how to add hair to a person

[Stephen Smith]

Assuming there is plenty of movement in the persons I would look at After Effects or if possible Smoke.

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

Check out my Motion Training DVD

Check out my Motion Tutorials

[Mark Suszko]

Possible to do, but very difficult to make look real and not ridiculous. Really a job for a compositing program and quite posibly a 3d CGI animation program to generate realsitic hair that behaves correctly.

You would have better luck just reducing any shine on the bald spot using the color correction tools.

You can’t deny mortality, balding men know this. We just don’t like it.:-)

[David Rodriguez]

Hello guys,

Thanks so far for your reply. There is not much movement because the video show is while they where doing their hair and it is a closeup of the top of the head. I will take a look to after effects possibilities and just for curiosity and fun see how far i will get.
Probably i will just end up telling her about the mortality “issue” :-)))

Saludos,

David

[Chris Linke]

Does Rogaine make a plugin for Final Cut?

Chris Linke
PRC Digital Media
http://www.prcdigital.com

[Mark Suszko]

If it is a woman, and the very top of her head, if it just thinning and not plain, open bald patch of skin, try applying some color correction to that area within a soft-edged multipoint mask. Sample the hair color right next to the area, then sample the flesh tone there in the barest spot, and use the 3-way color corrector to apply the same color as a tint to the flesh only in the thin hair area. The idea is not to make any new hair there, but just to color the flesh the same as the hair that DOES exist, so you don’t notice it as much. Digital version of Ron Popeil’s infamous “Spray-on hair in a can”:-)

You could also make a duplicate video track, stack it above, mask it to the balding patch and offset the top layer a few pixels, then adjust blending mode and opacity of the top layer. This at least keeps you from having to rotoscope every frame, and the layers naturally track together without any work.

Rotoing in Photoshop is your last, most tedious option, if you don’t have a compositing program with vector painting ability. Your problem in the photoshop roto situation is, if you just apply a clone brush to the hair in each frame, each frame is going to be a little different, and the repaired area is going to vibrate and shimmer and stand out MORE than if you just tried a color-correction or darkening.

Be sure to charge apropriately for the time this is going to take to fix. Remember the sign outside the popular barbershop:
“We Fix $7 Haircuts”

[Michael Gissing]

CHV make a clone plugin which lets you select an area and copy it across to another and can be keyframed. I have used it to steal sky & clouds to cover microphones in shot or tidy up dirt blobs on the lens.

It is limited and not as powerful as rotoscoping in Motion or AE but for some simple tasks it does an excellent job. It also allows some feathering so you can blend edges and has an opacity adjustment.

[David Rodriguez]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick mail to thank you all for taking your time to assist me with your tips. It is highly appreciated. I will try the different proposals to see which one can work better and will get back to you with how it went.

Kind Regards

David