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MATTE How to?
Hi
I need to know how to make a matte for a fire clip
Do I need to shoot the footage in special conditions, maybe at night?
Once I have the fire footage I want to make every thing go away except for the fire
How do I make the matte and get the desired result -
5 Replies
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A common trick is to shoot fire or explosions against a black background. Once you lay the footage in your comp, set the transfer mode of the layer to Multiply. (Or is it Screen? I forget.)
Shooting at night will work as long it’s dark enough out and the background is completely black. (You can always apply the levels effect to the footage and make the blacks “blacker”, but that may have undesirable effects on the fire.) You can also use a black backdrop, but make sure it is far enough away from the fire that A) it isn’t picking up any light from the fire, and B) it doesn’t catch on fire.
As always, you can shoot against a blue or green background as well and key it out. But the black trick works well for bright elements like fire and explosions.
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Only thing with using screen or any other blending mode is it’s a little too transparent. How do the Artbeat clips all have matte’s with them? How do they do the matte’s?….Thanks Tim
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Don’t know exactly how Artbeats does it, but you can try this:
Draw a garbage matte around the fire (use the pen tool) to eliminate as much of the background as you can.
Adjust the levels (Levels effect) of the image so that the remaining background is very dark, almost black.
Apply the Threshhold effect and adjust until the flames are white and the background is black.
Use this layer as a luma track matte for the original flames clip.
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
Redgiant offer the free plugin, Knoll Unmult – it’s much cleaner than AE’s luma key and produces the fire with an alpha channel.
Graham
https://www.qcit.co.uk – web design
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https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films -
Graham can I then make a separate matte from the alpha channel?….
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