How do you do Character Compositing?

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How do you do Character Compositing?

Postby rubyeye » Sun Jul 06, 2003 7:25 pm

This is the one trick I haven't learned yet and I am seeing lots of people pulling it off successfully. So could some of you please share with me how you composite a character (performing their full action) into a completely different scene? Software / Plugins / and how to do it?

I am talking about 'clean' composites like in the Excel_Pop_Up video or AD's Arima Shinjikun.
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Postby NicholasDWolfwood » Sun Jul 06, 2003 7:42 pm

Frame by frame. Or after effects.
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Postby EarthCurrent » Sun Jul 06, 2003 7:44 pm

Export frame by frame to photoshop or similar image/graphics editor. Create a matte surrounding the image you want composited. Reimport frame by frame with the mattes over the scene that you want to lay the composite.
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Postby Bebop0083 » Sun Jul 06, 2003 8:08 pm

i was wondering how to do that to. im still confused by the process though. except how exactly do u import them into the image editor??
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Postby EarthCurrent » Sun Jul 06, 2003 8:20 pm

VirtualDub

Open the footage. Video>Copy Source Frame to ClipBoard
Then Paste the frame into the into the editor.
Go back to VDUb, advance footage one frame, copy to clipboard, paste to editor...and so on.
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Postby FurryCurry » Sun Jul 06, 2003 8:29 pm

EarthCurrent wrote:VirtualDub

Open the footage. Video>Copy Source Frame to ClipBoard
Then Paste the frame into the into the editor.
Go back to VDUb, advance footage one frame, copy to clipboard, paste to editor...and so on.


A slightly faster way:

Open your source clip in vdub.
Seek to the first frame of the scene you want to use and set the "in" point.
Seek to the last frame; set out point.
Under the file menu, choose "save image sequence", set up all the numbering, name, format, etc. (I save as .bmp) hit ok.

Now you have a whole sequence of numbered images, one for every frame between the in and out points you marked. Load them into Pshop, or whatever you use.
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Postby EarthCurrent » Sun Jul 06, 2003 8:43 pm

Is that what that sequence thing does. Go figure.
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Postby rubyeye » Sun Jul 06, 2003 9:22 pm

Frame:by:Frame is NOT practical. I seriously doubt that's how professionals do it.

Must be an after effects thing.
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Postby Ashyukun » Mon Jul 07, 2003 8:32 am

Depending on what you're talking about with 'the professionals', they either a) are working with blue/green screen footage, b) have far more sophisticated software dedicated to rotoscoping characters out of a scene or c) do it frame-by-frame just like we do.

All told, doing it in After Effectis is still doing it frame-by-frame, it's just of a slighlty different (and IMO, better) nature. When doing it using masks (as I believe is the most common method) you still have to adjust the masks for each different frame. Character compositing is a lot of work no matter how you look at doing it...
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Postby rubyeye » Mon Jul 07, 2003 4:18 pm

Bumber... Well, thanks for the input fellas. Looks like if I want to try it myself, there's just no other way (until one comes along).
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Postby Quu » Mon Jul 07, 2003 4:34 pm

Pinnacle Comotion is one of those "far more sophisticated software" that is meant for rotoscoping and compositing
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Postby the Black Monarch » Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:35 pm

BTW, it's really sweet when you're taking a character from a solid black background and putting them into another solid black background. Iam considering using this in one of my videos. The folding chair from the last 2 eps of Evangelion is so similar to the one in Britey Spears' "Stronger" music video... hmm...
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Postby post-it » Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:46 pm

save image sequence . . T_T . . old school there - bub!

yes, there is an easier way today ^^ and it sounds more complicated than it really is:

1) crop the number of frames you want to use.

2) transparent the color(s) you want to loose andthreshold the colors you've picked to a limit that allows you to only show the parts of the scene you want to use ^^

its a combination of effects that can be stored in your behavior file - for that clip ^^
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Postby Ashyukun » Fri Jul 11, 2003 10:03 pm

post-it wrote:save image sequence . . T_T . . old school there - bub!

yes, there is an easier way today ^^ and it sounds more complicated than it really is:

1) crop the number of frames you want to use.

2) transparent the color(s) you want to loose andthreshold the colors you've picked to a limit that allows you to only show the parts of the scene you want to use ^^

its a combination of effects that can be stored in your behavior file - for that clip ^^


This is nice when you have a scene where there is both a nice color separation and clean enough definition- and there aren't any common colors in (say, for example) the clothes of the character you want and the background- but in a lot of cases you simply can't do it with just color keying. I've only really encountered one situation where I could pretty much use only color keying for compositing, and that was with Chiyo-chan in Osaka's dream about the alien pigtails when she's spinning and such- and even then I had to replace the black in her eyes from it being keyed out with the background...
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Postby Castor Troy » Fri Jul 11, 2003 11:42 pm

It's not extremely difficult, just painfully time consuming.

I think I edited nearly 700-800 frames in The Haunted Shipalone... :shock:

Pace is also an important thing. Just edit around 10-20 frames a day.
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