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Using Rain Effect
A few weeks back I was pointed to Detonation stock effects (heads blowing up, snow, rain, etc). My question is: When using Vegas Pro 8.0, how do I utilize the effect? For instance with Rain, I add the video track as a separate track above the footage I want it to rain on (like my house) but it just shows the rain, since it’s not on a transparent background… Am I doing something wrong?
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10 Replies
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You simply can use the chroma key plugin and key out
the black or you can even toggle with the compositing
mode to also get a desired look.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
Stock effects clips from Detonation are usually already keyed and contains alpha channel data.
Select and right click on the rain clip, go to Properties/Media/Alpha Channel and set it to Straight. -
No Omar,
Most of their footages are not pre-keyed,
only a few,You have to do your own keying…including
the rain stocks Jon is mentioning.
That is why i recommended the above solutions.
But with footages with an alpha channel, the method
you described is the correct one.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
Thanks Stive,
I didn’t think that you didn’t know it 😉
I just wanted to mention the alternate method. -
Thank you both for your help… Is there a place to get any animated backgrounds for a hack like me to just play with. I am just doing family videos, etc, but would love to play around with these effects. Steve, as you know from many of my very amateur/beginner questions that you have been grateful in answering, I am VERY new to this and I have tried the chroma key, etc, but am really struggling. Is there a place to get some free alpha (clear background) video animations for me to play with in my editing?
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Hi Jon,
A few years back I shot a film in which one of the shots required rain. I managed to create a very real rain composite by shooting some spray from my garden hose falling in front of a black polly board. I shot on a bright day which made the drops stand out really well (just watch out for direct sun, or rainbows will ruin your effect). Just make sure the spray is pointing in the direction you need the rain to be falling. The bigger droplets, the better. You can play with distance from your “rain” as well. Once you have the correct material, you can use a luma key, or possibly chroma key. Personally I prefer to use compositing. I have to admit that I originally composited my shot using DFX and unfortunately cannot give you any settings for Vegas…but I believe it should be no problem at all.
Good luck,Bruce Quayle
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Here you will find a good amount of free green-screen and
alpha channel shot footages you can download and use or
experiment with royalty free…Just freely sign up first:
https://secure.ribbitfilms.com/RibbitFilms/content.display.jsp?pid=1&aid=4&action=demo_register&lid=Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
Steve..> Thank you again for all the support. My one hold-up (and I got on the phone with Ribbit tech support) is that I am not educated enough to know how to import their clips as alpha channel clips. He said he is sure Sony supports it, but does not know how. Could you please let me know how. I put the rain media into Vegas media manager, then clicked on the properties (before adding to timeline) and tried the various alpha channel properties but it still shows the black background.
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After you import the footage in vegas….you go to the
“project media” tab and right click the particular footage
and select “properties”. When that comes up you see at the
bottom, “alpha channel” you then change it from “none” to
“straight (unmatted)”.
Now when you drag the footage to the timeline, the alpha
channel will be present.
Also to import the tga files that you probably downloaded
from ribbit films or any footage in image sequence….you click
on import media and highlight the first image in the list and
at the bottom you tick “open still image sequence” and then
press open….thats it.The rain clip you have isn’t embedded with an alph channel…
you have to key out the black with the chroma key video filter
or toggle with the “composting mode” on the timeline the rain
clip is on.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
> …or toggle with the “composting mode” on the timeline the rain clip is on.
…and for effects like rain and snow, I find that Screen is the best compositing mode to use. This removes the black quite nicely and blends the rain or snow with the video.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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