[Andrew Somers]

The Ray Traced 3D in After Effects has a native 360 environment layer, which can be HDR from a light probe, or other environment map, etc. You access it under the LAYERS menu:

The options for reflections are: ON, ONLY, OFF so you can use one for lighting, and another for just reflections, etc.

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

I agree Walter,

I have always hated the Animation codec. Uncompressed 8 bit is lower fidelity than a 10 bit compressed format like ProRes. If you need an alpha channel, ProRes 4444 is superior to the animation codec and uses less space.

I think people like the sound of “uncompressed” — and it “was” actually important back in the days of tape to tape editing, where generation loss was a real concern. It’s not so much an issue with modern workflows.

Here’s a test I just ran of three codecs that support alphas, using a little test sequence with alpha. All outputs were with alpha and set to trillions of colors (except EXR which was Float of course):

12 bit ProRes 4444 is like a THIRD the file size, yet is superior in terms of dynamic range due to the higher bit depth. My favorite choice is EXR with Piz compression, 16 bit floating point and just a little bigger than the animation codec, but superior dynamic range. EXR is what I *always* use rendering out of C4D.

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Try using ECHO, on a shape that is the width of the path you want to create (perhaps hidden behind the book.)

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

You’re welcome Pilip – Creative Cow comes up high in Google searches, so I figured it was worth it to address a lot of the comments all at once. 😉

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Newer Adobe products are relying more and more on OpenCL, so a graphics cards with lots of GRAM and lots of cores will probably give you the biggest jump, as you already have SSD.

A GTX 1080ti with 11GB GRAM should satisfy most of what you need.

If you do get SSD, you want a PCIe SSD controller card for best performance.

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

HI Pilip,

Yes I definitely agree with Dave that this is a poorly lit and uneven screen, and that’s probably going to cause the greatest problems.

ON THE SUBJECT OF TRACKING MARKERS:

Unfortunately productions all too often shoot without a dedicated VFX supervisor on set, and “wing it” expecting to “fix it in post”. And when it comes to tracking markers and green/blue/black screen there is so much misinformation it is shocking.

GREEN SCREEN EXPOSURE

I’m mostly going to talk about tracking markers, but just quickly, green screen is ideally “under exposed” by as much as a stop and a half. But more important is that the screen be very even in lighting, within a quarter of a stop, particularly around the subject/action.

In the example the OP posted, the screen exposure is nearly a stop between the darkest and lightest area. As a matter of reference, the more ideal exposure is the darker area on the far right of the screen. Unwinding the image into linear light we can estimate the actual exposure. In the info panel, we see the values for the darker area have good separation between channels.

The green channel is at 22%, while the red channel is 2.3%, more than three stops difference. The blue channel is a distant 0.8%, more than 4 stops difference. (this will help us in a minute). Meanwhile in the more over exposed areas of the screen, we have values like R 10%, G 35%, B 3%. Here, red is less than two stops away from green. This is a reduction in saturation which happens as the image gets “brighter”. Since green makes up 71% of luminance in the Rec709 colorspace, it looses saturation sooner than the other two colors, and the way to prevent this is to keep the exposure down (a spot meter reading at the same level as an 18% grey card should be in the ball park).

The Quick Cheatsheet:

FORMAT: Shoot 444 and avoid 422 whenever possible.
LIGHTING: as even as possible.
GREEN: Underexpose one to one and a half stops. You want very little crosstalk into the red and blue channels.
BLUE: Overexpose as much as a stop. This is actually pretty hard to do as blue makes up only 7% of luminance.
RED: For non-human subjects (like blue green plants), but even so avoid this. It is absolutely horrible if you’re shooting in a 422 type format. In the cases where you think you need red, BLACK might be better.
BLACK: This is used less often than it could be, and it is very useful. If you are shooting transparent things like smoke that you are going to use ADD transfer mode in the comp, black is ideal. For monitors, leaving them off and black so that the natural room reflections can be captured is awesome.

ORANGE TRACKERS

I am not going to defend orange tracking marks on a green screen, but just so everyone is aware, there is a rational behind them. (and again, there are better choices so I mostly disagree with their use in this day and age).

Orange is made up of Red and Green. As a result if you choose the proper orange tape, in the green channel of the image the markers will not be seen at all. But they will provide high contrast in the Red channel for tracking purposes.

However, this means you are relying on the red channel only for tracking information — and red (and blue) are at half the resolution of green at the bayer filter on the sensor. And also, it means that you need to key using blue and green unless you use masks for red (see below for that solution), but a problem here is that blue is the darkest and noisiest channel. For both tracking and keying, it is ideal to have all the channels at your disposal and at full resolution.

Here are the separated image channels:

As you can see the orange marks are barely apparent in the green and blue channels, while being very high contrast in the red.

