shirt (using key light, calculations, levels, etc). The skin, headphones, other bits and pieces will require rotobrush or mochaAE. If it were me I would think of this as a full roto job, and then be grateful that some of the stuff can be done procedurally. Then you are in a glass half-full situation!

  Ben Unguren
  Motion Graphics & Editing
  http://www.mostlydocumentary.com

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