Andrew Shanks
Forum Replies Created
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Keylight is the best keyer that comes with After Effects. There are many other options out there, but keylight is all most users will ever need. If you’re finding yourself doing a lot of keying (as a career), you will add other keyers to your toolbag (as some work better than others in certain situations. I generally use primatte as my other keyer of choice (and have zmatte and other misc matte pulling tools as well). Basically keylight is a good all-rounder (if you have a half decent blue or greenscreen). If I can’t get a good key with it, Primatte will usually do the job on nastier keys.
The main tricks with keying are to garbage matte (do a basic matte around the foreground objects you wish to keep), apply the keyer (make sure you know the keyers functions, …this is unfortunately a case where reading the manual is not just a last resort, ….I know I know, i hate reading manuals too, but keylight is very powerful and knowing exactly what all the settings do will make your keying job a lot easier), …if you don’t get a good key first time (and often it is the way, as screens are very rarely perfect), do multiple passes to produce the final matte (Barend Onneweer has a good tutorial on this, see link after this), if you have heavy compression (such as DV) there are techniques to smooth the edges (again a search of this forum will come up with things such as YUV channel bluring and vector blur of edges), and final step is to colour match your foreground element to the background (perhaps adding a bit of light wrap to help blend things). There you go. As mentioned about Barend has written some articles on keying, here are the links:
https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/onneweer_barend/keylight/index.html
https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/onneweer_barend/keyingtut/index.htmlhttps://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/onneweer_barend/chromashoot/index.htm
and heres a link to the free video tutorial (by Brian from Total Training) about vector bluring DV keyed edges:
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/total_training/AE65/Vector_Blur/index.html
Hope that helps!
Andrew
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Hmmm, you shouldn’t be getting banding in 16bit mode, unless maybe using an old 8bit filter. My first thought is what graphics card and monitor settings have you got. A way to check if banding is occuring is to throw a levels filter onto the layer you suspect (or even onto an adjustment layer on the top level of the comp, to see what the whole comp is like). look at the levels graph, if its choppy (i.e. vertical lines with gaps, then you’ve definitely got banding, ….if not, then maybe its okay and just a monitor/graphics card thing, …in which case render out an uncompressed still frame and look at it on another computer.
Sorry I have no other ideas.
Goodluck!andrew
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Thats a fairly simple print look to achieve (I certainly wouldn’t waste money on that plugin for photoshop, …theres a couple of similar free plugin/presets on the Adobe Studio site which will give equal if not better looks).
As far as for video, the one app that leaps to mind (for macs at least) is Studio Artist:
https://www.synthetik.com/
Having said that, you don’t need to go that way, experimenting in After Effects might get you some interesting results, …indeed its a topic that pops up from time to time, …if you look up comic and/or cartoon looks for video on this forum you should find some recipes to experiment with. Just off the top of my head, throw a layer into a new comp, duplicate the layer, desaturate the top layer, use an find edge filter, apply levels to it and tweak to get nice outlines (hand animated paint strokes on this top layer would make the effect look a lot nicer, but is quite time consuming, you’d use the image underneath as a rotoscoping paint guide), then use multiply to effectively apply the outline top layer to the layer underneath (use opacity to tweak the look). Tweak the hue/saturation of the bottom layer, maybe even posterize it a bit to give it a limited palette (depending on the image, maybe knock saturation back by 50%), …there are some halftone print-pattern style plugins around (I think Digieffects has a print style plugin for after effects which would add that texture to the comp) maybe throw one of those on.
I’m sure others will have plenty of suggestions. Theres certainly no hard and fast methods in AE for getting the look, but with a bit of experimentation you can get some pretty funky looks.Goodluck!
andrew
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p.s. they have also used selective colour, pretty much just getting rid of the colour in the whole image of the guy to the right, leaving his blue shirt. Many different ways of doing this (from having two layers,top colour one keyed (with key inverted) over a desaturated bottom layer (I’ve used that), …to just using the colour range selectors in hue/saturation and destaurating regions of colour that way, …those are just two off the top of my head), just look up Sin City discussions on this forum and you’ll get some ideas (its a cool look but unfortunately its a look being thrashed at the moment).
Oh, and as one of the others suggested, let ‘levels’ or ‘curves’ be your friend. I love ‘levels’, with it you can really crunch blacks and pump whites, using your grey point to affect the tonal regions in the best way to retain the mid-levels you want. Again in the image (guy to the right) it looks like they’ve tweaked the levels to beef up the highlight regions (to give it a more dramatic punchy look).
