Pulling Keys

I have used IB Keyer for this. It provides a lot more for the hair. I used the luminance match from the background as well as the chroma.......

The shirt area is roto'd and has and EdgeBlur which is brightened to give a soft and light outline....

Overall, pretty happy with this key.

The image will be properly colour corrected using other shots in the film as reference.

I am rendering most of the shots through the farm at the moment, and compositing some other final shots.

Keying and CG Character Comp Test

Keying

I have begun keying the character in some shots.

I began with Keylight and isolated separate areas, such as hair and body, and then merged them back together.

It was getting a little messy, and so I began again with IBK. Despite not having shot the blank green screen I was able to create a very smooth and consistent background using the IBK Colour node.

After tinkering with this process, I found it much more comfortable to work with. I tweaked the darks and lights for some time. Then using background luminance and chroma it gives the colours of the rendered background (or Constant in the meantime).

I also had to switch on 'autolevels' to pinch the whites in more and the 'luminance match' which needed the 'screen range' pulled down.

There were artefacts in the key, so it appeared that the red weight was too low, so this was pulled up to a value higher than 1.

For a better outline, I have premultiplied the key, then unpremultiplied it to get rid of the black outline, eroded the line, then blurred the edge (with a brightening effect.)

Lighting

When I rendered out the roughly keyed footage, I took it into Maya to match up the lighting. It was all very dark, so I created an area light with a warm colour to match the footage as much as possible.

Here is a test render:

After the test composite, this is what I have:

I have used light wrap, a glow and a glint (rotated 90 degrees) which really helps to tie the character into the scene using the lighting here. Of course along with a series of colour corrections and composited elements.

I have chosen to move the camera slightly to the right as the character leans forward.

Keying in Nuke

Last semester I did keying with Keylight for the Test 1 video within After Effects.

This semester, I have moved into Nuke for this. Again using Keylight, but also IBK.

The results I feel are a lot better and cleaner.

The project I did this for was Miss Donnithorne's Maggot with Flyboy Films. John Fairfield came to me and asked the favour to do these six shots in one afternoon.

I replaced  the green first of all with the desired grey they had before. But they wanted it 'dirtied up a bit'. And, with the lack of internet access on 3D lab computers I managed to source a texture in my project folders from the Test 1 video which was used for texturing the environment. I mixed this with the grey, and due to the idea that it were to be 'f**ked up' I made a trippy disorientating rotation of this back plate, which wasn't badly received.

Here is an example of the output:

Before

After

IBK Workflows:

Keylight Workflows:

Considering the short working time-frame and the lack of refining and staring closely at it, I am happy with the outcome, and the fact that John and Peter were happy with it.

Green Screen Shoot And Chroma Keying Tests

Example of simple chroma keying test in After Effects for 'multiple exposure' shot.

Myself and Michal Zagorski led a shoot at the green screen studio with the beautiful Alona Kiricenko doing the performing.

We filmed from 3pm to 8pm and were quite efficient at following my storyboard and keeping everything simple and well executed (in our opinions...)

I have since executed some simple chroma keying using Keylight within After Effects. I also hope to do this in Nuke (with Keylight, and IBK colour nodes, etc.) and composite it with more style. I find that After Effects creates naturally quite an artificial look, and there aren't many, many options available to rectify this, quite like it seems Nuke, complicatedly, can.

A simple AE key and composite.

The original plate shot on Wednesday.

 _____

Another, less accurate example.

This test should allow myself and Michal to know better how to go about a green screen shoot, even though we were very textbook in how we went about it and knew/were confident in how to do it beforehand. But, also it should allow us to see how more creative one can be with it, after practicing the basics fairly smoothly.