Now Filip, we could all bash this green screen all day, but I’m assuming you’d like a solution. Here it is:

You’re going to be working more with the individual color channels than the RGB image. For tracking, it’s not really necessary to make a monochrome video using just the red channel. Use the full RGB image. Because the screen is so uneven there are actually a lot of natural tracking “marks”, and you might as well let the tracker use them. If you do have problems with tracks slipping, then you might consider using the red channel to create a monochrome video just for tracking purposes. If noise is a problem, try turning of the BLUE channel first.

HOW TO KEY THIS:

Set the colorspace to LINEARIZE.

For keying, if you don’t want to use mocha and make track masks, then just use the green and blue channels, and turn the red channel off, as so:

And also set a Levels Effect and increase the brightness of the BLUE channel by sliding the INPUT WHITE control to the top (highlights) of the blue histogram. It’s okay if you clip the foreground subject slightly in the blue channel – the green/blue image is going to be used to create a matte ONLY. Your synthetic image will look like this:

Then sample the green in the keying plugin, and and looking at the MATTE image, adjust the key for a clean solid matte. Then set they keyer to “final result” or “Comp” so that the alpha is live and ready for use.

Immediately UNDER that layer, put your original footage, and then set it to TRKMAT ALPHA. Presto, your footage is keyed. In the keyer, adjust the softness and shape of the edge. In the original footage layer, add a levels and perhaps a spill corrector if needed. Then on the layers beneath, add in your background elements. I did this successfully using your still image from your post (I’ll show more below) not sure what issues there will be for full motion though as it looks like it might be noisy.

OTHER KINDS OF TRACKERS

I’d like to cover other tracker types. There is no single type that is best for all situations, they all have various pros and cons. Same color, B&W, BlueonGreen … But even though this has nothing to do with the shot, since were talking about trackers, let me just say one thing again,

…one more time for all the production people in the back row that didn’t get the memo…

……….PLEASE…..

…………For The Love Of God……….

———- STOP PUTTING TAPE MARKERS ON THE FRONT OF MONITORS USED IN THE SHOT!!! ——

S T O P P P P P PPPPP!

We like never ever need markers placed on the monitor surface. See those corners on the monitor? THOSE make best marks for us. When markers are placed on the monitor screen, we then have to waste a lot of time painting them all out before we can even comp something into the screen, and often losing the natural reflections that would have helped make the comp more authentic.

And generally we DO NOT need tracking markers all over the place. Modern tracking software can do a lot with the natural geometry of the surroundings. That said, tracking markers are needed in some cases, such as a nice evenly lit blue or green screen. And how to do this and be able to use the key with minimal roto?

One way is to use markers that the foreground subjects never cross in front of. In these cases a black & white marker might be ideal as it uses all color channels. Otherwise you can use markers that are of the same color but a different luminance. For green this means the darkest part of the tracking mark geometry should be about 1 1/2 stops underexposed, and the brighter part should be half a stop to no more than a stop brighter.

But you can also use blue markers on green (or vice versa) and this has an advantage over orange. First, it leaves the red channel clean for use in creating the key, and second you can ADD the blue and green channels together, creating a clean synthetic channel for use in the key. And third, it means you can use both the blue and green channels for tracking, and as green is the highest resolution and lowest noise channel, you want to be tracking with green.

HERE’S HOW BLUE ON GREEN MARKERS WORK (simulated obviously).

Here I covered the orange marks with blue (Note: because the orange ones were crosses so are these, BUT I do NOT approve of using Xs or crosses as track marks. Round dots are better to track and easier to paint out. Some software might prefer other marker geometry though, so ask you friendly VFX supervisor before you shoot regarding best geometry and mark placement).

Now here’s how that looks in channels:

The marks are visible in green and blue, but red is clean. REMEMBER: if we only get two channels to key with we prefer RED & GREEN (or RED & BLUE) this is because red is a principle color in humans (our most common subject) and because red makes up three times more luminance than blue. As a result there’s more “meat” in red to get a good key with red & green than with blue & green. Of course it is always preferable to have all three RGB channels, and each at full resolution (avoiding 422).

So what’s next here with blue on green trackers? The first step is to take the BLUE channel and ADD it to the green channel. then turn the blue channel OFF. When you add it to green, adjust the blue levels and gamma so the that tracking marks BLEND IN with the green channel. You should end up with a synthetic image before keying with only red and green channels, like this:

You may want add a levels effect just before the keyer and adjust the red gamma (optional/as needed).

Then sample the key color, and as above with orange markers, just make a solid matte.

And on the layer immediately beneath, put in your original footage and set to TRKMAT ALPHA. In the keyer, set it to “Final Comp” so that it generates the alpha you are going to use.

On the original footage layer, add a spill suppressor if needed, and levels to make final color adjustments. And beneath that, put the layer of the BG to comp into.

And that about sums it up I think. Good luck!

