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Best way to sky replace non blown-out footage (video game footage)
I have some footage that I captured from Halo 3 using an HD capture card. I want to replace the sky in the scene, but it’s not blown out in any way so using something like Colorama (like in the Video Copilot tutorial) or another keying method doesn’t seem to work. At this point I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll probably have to manually mask the entire footage, which pans around almost 180 degrees and has a very uneven horizon (between the in-game map geometry and the sky). It’s 30fps footage and the part I want is 15 seconds so that’s 450 frames, and I deliberately made it shaky to make it look more like a stormy day (that’s the effect I was going for.) I don’t want to have to go that route, so I’d like to know if there is a better, easier way? I managed to use Color Range to get the sky out, but it also cut out most of the ground as well, I don’t know why. I just put a copy of the video below the keyed copy and made a quick rectangle mask to show the ground again, but since the footage pans on the y axis I also had to keyframe the rectangle mask to move around and it looks pretty bad.
Does anyone have any ideas?
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6 Replies
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Yeah, I know what the process is called, I was asking if someone knew a simpler way.
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Without seeing the specific footage, it’s hard to be too helpful, but it sounds like you’re probably on the right track. I’d imagine that you’ll be using a combination of effects and light roto work. If you can get rid of the sky and have even a thin horizon line, you’re in business. Roto-ing the ground back in isn’t too hard.
The one thing I can recommend on your roto – work rough, and then refine. You may end up only needing to have one keyframe per second, or one every ten frames, etc. You’ll probably save yourself a significant amount of work.
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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>I deliberately made it shaky
Not sure how you made the shot shaky, but if you can re-do it ‘steady’ your sky replacement will be easier. Once you’ve added the sky, you can shake the footage with AE so as to still get the look you want.
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Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk -
I don’t want to shake in AE because it’ll cut off the edges.
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Sounds like you were on the right path when you had the sky removed and you duplicated the layer to save the bottom with a garbage matte.
But, using this process (https://library.creativecow.net/articles/oconnell_pete/roto.php) will give you the best result.
Can you post a small clip (.mov)?
Good luck.
Production Associate
Bend, Oregon, United States -
All I have uploaded is the full WMV, but here’s the link to that:
https://infectionist.com/movies/2009_5_17_4_3_18.wmv
It’s rather large, sorry, it’s HD.
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