🙂
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Hey Marc,
I’m chiming in here a bit late, but looking at the aussie site, it looks like they’ve just used multiply mode (for the guy towards the right with his hand in the air, …multiply works well for making drak regions stay and lighter regions become transparent on a second layer), also adding mild displacement filter (note how the face towards the bottom of his arm is distorting) and mixed opacity levels with matte shapes to get the result. As the others say, if you post a still image online (do a quick net search for free image hosting sites if you need a place to upload it to, then link to it here), and tell us the look you want, we can step you through it.Modes can be a hard things to get your head around, but they are sooooo handy, …most merging effects you see in print and motion graphics use them alot. The ones I use most often are ‘Multiply’ (for adding the dark features of an image to a background), ‘add’ (for adding the luma, or brightness, of two layers elements together, …gives you a really punchy, sometimes over exposed, look) and ‘screen’ (which is more subtle than add, in that it looks at the brightness of the two layers on a pixel by pixel basis, and whichever value is brighter, remains intact, ….screen is a handy mode for when things like smoke, fire, etc have been shot against black, …although often in those cases I might use a couple of duplicated layers, with add mode on one, screen on another, and rock the transparency levels on the add until I’m happy).
Post an image and we’ll do our best to help out.
Cheers,
andrew
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If you have After Effects already (which I’m assuming you have) the tracker in the pro version is actually pretty darn good, …but yeah, in your situation its more about roto work, cutting out the eyes (making animated matte shapes that follow the eyes opening and closing, squinting, leering, etc). I haven’t used FCP in ages, and never have used it for fx work (just prefer AE, Combustion, Shake, etc when it comes to doing comping), so can’t comment on its roto-splines (I’m picking it has those and that is what you used to make the mattes?). AE6.5 has okay matte splines, but there are better options around (such as the old favorite “Commotion”, new AE plugin “silohette roto”, and “curious gfx”), …where AE is a bit weak in relation to the other programs I’ve listed is that it lacks support for applying tracking data to the matte shapes (those other programs allow you to track and then apply the data not just to the whole mask shape, but to individual or collections of points, …this can help cut down on your roto time). Adobe has bought the Curious Gfx technologies to integrate into After Effects, …so I am assuming that if they’ve had time to build that code into AE7, that we’ll have better roto tools when its released (hopefully in the next month or so). I have a feeling that with NAB post in NY happening this coming week, that Adobe will use it to properly launch After Effects 7, …so yeah, see what happens this week.
But apart from using software that allows applying tracking data to matte shapes, theres no other way to speed up the process, …just a lot of frame by frame stuff as you will have already found out in FCP. One suggestion is to watch the creatures movements, …if there is motion blur as it moves, keyframe animate the mask’s ‘feathering’ (you may have to also animate the matte, expanding it a little to compensate for the feathering), …this will just make sure the look is more natural (otherwise you’ll have hard, unchanging edges around the black eyes, when the rest of the creature is blurred, …a quick tell that its a post produced effect).I hope thats of some use. Let me know how you go!
Cheers,
andrew
🙂
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Hey Dusty,
unfortunately i live over in New Zealand, so unless you’re living down under I can’t recommend anyone (sorry bout that, but if where you are is anywhere like here, there are a number of great freelancers with their own gear that could help out). But maybe just put word out on one of the 3D FX forums here (3D Max, Cinema 4D and Lightwave guys are probably more likely to be affordable and do it for the love of it, …although if you can find a good maya or xsi artist with their own gear, then that would be wicked), in the blurb just put something along the lines of “3D hair artist wanted to model/animate/track/composite demon hair into location source footage”. Just indicate which region you’re in, describe the job briefly (as you did in this thread, maybe not even as specific, just a rough guide of what you want) and make sure they know its a low budget film (so you don’t get the high-end rip-off merchants taking you guys for a ride, …and from what I hear there are a few of those states-side, ….if you say you’re on a budget, show that technically you have some nouse yourself (i.e. say you edited it and have investigated doing the word yourself in After Effects, but would rather get someone to do the job in 3D), you quite possibly will get some charitable expert to give you a good deal and do a great job. As with anything, make sure you check out showreels of anyone that you look at doing the work, and also make sure you get some form of a quote as to what it will cost (again just to make sure you’re getting a good quality artist and that you won’t get burnt at the end of the day).
