[Craig Whitaker]

I may be overlooking something very obvious, but couldn’t you render out the HUD with an alpha, bring it back in and warp it?

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

Try blurring the hell out of your plate and screening or adding it on top to create the reflections.

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

I’m reading your post again…if she’s facing the camera, how do we read the word coming from her mouth?

If she’s perpendicular, then you could read it as it happens, so I’ll assume that’s what you mean.

Ok, my approach, (not that it’s THE way to do it) would be…

1) Lock off camera so you don’t have to 3D track anything.
2) Cut your matte of the word “Spirit” either in Photoshop or AE.
3) Shoot someone blowing smoke from their mouth in front of a black screen.
4) In AE, trackmatte the smoke layer with the matte of the word.
5) If you can shoot the same person in the same position, it should be a relatively easy comp (perspective wise)
6) You can then just mask reveal the smoke layer to only show up behind the word.

Make sense?

-Craig

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

Does each letter get formed as if it was being written or is it an overall reveal?

[Craig Whitaker]

I did something similar recently and the mesh warp worked great. Tweaking the bezier handles was where the magic started to happen, haha. Moblur helps a bunch too. Good luck!

Best,
Craig

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

George,

If you have access to Shake, use it. Keying is FCP is fine if you have one shot to do, aren’t worried about detail and have great conditions.

Inside of Shake, you will be using multiple instances of Keylight (or whatever keyer you want)

The reason for this is that a subject in front of a greenscreen is going to have very different edges at different parts of their body. Focus on one part at a time. Take the head for example. Draw a rough shape around the head and focus on getting a key JUST for that. When you’re doing this, make sure you’re looking at the alpha channel in the viewer. Your goal at this point is to make a beautiful black and white image. Keep that in mind as you’re working on keys…black and white. Once you tweak the settings so you have a great black and white image for the head, move on to another body part.

At the end, you’ll have a bunch of black and white images that will need to be combined to make one master matte. In Shake, I think the best node to use would be a Max node? What that’s looking for is the maximum value of each pixel on the screen. If you’re dealing with black and white, obviously white will win. You’ll take the white parts of the head, combine them (Max) with the white parts of your body matte and so on and so forth.

The other aspect of this is the core/edge matte approach. Sometimes when pulling a key (often when pulling a key) you will get better results tackling edges and cores separately. Still think about black and white. Pull a key on someone’s torso for example. Just try and get the edges clean…don’t worry about the core. Ok so now you have a matte with beautiful edges but it’s probably full of holes. Black and white. Pull a second key and this time only focus on the core. The edges will look like crap but who cares, you already have an edge matte.

I hope this is all making sense, it took me a long time to get the concept of just making a black and white picture (some days I feel like I’m still getting it….I probably am, haha)

Would love to help if you need any other tips…my knowledge is limited but considering I acquired 90% of it on forums, I’ll help anyway I can.

Best,
Craig

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

Hi,

When pulling a key for a shot, the best two tools are time and patience. You already have the right software, just need a different approach. First, one instance of one keyer node isn’t going to work. Look at your shot. Where does it make sense to break it up….head, body, hair? Most likely, you will need to use at least two or more separate shapes for the final shot. Also, try thinking about one matte for the core of your object and another for the edges. Take the results of each and combine them together to make your final matte.

Best,
Craig

[Craig Whitaker]

If you have Final Cut Studio, I would suggest taking the sequence into Color and grade/correct there. If you’ve never used it, I would suggest reading or watching some tutorials first as the interface isn’t that common. Good luck!

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

Hey Dave,

thanks for getting back to me, I appreciate it.
It\’s a lock off so that helps big time, plus the vfx sup shot a clean plate .. just wanted to clarify my ideas for the workflow before I wasted a bunch of hours. I don\’t mind doing the roto if it\’s the right solution. Thanks again.

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net

[Craig Whitaker]

It has to match what you’re rendering from Maya, which I believe is premultiplied. I was thinking that this could be causing your “unpredictability”

Craig Whitaker
MFA Candidate
New York University
http://www.craigwhitaker.net