Using/Blending Textures in Sony Vegas

[Azure Vermillion]

This seems like the right place to post.

I've seen quite a few AMVs that make use of blending colour gradients to compliment the scenes they use. It's something I've always wanted to try, but something I've never been successful in implementing.
From what I gather, people use the compositing mode and select something from the blending options (overlay, dodge, difference, etc) As far as I am aware those blending options apply for all the other layers under it, or at least those directly under it.
Do I have to place the Blended Texture layer and desired clip on separate video tracks and place them below my main video layers so they don't affect them?

My question is, How do you personally go about using/blending textures? Like how do you work with them? (your personal approach)
Whenever I try and fiddle around with them, the best I can achieve is something similar to just lowering the opacity
Using the media generated gradients as an example and the overlay comp, whenever I try and blend it with some footage, the original clip is darkened quite alot, and the gradients take over most all of the colou . All I want is something like a subtile colour influence, sadly all the blending modes I try, influence by clip in ways undesired.
Is there a way in which to use them so they only subtily influence the colour tint on-screen, without affecting the clip noticeably? sliding around the transparency isn't working too well for me.

I guess what would really help me is a description of what each blending mode does, or in what situation best to use it.
Even just some general advice about working with textures/blending in general would be helpful
I'm sorry if my message is a little incoherent or not very clear.
I guess when I have more time, I'll post some pictures, visually explaining my predicament and what sort of range-of-colour I am trying to acheive

Thank you for your time!

[Kanti13]

OMG! Ever since I learned to use compositing modes I can't imagine not having them to work with. I've come to depend then in so many ways. For one thing, I have emitters from particle illusion. I don't have the program cuz I just downloaded the trial and rendered a bunch of effects that I use with black backgrounds. Putting an effect like that into any number of different compositing modes eliminates the background and leaves you with the effect, it looks clean and smooth. I know some people don't like to use those effects because they try to chroma out the background and it rarely looks good. The same can be applied for photoshop textures and other things like that.

I also like to use "lighten" as opposed to chroma keyer or even masking in some cases. If you have a scene with a dark background and you put it onto a lighten track it can look like flawless chroma and it's so much easier.
For example, in this video I only used chroma keyer for one scene and the only masking I did was a couple of small pieces where the image was showing through. I think I only did that twice and I didn't mask any advanced shapes or characters or anything. I just used compositing modes to combine so many different scenes and characters and effects. They are just soooo useful!
So those are practical ways I use then and then you can also use them to get all kinds of different looks for effects and all. They are an amazing tool. I use them in almost all my videos!

I need to go open up a project and do some screen shots to show you how to fix that problem you are having. It's really simple but for some reason whenever I try to explain it it sounds super complicated and intimidating. Will post those up soon.

[Kanti13]

I used Burn mode for the example in my screen shots but the same applies for Multiply, Overlay, Hard Light, Darken, Burn, and Difference Squared. For these compositing modes you will need to use a parent and child track (will understand from looking at screenshots).
Add, Subtract, Screen, Dodge, Lighten, and Difference can just be used like any other track, they don't affect the tracks below them.

Using Burn compositing mode:


Problem, it affects the tracks below when there is now footage on the track set to Burn mode. Make a child and parent compositing track:


Set the "parent compositing mode" to Burn. Change original track back to source alpha:


By setting the parent compositng mode you make both tracks into that mode. You can put something on either one of them and it will affect what is directly below it. If you want the tracks to only affect each other than you can leave only one of them set to a certain compositng mode but I wouldn't recommend it. When you use it that way some modes will still affect all the tracks under them but it won't be as strong. Better to just set the parent compositing mode and put something on those tracks when you want to use it.

When I know I want to use one of these darker modes (just what I call them, no reason really) I start out with 2 tracks, turn them into parent and child and set the parent compositing mode. Then go along with my editing.

As for your problem about trying to change the strength of the blending mode with the opacity, lowering the opacity will work for the modes I listed above that do not require parent and child tracks, add, dodge, lighten...
There is a sort of trick that I have found for the darker modes. For those tracks white appears as transparent. For example if you were to put a plain white media in a track set to burn it would look like nothing. So you can use whitening effects to change the strengths. For example you can use white glow which I did in these pictures:







If you have questions about achieving a specific kind of effect with compositing modes I can try to answer it if you want to describe something. I spend a lot of time using them.

It's really a pretty simple thing to show people, but I don't know how to describe it in a way that's easy to understand. So I really hope the screenshots help ^_^

[Azure Vermillion]

Wow, you pretty much explained everything I wanted to know, and yes those screenshots helped illustrate what you were saying.
So firstly, Thank you for going out of your way to help me understand and make use of the compostiting modes. You've been beyond helpful!
I still have a ton of things to work out with Vegas, as I pretty much self taught myself how to use it.
Chroma Keyering seems to be quite the powerful (and useful) tool. Its something I've never tried using, as I've always found rotoscoping more precise (though so bloody tedious)
From what I gather Chroma Keyering blends in the colours with the other layer that closest are to whatever you selected or somethingerrather.
Though I guess I'll play around with it all when I get more free time and such.

Anyway, Thanks again you really helped me out.

[infamous495]

I'm using multiply to make the image below appear on the piece of paper. Now, I want to get rid of that black bg and add something below it. This is the best could do...




I just realized why it doesnt work... it's because the clip within the paper also has black in it :/

Is there another way i could do this?

[infamous495]

I'm using multiply to make the image below appear on the piece of paper. Now, I want to get rid of that black bg and add something below it. This is the best could do...

Quoted Image converted to link:
http://img190.imageshack.us/i/pic1zlo.jpg/
Quoted Image converted to link:
http://img401.imageshack.us/i/pic2umh.jpg/

I just realized why it doesnt work... it's because the clip within the paper also has black in it :/

Is there another way i could do this?

I figured it out…
I used chroma key to take out the black from the piece of paper and then used multiply. This way it has the image in the piece of paper and the clip below it will be unaffected.