FXWARS SUPERPOWERS: TIPS & TRICKS!

#1

Post here your ideas and tricks used for this challenge.
Keep in mind, a big part of the challenge is to film people and/or actors
and adding visual effects.

Know how to do a matte painting? Post it here.
Know how to do a pull a matte from video? Post it here.
Know how to fog/storm effects your favorite compositor/3d program? Post it!
Know how to do complex camera matching/ lighting set up? Post it!
Know some good cinematography tricks? Post it
know how to buld a cheap blue screen?Post it

Looking forward to the posts, but please try to keep it
as application agnostic as possible.
-R

#2

Ok Some tutorials:

CINEMATOGRAPHY
[ul]
[li]RULE OF THIRDS[/li][li]Framing Techniques[/li][/ul]BLUE SCREEN
[ul]
[li]The Blue Screen / Chroma Key Page"[/li][li]Blue and Green Screen Photography[/li][li]A Tutorial on using Adobe After effects to do blue screen composition[/li][/ul]

#3

I did everything on this clip from filming to final composition and sound fx.

It involved modeling (a bit simple but i needed fast renders), texturing, illumination, dynamics, camera matching, compositing (greenscreen and rotoscoping), color grading… I know the intro’s almost as long as the whole scene but it’s just an example.

That was months ago. I can do it better now. If I can be of any help, just post it here or pm me.

http://www.sinproblema.net/video/mproject.wmv

#4

Here some Combustion tuts:

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/combustion.html

and some greenscreen tips:

http://www.fxguide.com/fxtips-273.html

and here i found again a little how to compose greenscreen in combustion. it is the same as the aftereffects way, which roberto has posted. I post it only to show that it is possible to do it the same way(new for me:) ):
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=47839&highlight=greenscreen

last edit :oP…if you still have questions after checking this, then i’m sorry:D :

http://www.fxguide.com/modules.php?name=fxtips&rop=fxtip_list&catid=8

EDIT:

Oh, and i forgot to say:
Very nice Work Ooz3d. looks really cool:thumbsup:

Can you give us some tips? For example, i tried this tutorial for greenscreen composing in combustion, which is in the link i posted. But for some reason it does not work. perhaps the green is not good, but it looks very strange :-/

how did you do it? what did you use for compositing?

#5

Thanks CapitanRed!

Greenscreen tips:

I guess many people here will use DV footage for this FXWars contest. You must know most chroma key tools are developed with HD and Film footage in mind which have much more quality than DV, so foreground is much easier to extract.

When working with DV things get different. You don’t have so much image quality/resolution and if you’re also using a homemade green screen, it may not be quite as well lit as a professional one. What to do then?

  1. Try to have as less light/shadow differences on your greenscreen as possible.
  2. When you have your clip captured, balance the green channel to flatten it as much as possible also trying to increase differences between background and foreground. It doesn’t matter if foreground looks funny, we’re only trying to get a decent alpha channel, then we’ll use the original footage combined with that alpha channel.
  3. Use a DV specific chroma key tool. There’re many of them but I used DVMatte Pro 1.5 from DV Garage. You can specify the highest and lowest level of green (or whatever color you’re using) and it eliminates everything in between. It even works with transparencies and you can also save the alpha channel to work with it later.

Tricks when compositing:

Sometimes (and I want to point out the word “sometimes”), when you have the footage and alpha channel that you want to add to a whole digital set it’s interesting to include it as part of the 3d scene (a plane facing the camera with the clip as a texture and the alpha as the opacity channel) cause the clip will be affected by the same lights as the rest of the scene and those little borders that make your composite look fake won’t be so visible. Just don’t use it when you want to work with layers!

That’s it… And you know… If I can be of any help just ask!

#6

Hey Im not in this contest, but I have a tip for those of you on a budget.

For a green screen we use rectangular green plastic table cloths, and put them up on our garage door. we got the Idea Here: http://www.hiddenphantom.com/Tutorials/Bluescreen/Bluescreen.html

It actually works terrific with some good work in Post Production. We set ours up with PVC pipe and duct-tape on our garrage door easy to put up and down. Plus you can get them and you local dollar store or party city!

Ill see if I can post a pic.:slight_smile:

edit: heres a pic

#7

since the footage I (and other teams) posted is quite raw, you’ll want to give it a look and not just comp fx over it and leave it. To give it a more hollywood feel, try color correcting it (cc) Here’s a great tutorial to show you how easy it can be to do. Its done in after effect but as you’ll see it can easyily be applied to all compositing applications.

At least don’t leave it in the raw state you got it. Good Luck all

#8

Here’s an article on camera tracking that covers a lot of ground fairly well and has some pics from one of the storm fxwars productions to boot!

#9

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