• Adobe After Effects

  Masking sky/tree line. Need object to appear behind trees. How do I create this?

  Posted by Shane on July 11, 2006 at 8:23 pm

  I have some footage of the camera panning upwards to the top of the surrounding trees. I want to place a 3D render of a ship flying in the sky, but when I place the 3D ship in the footage, it appears in front of the trees, and I need it to appear behind them. The main part of the ship will be in clear view, but there are going to be sections that are going to need to be behind the trees.

  I know there has to be a way to do. I think maybe I have used the wrong terminology in the subject, but im sure you all know what im talking about.

  Does AE have the ability to make some kind of matte so that I can place it over the ship to make it look like the ship is behind the trees?

  Im open to ideas on this one. Im currently stumped.

  Thanks

  Michael Szalapski replied 19 years, 10 months ago 5 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Jonathan Miller

  July 11, 2006 at 8:58 pm

  Without seeing your footage for myself…

  You can probably just key out the sky in your footage.

  So, just duplicate the layer with the sky/trees and apply a keying effect (Keylight, color key or luma key).

  Once the sky is removed, then just place your spaceship between those footage layers and the trees should appear on top of the ship.

  Good luck!

  Jon
  TreeLine Productions
  Fort Collins, CO USA

  Currently producing these popular podcasts:
• 

  Ryan Hill

  July 12, 2006 at 4:24 pm

  That approach is easiest if the sky is a pretty uniform colour.
• 

  Shane

  July 12, 2006 at 6:22 pm

  Ok, I tried both luma and color key, and I think color key worked best. At least from the results I was getting. The sky was pretty uniform in color, but the only problem was that around the trees, some areas were hard and pixelated, while other areas were too fuzzy and had some sky spill. I guess thats to be expected. I tried adjusting alot of parameters, and finally got a half way decent shot.

  Are there any other keying plugins out there that do a better job?

  Thanks for the help guys!
• 

  Juan

  July 12, 2006 at 10:04 pm

  have you tried the keylight plugin?
  its really good.
• 

  Shane

  July 12, 2006 at 10:35 pm

  No, I havent. Where can I get it?
• 

  Michael Szalapski

  July 13, 2006 at 4:00 am

  It’s included with certain versions of AE (I have 6.5 Pro). It’s a seperate install on the cd.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

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