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Hey Nick, to add, I just ran across this info graphic that (hopefully) should make the Rec709/Rec1886 issue very clear:

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Hi Omar,

That looks like a solid machine for what you are doing. Glad to see you got the better graphics card and CPU, I think you’ll be pleased with performance.

As to the CPU – my bad, I thought you originally said 7700, not 7700k. Still, I still think the 8700 you are getting is a better chip. Among other things tghe TDP is 50% better than the 7700k, and that means it can run in turbo longer before a thermal issue causes it to slow down.

Best of luck!!

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Hi Nick, yes it is that obvious regarding sRGB: both the ENCODE and DECODE/DISPLAY characteristics are defined in the spec, while Rec709 only defines encoding (written circa 1990) and display wasn’t officially defined until Rec1886 in 2011, over 20 years later (!!)

As for the difference in encoding:

The sRGB gamma results in a brighter image assuming the monitor is adjusted the same — and therein lies part of the problem. Monitors have ADJUSTABLE GAMMA, it is the control usually called “brightness” (the control usually called “contrast” adjusts the white level).

The other thing that sRGB defines is that BLACK is at 0 and WHTIE is at 255, as opposed to 16/235 as in Rec709.

Rec709 is a bit unique in that it only defines the encoding spec. sRGB is a derived from Rec709, but the developers wanted to define the viewing conditions and characteristics both because computers are used in brighter office environments (as opposed to a dark living room) and also because of the legacy of existing computer files (jpeg etc) that were all roughly at a 1/2.2 gamma.

Put another way, sRGB is “Display Referred” while Rec709 is “Source Referred” (note that I will no longer call Rec709 “scene” referred, as it’s not scene referred the way that an EXR is, for instance. I think it is more appropriate to call Rec709 “source” referred or “camera” referred).

And yes, this is a very abstract and confusing subject. It took me a long time to really get a handle on it. Not helping of course is that it’s hard to describe in words, plus Adobe has done a very poor job with documentation, a poor job labeling controls and workflow, a poor job including useful ICC profiles… etc.

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com

[Andrew Somers]

Hey Omar,

The 8700 absolutely stomps on the 7700— get the 8700 it beats the 7700 in every area and benchmark.

While the 8700 has a base clock of 3.2 GHz it has an all core boost of 4.3 GHz and a single core boost of 4.6 GHz. The 7700 has a base of 3.6 GHz (not 4.2 — the 7700 in max turbo tops out at 4.2 Ghz, less than the all-core-max for the 8700).

Plus that 8700 has 50% bigger cache at 12 MB instead of 8Mb, and the 8700 uses much faster RAM (DDR4 2666) than the 7700.

Plus the 8700 has six cores instead of four — that’s huge. Seriously dude I don’t care what others might be telling you regarding multi-threading/multi-frame render, because YOU NEED CORES more than Mars Needs Women. And lots of them. It’s not just for After Effects, it’s your entire working environment. With more cores you can run more apps at the same time, which is important for workflow reasons.

I’ll typically have Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere/Avid/FCP, Mocha, a couple dozen browser windows, a hex editor, BB, Pandora, QT Player, Screen sharing of the servers, and a Filemaker database. When something is going to take a minute (like a save or export) in one workspace, I’ll Ctrl-Slide to another workspace and work on that bit rather than waiting.

Oh yea, on Mac OS we have “spaces” where you have multiple complete desktops. I set each major app in its own space so I can quickly toggle over. I think Windows 10 finally has something like that (I believe they call it Virtual Desktops).

What you need to have this kind of workflow/Env is a LOT of RAM and a LOT of CORES.

ALSO: Outside of After Effects, multi cores are important. Cinema 4D will fill your CPUs to the top. having 12 total vcores on the 8700 will make a big difference in apps like C4D instead of the 8 on the 7700.

As for your question of who/when will the app or system take advantage? I don’t know Windows as well as Linux/OSX so I can’t really say, but that kind of things is part of the Operating System Abstraction Layer, and the app may be optimized to take advantage of this. Regardless, the OS also spreads “single threads” across multiple processors. Windows 10 also allows you to assign cores to specific apps.

The one thing you want to do to make sure you can use and work in TURBO mode is to make sure you have EXCELLENT COOLING. If the CPUs overheat, they will drop down to base . The “standard cooling” is not enough. Liquid cooling is best. Also, properly applying a high quality silver heat sink grease to the CPU is critically important for stable operation.

In short: The 8700 at about the same price as the 7700, and the 8700 is a better chip in terms of performance, TDP per core, and usability in what you are going to find is a CPU intensive environment. I SWAMP my 24 cores on a regular basis to the point hte fans roar and I trip the breaker on the UPS…

EDIT TO ADD: Also, what brand mother board are you getting? On a Gigabit in particular, but others as well, you can run Mac OS X and dual boot, that’s something useful to think about as well.

Cheers!

Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com