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Masking tracking points on a key
Hi
I’m very new to Motion and the world of keying in general. I’ve done some green screen keying with locked down shots, but recently I was asked to do a green screen in which an graphic needs to be masked to an iPad. They uploaded a solid green image with white crosses for the tracking points into the iPad. I have been able to get the key and attach the image to the tracking points, but now I am unsure of how to best mask the tracking points. I’ve tried searching for tutorials, but I can’t seem to find anything. We are locked into either Motion 4or Final Cut Pro 7. Can anyone help me out or point me in the direction of some good tutorials on keying moving shots?
Thanks
Scott -
9 Replies
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I asked a colleague who does a lot of high-end compositing on Smoke and Flame, and he says that it all depends on your shot. A common way of doing it is simply to paint the markers out, but as Motion doesn’t have any paint tools (in the sense of image touchup) that’s not much help.
Can you upload the video, or even just a still? That would help us suggest ways of getting round it with the Motion toolset. One approach you might want to consider would be to composite other parts of the front panel of the iPad over the top of the markers using garbage masks; with judicious feathering you may well get away with it.
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I would simplify things and ignore the cross hairs. If it is an iPad with green for the screen use the 4pt tracker and track your image over the green and cross hairs. Just track the 4 edges of the green screen. Hope this helps and best of luck.
Stephen Smith
Utah Video ProductionsCheck out my Motion Training DVD
Check out my Motion Tutorials
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Yeah it’s called rotoscoping and it’s something Motion has little direct support for. But if the footage was shot properly you may not ever need to worry about it. But if you do, you can take the footage into Photoshop or AfterEffects- both of which are essential for any VFX artist’s toolbox IMHO and paint out the tracking markers either procedurally or frame by frame. Again it all comes down to the original footage and how intelligently it was set up.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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Unfortunately our internet was down for the day so I was unable to view your helpful comments. We ended up being able to reshoot with a green screen taped onto the iPad and used small blue squares for tracking points, which I was able to key out with a second key. Once it was reshot it was pretty simple to achieve, taking probably a quarter of the time it would have taken me to manually paint out the original tracking points, especially with the hand sliding over them (and blocking them as a result). The producers seemed pretty happy with the result, although now they are asking to see if I can make the surface reflective like the iPad screen.
Do you know how I would do that? Would I need to have the reverse angle in 3D space reflecting on the keyed-in graphic? That’s the only way I can conceive of it but then again I have almost no experience in graphic work (yay for baptism by fire). I’m going to look around as well (something I haven’t been able to do with the lack of internet), but if anyone can point me in the right direction I’ll be even more grateful than I already am.
Thank you
Scott -
What do they want it to reflect exactly? If they for example expect to see the arm of the actor and the scene- etc that’s a reshoot for example with a green image on the screen of the iPad. That would get you something you could key and also a real reflection. Otherwise I’d have to see the actual shot and what the client expects to see on the screen reflected.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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Here is a link to the old key that I’m talking about:
https://reels.creativecow.net/film/old-ipad-key
Keep in mind that I have already made a new key and they just want to make the graphic have the reflective quality of the iPad screen. However, you can see how the actor and some of the ceiling is reflected in that image. Could I somehow use a composite mode with a shape to add some glare? Unfortunately I only have tomorrow morning to complete it.
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If this is the shot you’re actually keying it shouldn’t be too hard to dial down the strength of your key to leave some of the original reflectivity in the shot. Try turning the opacity down a bit or a different composite mode.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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That’s not the shot that was keyed. Unfortunately that one is on the drives at work. This was actually the one I was having trouble with getting rid of the tracking points before I made the new key, which does not have any reflectivity since it was made from a piece of paper. If I could get the same angle, I could shoot the iPad from the same angle, make it out and composite that in, although as I write that I imagine that might be difficult to do in a few hours.
I’ll try to upload the actual footage tomorrow morning to give you a better idea. Thanks for all of your help.
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Just throwing this out there for discussion, but having seen Scott’s raw background plate, what’s the general opinion – if there is one – about the best way to do a screen replacement like that? Personally, I don’t think I’d use the green-screen approach, I would simply track the new screen over the top and then use an animated mask to put the hand back into the foreground. That way you don’t have to worry about keying out tracking markers because they’re automatically covered up by the new screen.
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