Keying green screen as good as AVATAR??

[Jon Geddes]

I’m not sure what they are using in Avatar, but I’ve heard from many people that Primatte is a much better keyer than Keylight.

Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com

[Michael Szalapski]

A key depends on a lot of things to look good. The number one thing is good lighting.
Also, Keylight isn’t terribly intuitive. Read through as much documentation on it as you can. It can pull great keys even on smoke and windows if you’ve got good lighting and a good camera (you’ve got a RED? Jealous!)

To be fair, Avatar had a huge team of people who worked on the post production for quite a long time. It was probably one person’s job for a month to get that one hair to look right. So yeah; it’s unlikely you’ll get that level of amazing with a small team of people under a deadline (or, like I’ve often done, by yourself with an impossible deadline.)

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

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

[Mark Linthicum]

Thanks all!

i thought I new Keylight but I might be missing something!

Mark

Thanks, Mark

[Mark Linthicum]

I do not see any tutorials on there site!

i see a demo that seems to have more control than the plugin I have that comes with AE??

I wonder if I need to upgrade?

mark

Thanks, Mark

[Mark Linthicum]

I just found the Tutorials in small print, cant read!

Thanks, mark

Thanks, Mark

[Dean Sensui]

I use Primatte. Here’s an example of a typical key.

https://hawaiigoesfishing.com/greenscreen_demo.html

This was a single key. With more time a separate key can be done for the hair and even more detail retained.

Here’s another example, also done with Primatte. Note the hair detail retained.

https://hawaiigoesfishing.com/ap_vfx.html

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Mark Linthicum]

Nice!

Have you ever tried Keylight? I wonder if Primatte is the secret or with enough tweaking can Keylight do as good?

Mark

Thanks, Mark

[Dean Sensui]

[Mark Linthicum] “Have you ever tried Keylight? I wonder if Primatte is the secret or with enough tweaking can Keylight do as good?”

I use Keylight in the studio to check lighting and composition during the setup process, but I don’t use it for the actual key.

Keylight doesn’t have the controls that Primatte has to select green and non-green areas. Primatte’s procedure is more than just a single click: you tell it “this is green, this isn’t green” by clicking or selecting several areas in the composition. It’s so discerning that I’ve actually keyed green clothing, as long as the green is different from the green screen.

It also has separate spill controls, choke and edge controls, and a set of controls to handle detail.

It’ll key veils, smoke, translucent plastics, flame. And “lightwrap” will incorporate the background into the overlapping edges of the foreground elements. This is an important feature that helps blend things together for a cleaner key.

I also use Composite Wizard, which has better lightwrap capabilities, as well as edge blurring and other features.

Dean Sensui — Hawaii Goes Fishing

[Mark Linthicum]

Downloading the DEMO now!

Thanks!

Thanks, Mark

[Tim Kolb]

The biggest piece of the puzzle that most seem to miss is that very few keys at that budget level are pulled with one pass and one set of settings.

Often you’ll have one person who is being keyed and you’ll need one layer garbage matted to isolate the head, and you deal with the hair…maybe another layer needs to isolate a fast moving (blurring) arm or leg…then a chair or a weapon may have some reflective surfaces that need attention, causing some more layers to be generated to isolate those aspects of the shot.

There just aren’t that many challenging keys that are done with a one touch/full shot pass.

Keylight definitely isn’t excessively intuitive, but it can carry the load.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,