Silhouette Help? :]

[Lars Bunch]

HI,

I don’t know if this is particularly easy, but it should be pretty straight forward…

Shoot the dancers against the green screen with their dresses in whatever color you need. Key the footage as you normally would. Render the keyed footage in full color with an alpha. Create an inverted version of the alpha. Render an Alpha only quicktime and re-import it as footage.

The rendered alpha becomes your silhouetted dancers. Put that into your comp. Drop the footage of keyed dancers on top of the silhouette. Rotoscope the dresses, dropping out the stuff you don’t want. (Depending upon the amount of movement and length of time, this could get really old very quickly.)

You might be able to cheat by using a tint effect to make the shot a single saturated color so you can get a bit sloppy on the roto without it showing. If each dress is a different single color you could make as many layers of the color shot as you have dancers, tinting each as needed and then rotoscoping each of them separately. Come to think of it, it might be better to do that anyway. That way if you run into an error with one mask, you are less in risk of messing up previous roto work on the same layer. It’s also a good idea to lock finished layers so you don’t accidentally modify them later on.

If you tint the shot, it is best to do that after you’ve done your rotoscoping. Actually if you temporarily boost the color saturation of the shot you are rotoscoping, it will help show you the edges and may make the work a little easier. You can then delete the saturation effect and replace it with the tint effect when you are done.

If the dresses have very clean colors you might be able to extract them using a key, but you would have to do a separate key for each color of dress. I’m not sure how exactly this is done in AE since my experience at keying is mostly in Shake, but it can be done.

If you are going to do a lot of roto, if you don’t have a Wacom tablet consider getting one. Actually the Cintiq 12″ is ideal, but a bit pricey.

Good luck,

Lars

[Curious Turtle]

Do a search on rotoscoping. That’s the technique for you.

Basically drawing and animating a number of masks. It’s great fun, honestly.

Cheers,
Ben

Curious Turtle Professional Video
Training | Editing |Support

http://www.curiousturtle.com

[Bryan Barnes]

Thank you so much for all your help guys!

I have one more question. Is there any way to change the color of the dresses in After Effects? I would like to have the original color of the dress pop-up, and then use After Effects some how to continously change the color of the dress.

[Lars Bunch]

Hi Again,

There are a lot of ways you can change the color. An easy one is the Hue/Saturation effect. Drop that into the dress layer and click on the “colorize” check box. Then you can adjust the hue, animating it to to transform to a different color.

You might also want to try the Tint effect. If I remember right, this allows you to change highlight and shadows separately.

If you want to get really weird, you could experiment with the Colorama effect.

Hope that helps,

Lars

[Bryan Barnes]

Thanks a lot man! You’ve all been so much help! This whole After Effects thing can be very overwhelming for a beginner, and it’s nice to know there’s people out there like you who are willing to help!

[Curious Turtle]

[Dave LaRonde] “You’re a mean guy. I find roto work about as much fun as a root canal at the dentist’s office.”

It takes all sorts, I suppose :o) There’s nothing more satisfying than crafting the perfect mask. (Thank goodness for Mocha though)

Bryan, with regards your second question, depending on your dress colour, Hue/Saturation with Hold keyframes should give the look you’re after.

Cheers,
Ben

Curious Turtle Professional Video
Training | Editing |Support

http://www.curiousturtle.com