Goodluck and let me know how you go!!Cheers,
andrew
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Hey Dusty,
for the eyes you’d pretty much do as you’ve done in FCP, …a spot of roto and tracking. The step up from that is to animate a small fake gleam (a ‘ping’) to make the eyes seem 3d and moist, …but dark black holes always look creepy, so its probably not worth going for the glint look.
As mentioned above, particles would be the way to go for the blood splatter. Various options abound, I’d probably use particle illusion, but you might have some success from the particles in AE, …adding some directional blur will help you here, so you don’t need much detail at all, basically blurred little points that radiate in the right direction (this is probably overkill as the points will no doubt be very small, …but maybe even have a play with the Mr Mercury plugin, as it creates very realistic liquid blobs, ….so even if you can’t use the plugins output itself, you might be able to render out some stills to quickly hand animate them flying thru frame with a bit of added motion blur).
As for the scraggy hair, you’d be looking at using a 3D app with a hair/fur plugin (various around), some 3D tracking software, and some patience. Basically you’d track the actor using the 3D tracker (might even be able to get away with doing it in 2D, but i am assuming the character will be moving a bit, and if its tracked in 3D, it means that the 3D app will move the hair naturally as the head moves). If it is a dark scene it could be hard to do (but likewise, if its a dark scene you might be able to get away with cheating the hair a bit more). Theres some nice 3D hair/fur around these days (I had a play with the new 3D Max hair plugin (standard with v8) last week, and its great, you can work the hair like a salon stylist but with paint brush ease, …and most good hair plugins in XSI and Maya are the same, …plus they respond to gravity and enertia in the correct way.Those are my recommendations at least.
Goodluck,
andrew
🙂
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If you haven’t got a 3d app, the other way is to do a bit of a hunt on around for a shot of a skull or skeleton (there are great free public domain image sites around, the best being stock.xchng). I do a lot of FX for kids shows, its surprising how many times cartoon electric shots pop up, …generally i use the 3D approach and sweeten the look with photoshop a bit (so likewise doctoring an image in photoshop, cutting out the background, etc, should work okay if you can find an image thats basically the same orientation).
Goodluck!
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Okay, this is for when you are just wanting to do a basic 2D track (not corner pin or anything). With the setup you’ve got, track the tracker that is going to stay in shot the longest first (we’ll say its tracker 1). When tracker 1 moves out of frame, ALT-drag the tracker box to the next available tracking point, ….the tracker target (little cross on the screen) should not move, …then start the track going again. In theory you can just keep repeating this, then apply it to a null (or a layer, …I prefer the null way, cause then you can parent multiple elements to that one null, and if you want to make master changes to the move, it can all be handled by that one null, everything else will follow it). In practice After Effects has a bug with its tracker (that I keep complaining about, …anyone from adobe hearing me out there?!!) in that if the target cross happens to have moved off screen into the grey pasteboard area, when you do the ALT drag trick, you can find your tracker target resets to the centre of the screen, thus a jump in animation, ….damn annoying. So in practice you’ll probably get one alt drag before it resets due to this bug. The work around is to do a bit of precomping, placing your source footage for the tracking in a much larger sized composition (maybe 2k or bigger, will depend on how much your camera moves), tracking the data in that using the Alt-drag trick (due to the larger composition area you won’t have the little cross leaving the comp area, and hence the bug won’t occur), applying it to a null, then copying that null into your main composition where you can parent your layers to it. All should be fine.
…let me know if I’ve screwed up a step there, its been a while since I did it, …but yeah, we had a ton of sky replacements we had to track in that way, with trackable objects not staying in frame long. It was a pain to use the workaround, but it worked.Please Adobe, this bug has been there since v6, …fix it for v7 huh? …its a great 2D tracker thats marred by that small bug.
Other alternative is to use Boujou, Matchmover Pro or Syntheyes (they’re all good, Boujou being the king of auto tracking (most expensive), Matchmover being the king of supervised tracking (medium price), but the latter is the one I use most, …its the most affordable by a mile and gives you a ton more bang for your buck than the others, ….but the learning curve is steaper than the likes of Boujou). From the matchmove software, solve the move in 3D, and export a maya (.ma) file, …import this to After Effects, and if you place the layer you want to have moving locked with your camera in 3D space you will be away laughing. Please note that AE uses a bit of a modified .ma file (I think it might just be an older flavour of the maya format), Syntheyes allows for this, but I can’t speak for the others (as I’ve only used them for solving for 3D apps.
Goodluck!!!
andrew