Characters in real film footage?

[Mutley]

Hi there,

A while back I saw a guy who produced real life video footage but was able to include HL2 characters such as combine and striders into the footage.

I'm really intrested in trying this out and just wondering how it was achieved? What programs and any tutorials?

Thanks alot, really would like some good advice.

 

[crackhead]

well one way of doing this would be to make a map with a chroma blue wall. and even lighting. then have your models doing whateva u want. then record it and open it up in say adobe premiere 6.0 and key out the chroma so your basically making the blue part see through and layering it over some other footage. chromonater is very good for this find it at fxhome.com or somthign liek that. also you could export the models and textures into xsi and rig them. then export their animation as a video and then split it into single images for each frame and make sure the background is white and then make it an element in alamdv2. pretty vauge there.

 

[D€vIL²]

yeah wheres a link to that?

 

[Mutley]

So basicly.

> Make a map where everything is 255 blue, like a film blue screen.
> Make the blue screen see-through.
> Overlap other real footage as another layer, so the character is in the real footage and the area that was blue is see-through?

And what would you reccomend to make the blue area see-through, without optimising every single frame?

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Works in exactly the same way as blue screening in proper cinema works. Although, I have no idea how that works, either.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[crackhead]

well i would recomend chromanater even though i have never used that for chroma keying. ive heard that even if your blue or green screen is badly lit then it still works. ive only used adobe premiere 6.0 for this but i currently own premiere pro and that doesnt seem to support chroma keying. also i think green screen is prefered to blue nowadays. so to sum that up i think chromanator is your best choice and fxhome are very reliable. its probally gona cost ya about 60 gbp. but its well worth it and will give you professional results. so if you are doing this for a project or university course then its a good buy but not if your just going to mess around with it.

 

[Mutley]

Thanks alot,

It is definatly something I will play hard with. Will look into FXHome and Chromanator and give it a shot!

I belive green screen is the prefered way now, due to films like the Matrix using that method and Star Wars.

For HL2, do you know any commands to remove the HUD?

 

[Limpet]

impulse 200 I think

 

[Osilo]

Green screens are more popular, because blue is a more common color found in clothing than green. You'd probably want to use whichever is best for the models. The chroma should allow you to pick which color it keys out, so you could basicly use any color as the background.

 

[Mutley]

It's a shame you need to pay for everything, is there any decent trials or free/source chroma key programs?

I tried the Chromonator free trial but doesn't let you save?

 

[crackhead]

just buy it man itd be well worth it if your serious about this. plus you wont have to buy special expensive chroma colour felt or anything just a big plywood board painted green. i guess it really comes down to how serious you are about this though.

Green screens are more popular, because blue is a more common color found in clothing than green.

i believe it also has somethign to do with skin tone?

 

[Osilo]

See if you can fraps the preview on the trial. xD

 

[Phallic Thunder]

You mean these?

The guy you are talking about is Nick Bertke:

http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com/interviews/nick-bertke-hdri-artist.html.

http://pogon.deviantart.com/gallery/

http://www.deathfall.com/feature.php?op=showcontent&id=52

Follow the links, he describes his techniques on creating such pictures.

 

[Patriarch2000]

The guy doesn't use the green/blue screen like you have described, he uses some kind of reflective ball and lots of different types of 3d software.

 

[Mutley]

Gah, I really want to do something like that but just don't know where to start.

Would the green screen method still work?

 

[crackhead]

yeah itd work. infact its quite a neat idea. ive been playin around with chroma keys for quite a while but when looking into buying one theyre so expensive. doing it on the computer liek this is an excellent idea.