Keying suggestions?

[Kevin Camp]

click on Aharon Rabinowitz’s face on the ae forum page. find his super tight junk mattes tutorial… it is an excellent way to reduce the amount of color that needs to be keyed, allowing you to keep more detail.

also, Barend Onneweer (also on the ae forum front page) has a solid procedure for producing a single key from separate core and edge mattes. i would suggest looking at that technique too and it can be adapted to incorporate keylight too.

this won’t help you now, but i believe the single most important thing to getting a good key is the lighting. with good lighting you can get a good key using even the simplest keying software/effects.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[S. Marcotte]

Yes, I’ve already applied the super tight junk matte routine. I’m a big fan. I’ll look into Mr. Onneweer’s ideas as soon as I can.

I’m just having a lot of trouble keeping hair, even after I’ve isolated the character’s head on its own layer with a circular matte (and it’s not even blond hair).

Thanks.

[Kevin Camp]

the trick is usually just to focus on a specific area… so separate out just hair to deal with for that part of the key. it sounds like you are doing that to some degree by separating out the head, but if you still can’t keep settings loose enough to keep the hair, then barend’s edge technique may help.

use the keyed head as the core… you can tighten it up some, just make sure the core is keyed well.

duplicate that and then adjust the settings to try and get just the edges of the hair keeping the settings as loose as possible… if you still can’t keep the hair, try reverse keying just the hair color, or using one of the keying effects that barend discuses.

getting a good key requires a lot of finesse, and each situation is different, so it can be difficult to give precise steps.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Peter Van der zee]

Sometimes simply duplicating the keyed layer gets you back some detail…

vanderzee.tv